There are high mountain lakes in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks that are naturally free of fish and home to yellow-legged frogs. Non-native trout, introduced into the lakes, are now threatening the survival of the frogs, and the question for the National Park Service is what to do about it.
There are 560 lakes and ponds within the parks that contain introduced trout, and removal of these non-native species from up to 15 percent of these sites will be considered. Up to 82 lakes and 56 miles of streams are being considered for trout removal.
In its scoping document, the Park Service says the trout removal project “is needed to preserve and restore aquatic ecosystems and populations of native species, including mountain yellow-legged frogs in high elevation lakes and streams, creating new opportunities for visitors to experience native wildlife yet also maintaining recreational fishing opportunities.”
A preliminary project to eradicate trout from 11 lakes in the two parks since 2001 has allowed the recovery of yellow-legged frogs at these lakes. Now Park Service officials want to broaden the campaign to restore the frogs throughout the two parks - while leaving the fish in many lakes that are popular with anglers.
So the controversy is which lakes to remove the trout from, and how to go about doing it. For more information, and the opportunity to comment if you are so inclined, go to Save The Frogs!
A federal appeals court in San Francisco today blocked, at least for the time being, the construction of the nation’s largest landfill next to Joshua Tree National Park in Riverside County.
A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said by a 2-1 vote that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management did not adequately study several factors before approving a land swap with the landfill developer.
The waste dump proposed by Kaiser Ventures LLC is known as the Eagle Mountain landfill. It would occupy 4,654 acres at a former iron ore mine site and would accept 20,000 tons of garbage per day from several southern California communities.
There’s got to be a better place to dump garbage. Good to see at least two judges agreed.
The Yellowstone Insider has a good update on the bison situation in and out of Yellowstone National Park. Basically, not much has changed. Ranchers still want bison who wander out of the park shot because of fears of brucellosis, bison lovers keep pointing out that cattle don’t get brucellosis from bison.
Bison who wander outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park could not be killed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service if a lawsuit filed by nine environmental groups and American Indian organizations succeeds.
The lawsuit, filed today in U.S. District Court, argues that the Park Service and Forest Service is negligent in protecting Yellowstone bison and overstates the danger to local livestock posed by brucellosis carried by bison and elk in the region.
But science doesn’t quite jibe with the cattleman’s view of the world: research indicates it’s very, very unlikely bison can transit brucellosis to cattle. The more likely suspect: elk. But it’s harder to slaughter elk: there’s so danged many of them in the region (some 10,000), and they’re less manageable than bison.
They left out that many ranchers like to hunt elk, too. But the basic point remains. Bison are a convenient scapegoat for ranchers, slaughtering them has little or nothing to do with the facts.
Hard to imagine anything like this even being proposed, much less happening, in the United States.
The historic first return to indigenous owners of an Australian national park in the state of Queensland took place Friday on the Cape York Peninsula.
Established in October 1977 as the Mitchell-Alice Rivers National Park, the park covers an area of 371 square kilometers (143 sq miles) between the Mitchell and Alice Rivers 30 km (20 miles) northeast of Kowanyama on the Gulf of Carpinteria side of the Cape.
It was renamed the Errk Oykangand National Park (Cape York Aboriginal Land) on Friday. This protected area will be jointly managed by traditional owners and the Queensland government, under an Indigenous Management Agreement.
The National Park Service approved a plan to reduce snowmobile access to Yellowstone National Park to less than half of current levels. The 318 snowmobiles per day limit will go into effect over the next two winters until the EPA and the NPS can finish studying the complete environmental impact of the park’s use in the winter. Yellowstone is all but inaccessible during snowy months without the use of snowmobiles or snow coaches.
In response, Wyoming’s congressional delegation issued a press release deriding the agency’s decision. “More people should be allowed in the park, not less,” said Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY). Washington and Wyoming have both raised federal lawsuits against the National Parks Service.
The 318 number is above the average daily snowmobile use in Yellowstone last year, but under the peak use by about two hundred. Whether that will cut down visitors on snowmobiles in a big way remains to be seen.
Assuming, of course, the courts don’t change the rules before then.
U.S. Forest Service management plans for four Southern California national forests do not adequately protect those forests’ wildest landscapes, a federal district court judge has ruled.
U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel sided with seven environmental groups, ruling that the Forest Service failed to assess cumulative damage to those national forests that would be caused by road building and other development in most of the forests’ roadless areas, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.
Surrounded by some of the most rapidly urbanizing land in the United States, these forests are the last remaining refuge for the region’s imperiled species such as the steelhead trout, the California condor and the California spotted owl.
The proposed plan would have left only 79,000 roadless acres out what is currently nearly a million. In other words, the wilderness character of these forests would have been nearly erased. Hikers, campers, trout fishermen, and just plain lovers of wilderness all owe a big thank you to Judge Patel, who understands that the laws governing wilderness and forest management actually mean what they say, and are not just minor nuisances to be avoided in favor of the desires of land developers and their allies in the U.S. Forest Service.
If you’ve been watching and enjoying Ken Burns’ documentary on our national parks now being shown on PBS stations, and why wouldn’t you, you’ve probably picked up on one of the major themes; that the early history of the parks was often one of a few people managing to establish the parks in the face of misunderstanding and, at times, outright opposition. That the idea of the parks came to be at all is a minor miracle, that they were first established at a time when exploitation of resources was seen by many as the end all and be all of their existence is more of a major one.
Of course, the problems faced by the parks today are different than those encountered in simply trying to get them set up in the first place. Management and use issues tend to dominate conversation about the parks, but there is a looming issue that threatens to change the very nature of the parks themselves. If global warming and climate change prevail, for many of the parks, from the glaciers of Glacier National Park to the Joshua trees the very reasons the parks were established to preserve will disappear forever.
That’s the theme of a report issued last week by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. As their report shows what Burns characterizes as America’s best idea is in danger of being destroyed not by competing development or over-use, although those are perennial problems, but by a changing climate that could lead to an irreversible change to the very landscape the parks are intended to preserve.
That would be a shame, not just for us but also the wildlife and other species that have come to depend on the presence of the parks to protect the habitat they depend on for life. The problem is serious, but it may not be too late yet to do something about it. For an introduction, including a slide show of the most endangered parks, click here, to go straight to the report, here (pdf file).
If you weren’t able to make it out for the free weekend at the national parks, there’s still a chance to enjoy them this weekend from the comfort of your own home. Just tune in Sunday night for the premiere of Ken Burns’ latest documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea on PBS.
Burns’ lingering over beautiful images approach to documentary film-making should work particularly well for portraying the national parks and their abundant scenery.
Fall can be a great time in many of the national parks, they’re generally less crowded, and a night chill can make that campfire all the more welcome. Good thing, then, that the last of this year’s free weekends at national parks is coming up now.
September 26 is also Public Lands Day, a day devoted to volunteering to help out in the national parks and other public lands.
National Public Lands Day is the nation’s largest hands-on volunteer effort to improve and enhance the public lands that we all enjoy (and so often take for granted.) In 2008, about 120,000 volunteers built trails and bridges, removed trash and invasive plants, and planted over 1.6 million trees in parks around the country. More efforts are underway this year.
if you’re interested in volunteer opportunities near where you live, or not, click here.
It’s been a while since there was anything in the news about Florida and the fight to save the Everglades. When we last looked, legislation had been passed to save the Everglades but funding wasn’t coming through, and the state of Florida had announced a deal to buy 283,000 acres from US Sugar and use the land as part of the Everglades restoration project.
Now it’s looking like a race between funding and restoration on one hand, and complete collapse of the Everglades ecology on the other. First, check out this article on just how close we are to losing the Everglades and Florida Bay, then add in this editorial from the Miami Herald, which holds out some hope that things will still work out.
Two decisions this month by the South Florida Water Management District’s governing board can begin to stem the Bay’s collapse. The board should approve an agreement between the district and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on how they will calculate costs and share responsibilities for projects to replumb the Everglades to bring more clean water into the national park and Florida Bay. Approval will clear a huge obstacle that has blocked federal funding for the massive replumbing project for eight years.
In 2000, Congress passed the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, an ambitious 20-year project to restore the Everglades’ sheet flow while safeguarding South Florida’s drinking-water supply. CERP is jointly funded by Florida and the federal government. But a mixture of bureaucratic infighting, a plethora of lawsuits by various groups and political shenanigans by the Florida Legislature that angered Congress has held up federal funding.
Meanwhile, the state invested millions of dollars in building water storage reservoirs and buying land for the replumbing project. The logjam finally broke this year when the Obama administration included $279 million for Glades restoration in the federal stimulus bill. But then a dispute erupted between the feds and the district over how to calculate shared costs. The agreement the district’s board of governors will take up Aug. 13 resolves that dispute. Once the board approves it, the first federal stimulus money — $41 million to reclaim 55,000 acres in the Picayune Strand in Southwest Florida — will be freed up.
The second decision involving the district’s board is a vote to spend $536 million to buy 283,000 acres from U.S. Sugar Corp. for the restoration. But first, a judge is expected to rule Friday on a lawsuit brought by the Miccosukee Tribe and others challenging the financing of the land deal. The tribe has concerns that this land purchase might cost taxpayers too much and not leave enough money to pay for other restoration projects.
The tribe’s concerns are well taken, as are other issues such as the impact on communities dependent on the sugar industry. But they are overridden by this one-time opportunity to take nearly 300,000 acres out of sugar production. Those acres would become water storage areas that would cut the problematic fresh-water discharges from Lake Okeechobee into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers, reduce back-pumping of dirty water into Lake Okeechobee and prevent tons of phosphorus from entering the Glades.
This may well be the last chance we’ll get to save one of the world’s greatest wetlands. At least it sounds like some money is starting to flow. Whether it will be enough, and whether the commitment to save the Everglades is kept, remains to be seen.
