Soon after federal officials announced the imminent capture of 100 or so horses within the boundaries of a national forest near here — to be sold at auction, “condemned and destroyed, or otherwise disposed of” — a resourceful cadre of self-appointed guardians issued a desperate call for action.
“Salt River Wild Horses To Be Eliminated,” they wrote on a Facebook page created for the horses, which has more than 200 pictures and 220,000 likes. “EVERYONE AROUND THE WORLD — PLEASE HELP.” The response was broad and fast, stunning the guardians, as well as officials at Tonto National Forest, to whom the horses are a nuisance and a risk.
Since then, Arizona officials have joined in the chorus of protests, outlining the boundaries of a dispute that, at its essence, encompasses an old political battle between state and federal governments over the stewardship of public lands in the West.
The fight over the horses is only partly about horses: It is also about who and what can use these lands — and who should have the right to make such decisions. Relying on the state’s outlaw image and independent streak, Arizona’s lawmakers, in atypical bipartisan concert, asked the federal government to find another resolution or else stay out of their equine affairs.
With pressure mounting, the Forest Service hit pause. Last month, Neil Bosworth, the Tonto National Forest supervisor, suspended any planned roundups for four months.
Divided into five ranger districts, the Kisatchie National Forest spans 600,000 acres across northern Louisiana. As a home to all kinds of animals, lately the focus has been on the hundreds of wild horses that roam the land. For years these horses have roamed through Kisatchie National Forest, but now they’re starting to encroach on army training grounds.
The area is free of trees and offers the perfect feast for horses….Nice green grass. In the last few years, army officials say they’ve seen an increase in horses coming onto the training ground which puts their soldiers at risk.
Col. David G. Athey said these men and women only have a 14 day period to train before they are deployed. Adding, millions of dollars are spent during this two week period. So every minute counts if the soldiers have to stop to let a herd of horses pass that’s money wasted.
“We understand this is an emotional issue for some people and we appreciate that but for us our bottom line is the safety of the soldiers and the safety of the mission,” Col. Athey said. Col. Athey says they are pushing to have the horses removed from the property.
Others say, “There has to be a way to handle this appropriately. And for the herds that are truly wild that have been living there self-sustained for 75 years to remain. We see there are problems and we want to assist the army in handling it the best way possible for the safety of the solider, community, and horses.”
In a blockbuster study released in Nature, a team of 38 scientists finds that the planet is home to 3.04 trillion trees, blowing away the previously estimate of 400 billion. That means, the researchers say, that there are 422 trees for every person on Earth.
However, in no way do the researchers consider this good news. The study also finds that there are 46 percent fewer trees on Earth than there were before humans started the lengthy, but recently accelerating, process of deforestation.
“We can now say that there’s less trees than at any point in human civilization,” says Thomas Crowther, a postdoctoral researcher at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies who is the lead author on the research. “Since the spread of human influence, we’ve reduced the number almost by half, which is an astronomical thing.”
In fact, the paper estimates that humans and other causes, such as wildfires and pest outbreaks, are responsible for the loss of 15.3 billion trees each year — although the authors said at a press conference that perhaps 5 billion of those may grow back each year, so the net loss is more like 10 billion annually.
In addition to melting icecaps and imperiled wildlife, a significant concern among scientists is that higher Arctic temperatures brought about by climate change could result in the release of massive amounts of carbon locked in the region’s frozen soil in the form of carbon dioxide and methane. Arctic permafrost is estimated to contain about a trillion tons of carbon, which would potentially accelerate global warming. Carbon emissions in the form of methane have been of particular concern because on a 100-year scale methane is about 25-times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat.
However, new research led by Princeton University researchers and published in The ISME Journal in August suggests that, thanks to methane-hungry bacteria, the majority of Arctic soil might actually be able to absorb methane from the atmosphere rather than release it. Furthermore, that ability seems to become greater as temperatures rise. Good news is nice for a change.
The researchers found that Arctic soils containing low carbon content — which make up 87 percent of the soil in permafrost regions globally — not only remove methane from the atmosphere, but also become more efficient as temperatures increase. During a three-year period, a carbon-poor site on Axel Heiberg Island in Canada’s Arctic region consistently took up more methane as the ground temperature rose from 0 to 18 degrees Celsius (32 to 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit). The researchers project that should Arctic temperatures rise by 5 to 15 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years, the methane-absorbing capacity of “carbon-poor” soil could increase by five to 30 times.
The Obama administration sent to Congress a $1.5 billion proposal to upgrade national parks, using a combination of tax money, fee increases, donations and commercial partnerships for a three-year improvement plan marking the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.
The National Park Service Centennial Act would seek $100 million in private donations each year for three years, matching them dollar-for-dollar with tax money for special “challenge” projects. It would spend another $900 million to address a maintenance backlog in parks, and $300 million for projects on other federal lands.
Those improvements would be funded, in part, by increasing the cost of a lifetime pass for senior citizens. People aged 62 and older now pay $10 for the lifetime pass, which would be raised to $80. The remaining $70 would help fund a $300 million National Park Service Second Century Fund. The proposal would also add 5% to the cost of camping or lodging in national parks.
But the program would also expand the use of free park passes for people who volunteer 250 or more hours a year. Right now, that program is capped at $3.5 million, which allows for only about 43,750 passes at $80 apiece. Last year, 247,000 people volunteered almost 6.7 million hours of time.
Rooftops on new buildings built in commercial zones in France must either be partially covered in plants or solar panels, under a law approved this week. Green roofs have an isolating effect, helping reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building in winter and cool it in summer. They also retain rainwater, thus helping reduce problems with runoff, while favouring biodiversity and giving birds a place to nest in the urban jungle, ecologists say.
The law approved by parliament was more limited in scope than initial calls by French environmental activists to make green roofs that cover the entire surface mandatory on all new buildings. The Socialist government convinced activists to limit the scope of the law to commercial buildings.
The law was also made less onerous for businesses by requiring only part of the roof to be covered with plants, and giving them the choice of installing solar panels to generate electricity instead.
Green roofs are popular in Germany and Australia, and Canada’s city of Toronto adopted a by-law in 2009 mandating them in industrial and residential buildings.
A few years ago in a lab in Panama, Klaus Winter tried to conjure the future. A plant physiologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, he planted seedlings of 10 tropical tree species in small, geodesic greenhouses. Some he allowed to grow in the kind of environment they were used to out in the forest, around 79 degrees Fahrenheit. Others, he subjected to uncomfortably high temperatures. Still others, unbearably high temperatures—up to a daily average temperature of 95 F and a peak of 102 F. That’s about as hot as Earth has ever been. It’s also the kind of environment tropical trees have a good chance of living in by the end of this century, thanks to climate change. Winter wanted to see how they would do.
The answer came as a surprise to those accustomed to dire warnings that climate change will turn the Amazon into a desert. The vast majority of Winter’s seedlings didn’t die. In fact, most thrived at significantly warmer temperatures than they experience today, growing faster and larger. Just two species succumbed to the heat, and only at the very highest temperatures. The trees’ success echoes paleontological data, which hints that warmer temperatures can be a boon for tropical forests. After all, the last time Earth experienced average temperatures of 95 F, there were rainforests in Michigan and palm trees in the Arctic.
That doesn’t mean climate change won’t affect tropical forests of today. It already is. And it definitely doesn’t mean humans needn’t worry about global warming. Climate change will be the end of the world as we know it. But it also will be the beginning of another.
Climate change — as it is for pretty much all life forms — is a huge bummer for bees. If neonics and other pesticides weren’t enough to deal with, a recent study demonstrated that global warming has fueled drastic bee habitat loss, leading to a 200-mile reduction in their natural environments. Something out in the great abyss has it out for the buzzers (hint: it’s CO2).
Because bees depend on flowers for food and flowers depend on bees for pollination, the two groups of organisms tend to sync up. (Remember scribbling “symbiotic relationship” into your high school biology notebook? It’s one of those.) And because climate change is fiddling with the times that flowers bloom, it means “we could have a situation where plants are available but bees are not active,” says Rebecca Irwin, an associate professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University. “That’s going to be a problem for both parties.”
Perhaps you could care less about bees, but we assume you’re mildly interested in little things like “the produce section at Whole Foods” — which could disappear entirely if bees are wiped out.
As part of President Obama’s commitment to protect our nation’s unique outdoor spaces and ensure that every American has the opportunity to visit and enjoy them, the Obama Administration today formally launched the new Every Kid in a Park program.
Starting today, fourth graders nationwide can visit the new Every Kid in a Park website to obtain a pass that provides free access to students and their families to all federally managed lands and waters – including national parks, forests, wildlife refuges and marine sanctuaries. The pass is valid for the 2015-2016 school year and grants free entry for fourth graders and three accompanying adults (or an entire car for drive-in parks) at more than 2,000 federally-managed sites.
“Every Kid in a Park is a chance for fourth graders from every background to be outside and get to know the lands and waters that belong to them, whether it’s a national forest, a wildlife refuge, a marine sanctuary or a historic site in the center of a city,” said Christy Goldfuss, Managing Director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). “By expanding their horizons and learning all the ways the outdoors can enrich their lives, this innovative program hopes to create greater awareness of the many benefits of our nation’s public lands and waters.”
Leading up to the 100th birthday of the National Park Service in 2016, President Obama announced the Every Kid in a Park initiative earlier this year as a call to action to get all children to experience America’s unparalleled outdoors, rich history and culture. Today, more than 80 percent of American families live in urban areas, and many lack easy access to safe outdoor spaces. At the same time, youth spend more hours than ever in front of screens instead of outside.
By introducing fourth graders to public lands in their backyards and beyond at an early age, Every Kid in a Park is part of a multi-pronged approach to inspire the next generation to discover all that our nation’s public lands and waters have to offer, including opportunities to be active, spend time with friends and family, and serve as living classrooms to build critical skills.
Hundreds more died off the coast of Libya this week, on the heels of 71 deaths of migrants trapped in the back of a truck near Vienna, Austria. At the same time, NASA officials just warned that rising global sea levels from climate change could affect coastal regions, including 150 million residents in Asia who lived “within a meter from the sea.”
While news organizations and policymakers around the world wrestle with calling displaced persons “refugees” or “migrants”or “asylum-seekers,” a far more dangerous precedence of denial over a looming global shift of populations largely from climate change is taking place.
There is not a migrant or refugee crisis. We’re in the midst of a global migration shift. While its unrelenting realities of forced displacement, whether from war, persecution or economic despair originate from disparate causes, they all share a singular fact: The nascent stages of this historical migration shift require long-term planning, not short-term designation.
Nearly 60 million people fled their homes in 2014, according to a recent UN report. Within a generation, according to estimates by numerous climate scientists and the international organizations dealing with migration, 150-200 million people could be displaced by the fallout of severe drought, flooding and extreme climate.
When musician and naturalist Bernie Krause drops his microphones into the pristine coral reef waters of Fiji, he picks up a raucous mix of sighs, beats, glissandos, cries, groans, tones, grunts, beats and clicks.
The water pulsates with the sound of creatures vying for acoustic bandwidth. He hears crustaceans, parrot fish, anemones, wrasses, sharks, shrimps, puffers and surgeonfish. Some gnash their teeth, others use their bladders or tails to make sound. Sea anemones grunt and belch. Every creature on the reef makes its own sound.
But half a mile away, where the same reef is badly damaged, he can only pick up the sound of waves and a few snapping shrimp. It is, he says, the desolate sound of extinction.
Krause, whose electronic music with Paul Beaver was used on classic films like Rosemary’s Baby and Apocalypse Now, and who worked regularly with Bob Dylan, George Harrison and The Byrds, has spent 40 years recording over 15,000 species, collecting 4,500 hours of sound from many of the world’s pristine habitats.
But such is the rate of species extinction and the deterioration of pristine habitat that he estimates half these recordings are now archives, impossible to repeat because the habitats no longer exist or because they have been so compromised by human noise. His tapes are possibly the only record of the original diversity of life in these places.
“A great silence is spreading over the natural world even as the sound of man is becoming deafening.”
Does the Ted Cruz in you ever wonder whether global warming really is just a hoax? Whether skeptics really are the Galileos of our time? Whether climate scientists really do just want to make money? Well, wonder no more. A group of researchers just tried to replicate 38 peer-reviewed studies that support skeptic talking points, and surprise! They ran into some trouble.
In a paper published last week in the journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology, the researchers reported a number of problems with the 38 studies, including questionable physics and incomplete data sets. They also found that some of the studies were published in peer-reviewed journals that didn’t specialize in climate science, and therefore probably didn’t have the proper experts looking over the work.
One of the most common problems the researchers encountered was something called “cherry-picking.” Not to be confused with actual cherry-picking (which is now endangered thanks to climate change), data cherry-picking is a big science no-no in which researchers falsify results by including only the data that support those results and not the data that don’t.
At the Asia Pacific Resilience Innovation Summit held in Honolulu, Hawaii, Governor David Ige dropped a bombshell. His administration will not use natural gas to replace the state’s petroleum-fueled electricity plants, but will make a full-court press toward 100 percent renewables by 2045. Ige’s decisive and ambitious energy vision is making Hawaii into the world’s most important laboratory for humankind’s fight against climate change. He has, in addition, attracted an unlikely and enthusiastic partner in his embrace of green energy—the US military.
Ige said that LNG (liquefied natural gas) will not save the state money over time, given the plummeting prices of renewables. Moreover, “it is a fossil fuel,” i.e., it emits dangerous greenhouse gases. He explained that local jurisdictions in Hawaii are putting up a fight against natural gas, making permitting difficult. Finally, any money put into retooling electric plants so as to run on gas, he said, is money that would better be invested in the transition to green energy.
As a set of islands, Hawaii faces special energy difficulties. Residents pay the highest rates for electricity of any state in the union. Last year, before the recent oil price drop, residential electricity averaged around 36 cents per kilowatt hour (the US average is 12 cents/kwh). On the mainland, states that do not generate enough electricity themselves can import it from their neighbors. Islands in the middle of the Pacific just have what they can make themselves.
Because Hawaii’s energy plants were built before it was economical to ship natural gas as LNG, they for the most part use petroleum. The high oil prices of the past decade are estimated to have cost Hawaii some $5 billion extra that was not anticipated. Part of the impetus for the current drive toward renewables is to escape the volatility of fossil-fuel markets.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park rangers remind visitors that graffiti not only detracts from the natural beauty of the park, but can also permanently damage irreplaceable resources. Park resources including one of the best collections of log buildings in the eastern United States, backcountry hiking shelters, live trees, stone walls, bridges, and tunnels have all suffered from a range of small markings with ball point pens to elaborate markings with permanent marker to lewd and offensive spray paint messages that leave the park in worse condition.
Park rangers and volunteers educate visitors about the lasting implications of defacing the park’s natural and cultural resources through education programs, signs, and a graffiti-removal program. Unfortunately, graffiti can seldom be removed from log structures without destroying historic wood which makes removal virtually impossible. “Bob Was Here” signs were installed at a variety of locations within the park to help deter the park’s 10 million visitors from leaving permanent marks on structures and long trails that damage park resources.
“The staff at Great Smoky Mountains National Park remains committed to preventing and removing where possible graffiti in the park,” said Superintendent Cassius Cash. “The National Park Service, our neighbors and visitors, have an equal responsibility to ensure that this park is preserved unimpaired for the next generation.”
As motorists take the curve on N.C. 151, heading up the mountain from Asheville toward the Blue Ridge Parkway, they should notice a large stone lovingly placed there 95 years ago to commemorate the area’s history. But they probably won’t. Eagle Scout hopeful Levi Smith is looking to change this by giving both the monument and the adjacent Stony Fork picnic area a much-needed facelift.
Although he lives nearby and drives by the site on N.C. 151 regularly, it wasn’t until a recent hike with Boy Scout Troop 58 that the 17-year-old knew the historical significance of the road leading up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. A fellow Boy Scout found and pointed out an old plaque attached to a rock hidden behind poison ivy and vines, practically inaccessible to passersby.
The monument, dedicated in October 1920, memorializes the 1914 sale of more than 83,000 acres of land to the United States from the Vanderbilt estate to create the Pisgah National Forest and honors George W. Vanderbilt for his contribution and commitment to forestry.
On a recent Saturday, Levi and four scout friends took up shovels, rakes and posthole diggers to begin improving the picnic area and monument site. “This place looked pretty scary,” he said of the picnic area, which has mostly been taken over by moss, and is occasionally thought to be abandoned. “I think it would look a lot better if someone put a little care into it.”
Levi has dedicated his Eagle Scout project, which must benefit the community, to the accessibility of the site, which gets little more than weed management attention.
Think you have the grit to produce grist? Then consider helping out Great Smoky Mountain National Park by volunteering to help provide visitors with historic information at Mingus Mill.
The mill, located a half-mile north of the Oconaluftee Visitor Center near Cherokee, North Carolina, was built in 1886. It offers visitors a unique look into the inner workings of the turbine-wheel operated mill that custom-ground a variety of grains, including corn, wheat, and rye. The complexity of the mill provided customers with custom-ground cornmeal or flour in a fraction of the time needed by other types of mills, according to park officials.
Volunteers will work alongside Great Smoky Mountains Association employees to provide opportunities for visitors to learn more about Mingus Mill and its unique turbine wheel. Each volunteer is asked to work at least one four-hour shift per week from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the peak visitation season, from May through the end of November.
New volunteers are required to attend orientation and training on Monday, August 31, from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. The training will be held at the Oconaluftee Administration Building adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center near Cherokee. To reserve a spot in the training or receive more information, please contact Park Resource Education Ranger Florie Takaki by phone at (828)497-1906 or by email at [email protected].
Wildfires are exploding across the western United States, overstretching resources and, in some states, resulting in tragic consequences.
Some 30,000 firefighters and additional support staff are now fighting fires across the United States — the biggest number mobilized in 15 years, according to the U.S. Forest Service. And it’s still not enough.
Two hundred members of the military are being called up to help further — they will be trained and deployed within just a few days — as are Canadian firefighting forces. There’s even some talk of potentially needing to draw on resources from Australia and New Zealand, which has been done before in a pinch.
And no wonder: Five states are now battling more than 10 large wildfires — California is contending with 16, Idaho 21, Montana 14, Oregon 11 and Washington 17. Most terrifying, perhaps, is the Soda Fire, which has scorched 283,686 acres in Idaho, burning up ranches, killing wild horses, even generating an alarming fire whirl recently.
The total acres burned so far in 2015 is now a staggering 7.1 million, with currently burning fires accounting for over 1 million of that total. “This is the earliest the number of national acres burned has been more than 7 million in the past 20 years,” notes the National Interagency Coordination Center.
The gigantic convulsion of fire activity makes a report released two weeks ago, by the U.S. Forest Service, seem prescient. The agency sounded the alarm about rising wildfire costs, saying that fighting fires will consume more than 50 percent of its budget this year and could be up to two thirds of it by the year 2025, based on current trends. According to the Forest Service, the U.S. spends $100 million per week when it is at wildfire preparedness level 5, as it is now.
More than a decade ago, Kieran Roe sealed and stamped an envelope and dropped it in the mail. What he got back proved to be far beyond his expectations.
“I couldn’t have fathomed everything that would come from it,” said Roe, executive director of Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy (CMLC). Roe’s envelope contained a grant application to the Corporation for National and Community Service with a proposal to initiate Project Conserve, a new AmeriCorps program in western North Carolina. “We were still a fledgling land trust. We only had a few staff and we needed help,” recalled Roe.
AmeriCorps was created under President Bill Clinton by the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993. The program— often billed as a domestic version of the Peace Corps–engages adults in intensive community service with the goal of helping others and meeting critical community needs.
Members within AmeriCorps commit to part- or full-time public service positions among non-profit community organizations and public agencies. The proposal that Roe submitted was to establish positions to fulfill environmental and conservation needs in the region.
Roe’s application proved successful, and Project Conserve was born, hosting its first members in 2004. Making a difference is what has defined the program. Since CMLC initiated Project Conserve a decade ago, nearly 200 AmeriCorps members have completed service terms. Their collective contribution has exceeded an astonishing 410,000 hours of public service to western North Carolina communities.
The U.S. Forest Service closed a large chunk of the North Fork Coeur d’Alene River drainage in Northern Idaho due to a forecast of hazardous fire weather and because of close to 20 fires already burning on the Coeur d’Alene River Ranger District.
“It’s probably among the most popular forest access in all of the Idaho Panhandle,” said Jason Kirchner, spokesman for the Idaho Panhandle National Forests. The closure, unprecedented in its size for this area, is necessary to protect public safety, Kirchner said.
“We’re not aware of ever needing an area closure this large before, but we’re also in a fire season where we haven’t seen this much fire on the landscape since 1926,” he said.
The public is barred from campgrounds, trail heads and day-use areas in the nearly 10-square-mile area northeast of Coeur d’Alene and north of Kellogg. Officials swept through the campgrounds asking people to leave, and barricades have been erected on forest roads.
For questions about campground reservations, go to www.recreation.gov or call (888) 448-1474. For questions about reservations at any of the rental cabins, call Barb Hansen at (208) 769-3050.
I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
Copyright © 2011-2023 Internet Brothers. All Rights Reserved. ISSN 2324-6057
Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by Wordpress | Logo by Design Aspirations
