Agreement Reached To Protect Sierra Nevada Land From Home Building

The Sierra Nevada mountain range. Photo courtesy of the Sierra Nevada Alliance.

An agreement has been reached that will protect the forests in the northern Sierra Nevada from being parceled off and developed for commercial purposes.

Sierra Nevada northern forest. Photo by Sierra Forest Legacy.

In an effort that has been about four years in the making, an agreement has been reached between the Truckee Donner Land Trust, The Trust For Public Land, and the forest products company Sierra Pacific Industries will allow the company to continue logging the land near Jackson Meadows Reservoir north of Truckee, but the conservation agreement will prohibit property from being subdivided for development into homes.

The conservation agreement will mean permanent protection for the land, which includes streams, meadows, and a variety of plants and wildlife.

“These lands straddle the headwaters of four major rivers systems, which are the very heart of California’s water supply,” said David Sutton, The Trust for Public Land’s director for Northern California and Nevada.

“To get clean plentiful water out of the tap, the whole system has to be working right, but without healthy forests at the top, the water is threatened before it even begins to run downhill,” added Sutton.

The area will also still be available for recreation, including hiking, snowmobiling, and other uses. 

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Relentless Tiger Poaching Brings Activists and INTERPOL Together

Photo courtesy of Brian Scott.

On the Chinese lunar calendar 2010 is the Year of the Tiger, which commences on February 14, 2010 and ends on February 2, 2011. The tiger is the third sign in the Chinese Zodiac cycle, symbolizing fighting courage, which was admired by the ancient Chinese as the sign that keeps away the three main tragedies of a household — fire, thieves, and ghosts.

Things are currently a little different in real life. The tiger is not fairing so well against both the destruction of its habitat and poachers.

In the early 1900s, tigers roamed throughout Asia and numbered over 100,000, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Its current estimates indicate that less than 3,500 of these remain as a whole in the wild. Tigers today are pouched for their skins, but almost every part of their bodies can be used for either decorative or traditional medicinal purposes.

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Searching Out New Ranges for America’s Wild Mustangs

Wild mustangs. Photo courtesy of National Geographic.

While having descended from domesticated horses brought here by early Spanish explorers, the American wild mustangs have always embodied virtues that we also pride in ourselves, such as strength, endurance, determination, and freedom.

Still exemplifying these virtues, the horses have experienced a powerful resurgence over the last four decades since the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act was passed in 1971.

The law made it illegal to slaughter these animals as a method of population control or providing meat for dog food. The horses and burros were seen as competitors with domestic livestock for grazing lands.

Today, these federally protected animals are being threatened by their own successful comeback. They are eating themselves right out of their own protected ranges.

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National Zoo’s Clouded Leopard Cubs Reach a New Milestone

Happy News! The now almost three-and-a-half month old clouded leopard cubs born at the conservation and research center of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park have just left the hospital, where they had been hand reared since birth, and moved to their new home at the facility.

The two yet-to-be named cubs are now on an adult diet of chopped up beef and are exploring their new world at the Front Royal, Va., facility.

“They are in a nice enclosure, where they are learning to climb. They have no problem going up. They love to go up. Right now, they go up a large branch and go down a log. Eventually, they will start jumping down,” said JoGayle Howard, a reproductive specialist at the facility.

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$750 Million to the National Parks Creating Jobs in a Variety of Fields

At the Dinosaur National Monument and Quarry, visitors can watch paleontologists remove fossils in a three-story glass building attached to a mountain, according to Dinosaurland KAO, Vernal, UT. Photo courtesy of Dinosaurland KAO.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congress has directed $750 million toward national park infrastructures projects through the Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C..

“Investments in national park infrastructure will help to improve safety and public access; restore our national heritage; and bring immediate economic benefits—including thousands of new jobs in rural and urban communities nationwide,” said Karen Hevel-Mingo, Southwest regional program manager of the National Parks Conservation Association, Washington, D.C.

Nearly 800 projects are planned, which the National Parks Service, Washington, D.C., plans to use to create jobs in areas including: construction, deferred maintenance, energy efficiency equipment replacement, trails maintenance, abandoned mine lands safety projects, and road maintenance.

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