A small herd of about two dozen bison could be grazing on restored grassland south of Chicago as soon as this fall.
Officials plan to introduce a mix of young and mature bison at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, where the U.S. Forest Service and other groups have been trying to restore grassland at a site that was used as a U.S. Army ammunition plant for many years. The 1,200-acre area could eventually be home to about 100 bison.
Bison are an important part of prairie ecosystems, and they will help restore the site’s native grass species, the Forest Service says. That will improve the habitat for native grassland birds.
The first animals should arrive in the fall, said Greg Peters, a spokesman for the National Forest Foundation.
“We saw an opportunity to return an iconic species back to the native tallgrass prairie where they had existed before,” Peters said.
Over the summer, workers will construct pasture fences, corrals, hiking trails, overlooks and other facilities for visitors.
On the 45th anniversary of Earth Day, President Barack Obama looked out on the tall grasses of the Florida Everglades Wednesday and declared that the sweeping wetlands illustrate the dangers posed by climate change.
“This is a problem now,” he said.
Obama visited the South Florida landmark to warn of the damage a warming planet is already inflicting on the nation’s environmental treasures – and announced more financing for conservation efforts.
In addition to the $2.2 billion investment in Everglades restoration, the president is also proposing another $240 million this year to fund more land and water conservation efforts. Mr. Obama announced an additional $25 million in private and public funding for the restoration of national parks.
The chief executive also hammered political opponents that he says are doing far too little about it. “Climate change can no longer be denied,” he said. “It can’t be edited out, it can’t be omitted from the conversation and action can no longer be delayed.”
It took more than a year, but crews at Joshua Tree National Park, aided by professional conservators from the University of New Mexico, have largely “erased” graffiti scratched into the Barker Dam, a historic site inside the California park. Barker Dam is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The year-and-a-half partnership culminated with a weeklong project in March, where architectural conservators from the University of New Mexico volunteered their skills to effectively mitigate the visual impacts of scratched graffiti from the entire surface of the dam.
The dam can still hold water, but the ongoing drought in California has severely reduced annual precipitation. Lowering water levels in the dam exposed the naturally weathered surface and vandals were quick to act. In less than a year, scratched graffiti spread across over 50 percent of the entire surface of the dam.
UNM conservators employed a method known as “in-painting” to blend the scratched areas into the surrounding naturally weathered surface. “In-painting” is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process that involves adding pigments to the scratched areas with a method similar to the painting style of pointillism. Instead of merely painting over the graffiti entirely, the paint is applied in a way that matches the surrounding colors, textures, and patterns.
If, after the long, snowy and cold winter, you’re ready for some colorful spring wildflowers, consider heading to New River Gorge National River in West Virginia this weekend, April 24-26, 2015, for the 12th Annual New River Gorge Wildflower Weekend.
This three-day event showcases the biologically diverse southern Appalachian forest at New River Gorge National River, Tamarack, and the state parks of Babcock, Hawks Nest, Little Beaver, Pipestem Resort, and Twin Falls Resort.
According to park staff, the New River Gorge area has the most diverse flora of any river gorge in central Appalachia. New River Gorge National River and area West Virginia state parks help preserve this unbroken and globally significant section of the Appalachian forest ecosystem. Besides providing essential habitat for endangered mammals, rare birds and amphibians, a dedicated botanist can find more than 1,400 species of plants in these park sites.
All programs are free. Just be sure to bring water and wear sturdy walking shoes for guided walks. Snacks, binoculars, a hand lens, and a favorite field guide are also useful.
Today is the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, an event that triggered the nation’s worst-ever oil spill. The well leaked for three months and dumped over 200 million gallons of oil into the sea. The explosion itself killed eleven men; the resulting pollution killed a stupefying amount of wildlife, including 800,000 some birds. And despite billions paid out by BP in fines and restoration costs, the economic impact of the disaster remains wide-reaching and ongoing.
But possibly even more outrageous than the spill itself is how little has been done by government to prevent a similar disaster. The oil and gas industry has stayed active in Washington, and managed to fend off serious efforts to curb drilling: Congress has passed zero new laws—not one—to restrict offshore drilling or force it to be safer.
The Obama administration has approved over 1,500 offshore drilling permits since the spill. And back in January the administration announced a plan to open new areas in the Atlantic and Arctic for offshore drilling.
Drilling in the Gulf makes up less than one-fifth of US crude oil production, and an even smaller share of total oil production if you count unconventional oil from fracking. So it wouldn’t be a crippling blow to our energy supply to consider putting the brakes on offshore drilling—if not forever, at least until we feel secure that we’ve done enough to prevent another Deepwater Horizon.
A recent budget crisis in Alabama could force as many as 15 state parks to close their gates to the public.
According to Alabama State Parks Director Greg Lein, those parks include Bladon Springs, Chickasaw, Bucks Pocket, Paul Grist, Florala, Blue Springs, Roland Cooper, Rickwood Caverns, Cheaha Park, Lake Lurleen, DeSoto, Lakepoint, Guntersville, Joe Wheeler, and Frank Jackson.
If the plan goes through, not only would the parks turn away potential visitors, but they would lose critical funding earmarked for upkeep and maintenance.
One of the parks on the chopping block—Cheaha Park—is home to the state’s tallest mountain, while Guntersville and Joe Wheeler are considered two of Alabama’s most treasured natural areas. The closures could also effect portions of Alabama’s famous Pinhoti National Recreation Trail.
Lein told WHNT that the parks in question have reported subpar profits over the last three years while the 7 parks that would remain open under new budget cuts have been more financially stable.
The nation is buzzing about National Park Week, America’s largest celebration of national heritage, April 18–26, 2015. It’s about making great connections, exploring amazing places, discovering open spaces, enjoying affordable vacations and enhancing America’s best idea—the national parks. It’s all happening in your national parks.
The National Park Service is once again partnering with the National Park Foundation, the official charity of America’s national parks, to present National Park Week, a presidentially proclaimed celebration of our national heritage.
April 18 and 19: On opening weekend of National Park Week every national park will give you free admission!
April 18: On National Junior Ranger Day, parks will invite young visitors to explore, learn, protect and be sworn in as junior rangers.
April 22: This Earth Day, if you want to roll up your sleeves and pitch in with a project, look for a park where you can help out.
Whether you’re a hiker, a historian, a romantic, a family with kids, a crowd-lover or simply someone seeking solitude there’s bound to be a national park for you. Get out there!
Republican senators and congressmen want to sell your National Forests, Wildernesses and Wildlife Refuges. But they can’t sell your National Parks, Monuments or Preserves. Here’s how all the different types of public land are different, and why you should care.
As a recap, nearly the entire GOP senate just made a symbolic vote in order to demonstrate its resolve to sell-off some lands currently owned and administered by the federal government.
With little demonstrable will among constituents in their own states, the reason for this sudden interest in States’ Rights is a bit puzzling, until you realize that concerted campaigns for privatization are underway across western States thanks to funding and support from special interest groups like ALEC and Americans For Prosperity, otherwise known as ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers.
Under federal ownership, public lands enjoy a variety of strong protections. Those same protections don’t necessarily exist if ownership is transferred to individual states, potentially paving the way for destructive exploitation by private industry or even the transfer of these lands to private ownership.
The argument for such a move is masked in small government, states’ rights and good ol’ fashioned capitalism, but rather than being a logical conclusion of conservative values, it instead clashes directly with the conservation movement that was begun by the Republican Party’s most famous leaders in order to protect our country’s natural beauty and environment for future citizens.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is powered by people and passion. About 2,560 volunteers worked 150,679 hours in the Park during fiscal year 2014. “We really rely on our volunteers in many aspects of our operations,” said Park spokeswoman Molly Schroer.
“We really appreciate our volunteers, and we enjoy working with them. They typically have a passion about the work and working in the Park, and it’s nice sharing that with people. We have that in common. It’s a great relationship we have.”
April 12-18, 2015 has been declared National Volunteer Week. Park volunteer opportunities can range from trail work to gardening to collecting data for Park scientists.
Among the opportunities, GSMNP is recruiting volunteers to participate in the Adopt-a-Trail (AAT) program and for Trails Forever trail crews.
The Volunteers in Parks (VIP) program has integrated volunteerism into many of the Park operations, including trail maintenance that covers everything from picking up litter to removing tree-falls and reporting trail problems to the Park.
Death by acid was the fate of the sea monsters that perished in Earth’s biggest mass extinction, some 251 million years ago, a new study finds.
Nearly every form of ocean life disappeared during this “Great Dying” at the end of the Permian period, when more than 90 percent of all marine species vanished, from the scorpionlike predators called eurypterids to various types of trilobites, some with alienlike stalked eyes. It’s the closest Earth has ever come to completely losing its fish, snails, sea plankton and other marine creatures. Some 70 percent of animals and plants on land died off at the same time.
Now, there is direct evidence that ocean acidification dealt the final blow to species already suffering from these huge environmental changes. By analyzing boron embedded in limestone from the Permian and Triassic periods, researchers discovered an abrupt shift in ocean pH levels. The change in acidity corresponds to a drop in surface ocean pH levels of 0.6 to 0.7 pH units that lasted about 10,000 years. In comparison, modern ocean pH levels have fallen by 0.1 pH units since the Industrial Revolution, a 30 percent increase in acidity.
It’s strange to remember how bitterly divisive the 2008 Democratic presidential primary battle was. Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s platforms and ideological positioning were awfully similar. And on the chief difference between them — Obama’s less hawkish foreign policy — the victor wiped away that distinction by appointing Clinton as secretary of state. Now Clinton is expected to announce her candidacy today and is poised to coast through the 2016 Democratic primaries as her party’s prohibitive favorite. Would a Clinton presidency be essentially a third Obama term?
On climate change and energy, it seems the answer is yes. For better and for worse, Clinton’s record and stances are cut from the same cloth as Obama’s. Her close confidant and presumed campaign chair, John Podesta, served as an Obama advisor with a focus on climate policy. Like Obama and Podesta, Clinton certainly seems to appreciate the seriousness of the threat of catastrophic climate change and to strongly support domestic policies and international agreements to reduce carbon emissions. But, like Obama and Podesta, she subscribes to an all-of-the-above energy policy. She promotes domestic drilling for oil and natural gas, including through potentially dangerous fracking.
Here are eight important points about Clinton’s climate and energy views…
The new documentary film Merchants of Doubt—which lays bare the tactics used by the professional climate deniers paid to spread doubt and confusion about the reality of global warming—is essential viewing for everyone who cares about the fight for climate action. It’s even more essential for anyone who still isn’t sure whether climate change is really happening or primarily caused by human activities.
A brilliant disinformation campaign by the “Merchants of Doubt” has stoked public fears about the economic consequences of climate action and kept a fake debate alive — even though the scientific consensus is overwhelming that climate change is happening and humans are the reason why.
Merchants of Doubt shows how the playbook developed by big American tobacco companies to deny the link between smoking and cancer has been redeployed by the fossil fuel lobby to deny the link between industrial emissions and climate change. Indeed, some of the most prominent climate change deniers are the very same people who spread doubt about the harmful effects of cigarettes decades ago.
It’s enough to make you want to holler: Scientists in the pay of fossil fuel companies; trumped-up petitions claiming scientists don’t really think the climate is warming; “independent” think tanks that are really just industry front groups; self-styled “experts” who are mostly expert at sandbagging real scientists and keeping doubt alive. But there’s one thing these Merchants of Doubt don’t want you to know.
When the truth is accepted, Americans will demand action.
Leigh Girvin’s brand of local environmentalism is inseparable from her strong ties to the land.
Other conservation advocates focus on wildlife or water quality from an abstract sense of right and wrong. Girvin, who moved to Breckenridge, Colorado as a kid 43 years ago, points to land protection, especially in her beloved Summit County, as the foundation that encompasses all environmental issues.
“The land is the only thing that matters,” she said, referencing a line from “Gone with the Wind,” one of her favorite books. “Everything is interconnected, and it all ties back to the land.”
Girvin, 53, of Breckenridge, worked her last day on Tuesday, March 31, as executive director of the Continental Divide Land Trust, a nonprofit that holds conservation easements to forever protect land. A local conservation advocate for decades, she led the nonprofit for the last 13 years.
Summit County would look radically different without her often unheralded efforts against what she called the relentless juggernaut of development. “Land conservation is about what you don’t see. You don’t see the condos, you don’t see the roads, you don’t see the highways,” she said.
They might notice the meadows and the streams, the birdsongs and the elk bugles. But they don’t see the tireless work of people like Girvin.
AmeriCorps Project Conserve is now accepting applications for 2015-2016. AmeriCorps Project Conserve seeks dedicated individuals to fill 32 full-time positions serving critical conservation needs of western North Carolina. The application deadline is May 22, 2015.
The program places members in service with one of 17 host site organizations working to protect the unique natural resources of the southern Blue Ridge Mountain region. Each member will serve 1700 hours during an 11 month term, from September 2015 through July 2016.
Please contact Amy Stout, AmeriCorps Project Conserve Program Director, with any questions at 828-697-5777 ext. 208 or [email protected].
The Cradle of Forestry in America historic site will kick off its 2015 season, April 11th with a living history event titled, “Old Time Plowing and Folkways.”
Visitors to the event will encounter living history volunteers demonstrating their crafts, including wood carving, rope making and crafting corn husk dolls. Haywood County’s David and Diane Burnette will demonstrate working the land the old way as their Percheron draft horses plow under the Cradle’s vegetable garden located along the Biltmore Campus Trail. In the afternoon guests will enjoy live music as they walk and enjoy the historic buildings and displays.
The Cradle of Forestry will be open daily, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., April 11th through November 8th, 2015. Throughout the season, living history volunteers will demonstrate a range of traditional crafts and music.
A full schedule of events is planned in 2015 including Migratory Bird Day on April 25th, the Songcatchers Music Series held Sunday afternoons in July, and Forest Festival Day on October 3rd.
Admission to the Cradle of Forestry is $5.00 for adults and free for youth under 16 years of age and for those with America the Beautiful passes and Golden Age Passports. The Cradle of Forestry in America Interpretive Association provides free admission every Tuesday throughout the season.
Admission includes the Forest Discovery Center with two films, hands-on exhibits and scavenger hunts. It also includes historic cabins and exhibits along three paved trails with guided tours and living history demonstrations when available. The Adventure Zone along the Forest Festival Trail is designed to reach children with autism and engage young families.
The Cradle of Forestry is located on State Highway 276 in Pisgah National Forest near Brevard, six miles north of Looking Glass Falls and four miles south of the Blue Ridge Parkway. For more information call (828) 877-3130 or go to www.cradleofforestry.com.
Few things inspire bitter disagreement among green groups and climate advocates quite like the question of how to deal with fracking. It’s one of the more important debates within environmentalism today.
To break it down very roughly: The pro-fracking side points out that the US natural-gas boom, driven by hydraulic fracturing, has been one of the big environmental success stories of the past decade. Electric utilities are now using more cheap gas and less dirty coal to generate power. Since gas burns more cleanly, that reduces air pollution: US carbon dioxide emissions have fallen 10 percent since 2005.
On the “anti” side are a large and growing number of environmental groups who now argue that the problems with fracking seem to outweigh the benefits. It’s not just the air and water pollution caused by fracking. They also point out that there’s methane leaking out of all those gas wells and pipelines. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and depending on how big those leaks are, that could offset the climate benefits of lower CO2 emissions. Just as significantly, anti-fracking groups also note that natural gas is still a fossil fuel and still produces carbon dioxide when burned.
The overarching problem here is that no one knows how much methane is actually leaking out of natural gas infrastructure. It might be a lot — in which case natural gas could conceivably be worse for global warming than coal is.
Some are trying to answer the questions…
Great Smoky Mountains National Park will hold its 11th annual “Music of the Mountains” celebration April 17-19 with a mix of music that harkens to the “Old-Time” music that long has reverberated through the mountains.
Spread across a handful of venues, the event tells the story of music in the Southern Appalachians through its diverse history by letting visitors experience a variety of music that was played in the region or represents Old-Time music’s roots. The event tells the story of how mountain music grew out of traditional Celtic and religious roots to become something that would be played on front porches all over the Smokies.
The three-day event begins with a concert of Celtic music by Four Leaf Peat on Friday, April 17, at 7 p.m. at the Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center in Townsend, Tennessee. General admission is $5. “Music of the Mountains” continues on Saturday, kicking off National Park Week in style, with a series of free performances of old-time mountain music, dulcimer and early bluegrass during the day at the park’s Sugarlands Visitor Center. Music will be ongoing from 10 a.m. through 3 p.m.
Using the assessment tool ForWarn, U.S. Forest Service researchers can monitor the growth and development of vegetation that signals winter’s end and the awakening of a new growing season. Now these researchers have devised a way to more precisely characterize the beginning of seasonal greening, or “greenup,” and compare its timing with that of the 14 previous years. Such information helps land managers anticipate and plan for the impacts of disturbances such as weather events and insect pests.
Three maps detailing greenup in forests and grasslands, agricultural lands, and urban areas are now available online via ForWarn, which delivers weekly Land Surface Phenology (LSP) maps of seasonal vegetation growth and development detected by satellites, as well as national maps showing vegetation disturbances.
“In contrast to field observations that track leaf emergence for particular species of trees or herbaceous plants, ForWarn‘s LSP maps capture the response of the mixture of vegetation that can be seen from space,” explains William Hargrove, research ecologist from the Forest Service’s Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center.
The researchers used nationwide satellite imagery collected between 2000 and 2013 to quantify the seasonal progression from dormancy to peak greenness using a common scale from 0 to 100 percent.
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. 
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