Mercado Sagrado & a disconnect
Category: Environment
USFS approves expedited commercial logging project in Condor habitat, 4/29/19
Forest Service Approves Expedited Commercial Logging Project in Condor Habitat
Goleta, Calif. – Yesterday, the Forest Service announced its approval of the second of two commercial logging projects in the Los Padres National Forest. The approval of the 1,600-acre project along Tecuya Ridge comes just five months after the agency authorized an adjacent 1,200-acre project allowing commercial logging in Cuddy Valley at the base of Mt. Pinos.
The agency fast-tracked both projects without preparing a standard environmental assessment or environmental impact statement, instead declaring that the projects were excluded from environmental review under a loophole in the National Environmental Policy Act. A full environmental review examines potential impacts to plants and wildlife as well as alternatives to the proposed activities. The normal review process also provides more transparency and opportunities for the public to weigh in with concerns about the project.
The logging area provides prime habitat for endangered California condors. According to condor tracking data provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, nearly fifty condor roost sites occur within a half-mile of where trees will be cut and removed. These roost sites are typically large dead or live trees that are used by condors for resting overnight between long flights. Federal standards require a minimum half-mile buffer from condor roosting sites to protect them from disturbance, given their sensitivity and importance in condor survival.
For the rest of this article please see: https://lpfw.org/forest-service-approves-expedited-commercial-logging-project-in-condor-habitat/
Photo Sunday 4/28/19
Pink Lupine
The Story behind California’s Powerful Coastal Commission
From UC Berkeley News: (https://news.berkeley.edu/story_jump/the-story-behind-californias-powerful-coastal-commission/)
No feature defines California like its 840 miles of coastline.
And that’s no accident, said Todd Holmes, a historian with the Bancroft Library’s Oral History Center who has long studied California’s coast.
“There’s a reason we don’t look like Miami or the Jersey Shore,” Holmes said. “It is because of the California Coastal Commission.”
Holmes is the creator of a new podcast from the Oral History Center about the commission, a powerful — sometimes controversial — state agency created by voters in 1972 to protect California’s iconic coastal redwoods, golden beaches and rugged cliffs.
Each of the 15 episodes will examine a particular moment in the commission’s history, from efforts to preserve San Francisco Bay to a fight over the Hearst Corporation’s plans to build a golf resort in Big Sur.
“So much of what the commission does you don’t see,” Holmes said. “All these developments that didn’t happen.”
The project started when Holmes and his colleagues began to interview the men and women involved in the creation of the commission for the Oral History Center, which collects firsthand accounts of major moments in California and global history.
Holmes realized the long interviews could be crafted into a narrative about the commission’s work.
“This way, people can hear the story of why the coast looks the way it does,” he said.
The first episode, about a fight over development at Lighthouse Point in Santa Cruz, is available now, and the remaining 14 episodes will be posted over the next year, Holmes said.
Eventually, he hopes placards along the coast will point people to the audio histories.
“You could be in Santa Barbara and hit a QR-code with your phone to listen to a story about the fight over offshore oil drilling,” he said.
Every Californian has a connection with the coastline, said Holmes, who grew up outside of Sacramento and still remembers spending a day on a Los Angeles beach with family when he was four years old.
They picnicked, played in the water and gathered together to watch the sun go down before driving home.
“I’ve been a fan of sunsets ever since,” he said. “There is no better place to watch a sunset than the California Coast.”
Earth Day 2019
From the River Inn:
Tips for visiting the Sur with care:
We all love the rugged and wild beauty of Big Sur. It is something that after 85 years of being in business, even the River Inn is continually surprised at how dynamic and special each sunrise and sunset can be. With Earth Day approaching on the 22nd of this month we are putting out a reminder to make memories and take photos but
leave no trace…
What does that mean?
1. Big Sur is beautiful and rugged. Big Sur is not littered with public restrooms, they are located at the major state parks. The drive can either seem wonderful and picturesque or stressful because you are looking for a restroom. Don’t make your poor planning a mess on the coast, the land in Big Sur is no place to defecate.
2. The wildflower blooms across the state have been fantastic but in many places folks have been ignoring trail signs and disrespecting the wildlife by leaving the trails and even laying on the plants themselves, which, besides ruining the view for folks this year it can also damage the plants to the extent that it hinders future spring blooms.
3. Though we have had a great rainy season, the fire danger is always present. There are plenty of places where you can enjoy a fire, make sure that whenever and wherever you light a fire it is an approved campfire spot.
From https://www.earthday.org/campaigns/endangered-species/earthday2019/
“In nature, nothing exists alone.”
— Rachel Carson, 1962
Nature’s gifts to our planet are the millions of species that we know and love, and many more that remain to be discovered. Unfortunately, human beings have irrevocably upset the balance of nature and, as a result, the world is facing the greatest rate of extinction since we lost the dinosaurs more than 60 million years ago. But unlike the fate of the dinosaurs, the rapid extinction of species in our world today is the result of human activity.
The unprecedented global destruction and rapid reduction of plant and wildlife populations are directly linked to causes driven by human activity: climate change, deforestation, habitat loss, trafficking and poaching, unsustainable agriculture, pollution and pesticides to name a few. The impacts are far reaching.
If we do not act now, extinction may be humanity’s most enduring legacy. Here are some quick facts on the current wave of extinction and additional information about this problem here.
All living things have an intrinsic value, and each plays a unique role in the complex web of life. We must work together to protect endangered and threatened species: bees, coral reefs, elephants, giraffes, insects, whales and more.
The good news is that the rate of extinctions can still be slowed, and many of our declining, threatened and endangered species can still recover if we work together now to build a united global movement of consumers, voters, educators, faith leaders, and scientists to demand immediate action.
Earth Day Network is asking people to join our Protect our Species campaign. Our goals are to:
- Educate and raise awareness about the accelerating rate of extinction of millions of species and the causes and consequences of this phenomenon.
- Achieve major policy victories that protect broad groups of species as well as individual species and their habitats.
- Build and activate a global movement that embraces nature and its values.
- Encourage individual actions such as adopting plant based diet and stopping pesticide and herbicide use.
Climate Change & Big Sur, 4/19/19
There is a fascinating history of science article that discusses the measurement of C02 emissions and the role a campfire in Big Sur played.
“Science historian Spencer Weart describes the Keeling Curve as “the central icon of the greenhouse effect.” It was, he writes in his book, The Discovery of Global Warming, “not quite the discovery of global warming. It was the discovery of the possibility of global warming.”
READ MORE: Climate Change History
Its origins can be traced to a campsite in Big Sur, California. In 1953, Charles David Keeling was a young postgraduate geochemist embarking on a study to compare the relative abundances of carbon dioxide in water and air. To do that, he first had to measure the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, which, to that point, nobody had done to any great precision. And because nobody had done it, there was no off-the-shelf equipment readily available to do so. So, Keeling made his own instrument, working from instructions for a prototype he found in a 1916 journal article, and he undertook the day’s drive to Big Sur. Unsure whether the CO2 even in pristine air next to the Pacific Ocean would be constant, he decided to take air samples every few hours over a full day and night, a meticulousness that would characterize his career.
“He lived by a kind of moral code that looked at there being a right way and a wrong way to do things, and the right way was always the thorough way,” explains Ralph Keeling, his son and the Director of the Scripps CO2 Program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.”
To read the rest of this fascinating article, see: https://www.history.com/news/keeling-curve-global-warming-climate-change
Volunteers Needed to Preserve Big Sur Coast
Volunteers Needed to Preserve Big Sur Coast
Heavy Rains Quench Drought But Spur Explosion Of Invasive Species
Apr. 16, 2019 / PRZen / BIG SUR, Calif. — While winter rains have brought welcome relief to California’s drought conditions, they unfortunately are also fueling an explosion of nonnative plants that threatens Big Sur’s world-renowned natural resources. Nature Corps, a nonprofit volunteer conservation organization, is inviting individuals, families, and employee groups to stem this invasion by participating in a critical volunteer weekend scheduled for May 17-19, 2019.
The Big Sur coast of California is known as the “greatest meeting of land and water in the world,” and has been described as a “national treasure that demands extraordinary procedures to protect it.”
Volunteers are urgently needed to preserve Big Sur’s coastal mountain range where now smaller populations of nonnative flora are poised to overtake many acres of native habitat. Over time, these nonnatives will significant impact wildlife by reducing their sources of food and breeding habitat.
Don’t miss out on a great way to make friends, make memories, and make a difference. Sign-up for the weekend at: https://www.thenaturecorps.org/big-sur/. For more information, call 800.774-PARK (7275) or email info@thenaturecorps.org. Registration deadline April 30.
To learn more about Nature Corps visit them at http://www.thenaturecorps.org or call 1.800.774-PARK.
Contact
Mark Landon
8054340299
Follow the full story here: https://przen.com/pr/33294285
Tourist Tuesday, 4/16/19 – Making a Difference
When combining the Leave No (Digital) Trace Ethics mentioned last week, along with the Educational aspects of publiclandshateyou and contacting sponsors, is there more we can do? Can we use technology to help us tackle overtourism? Yes, we can and some creative solutions present themselves when we do.
There is a very lengthy article that discusses and explores the various methods being used around the globe – both the “carrot and the stick” (positive vs. punishment) methods and how that is working for each. Also discussed in this article is the role of Airbnb on housing, local economy, and tourism. This is well worth the time to read the entire article if one is interested in protecting our coast from overtourism.
You can find it here: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-technology-can-help-us-tackle-overtourism
Tourist Thursday 4/11/19 – So-called “Influencers”
At this very moment, Southern California is full of poppies, and the poppies are full of influencers. The superbloom—a fun word for a particularly riotous profusion of wildflowers—has brought thousands of tourists flooding into areas across the state, like Lake Elsinore, where access to the Walker Canyon poppy fields was temporarily shut down because of City Hall called an “unbearable” amount of people, many of them stampeding through the fields and even picking the flowers.
People behaving horribly in natural spaces isn’t new, though it’s a problem getting more attention recently. During the government shutdown, Joshua Tree was particularly badly hit by vandalism, including people climbing the delicate trees, vandalizing them, and even cutting them down, damage that experts estimate could take as long as 300 years to repair itself. (Miley Cyrus apparently did not get the memo. She posted two photos of herself this week sitting in a Joshua tree. After the comments trended towards outrage, the comments on the posts have been closed, but the photos themselves remain up.) The damage to Joshua Tree alone was bad enough to generate an Instagram account, Joshua Tree Hates You, which shows a truly soul-crushing amount of damage, which seems to only get worse as the park gets more popular.
In the case of the superbloom, a more fleeting phenomenon, the unruly crowds have garnered a lot of attention and more than one guide to seeing the flowers without ruining the flowers. Yet reports of appalling poppy-centric behavior keep flooding in. Definitely not helping: the sheer number of influencers staging photoshoots among the flowers. The images tend to be pretty uniform: a beautiful, often white person sitting in a poppy field, gazing dreamily into the distance, sometimes holding a carefully placed sponsored product, like a cellphone case or a jaunty can of soup. They tend to make the poppies look very, very inviting, and like it’s cool to sit among them, which it’s absolutely not.
For the rest of this article, see: (https://jezebel.com/instagram-influencers-are-wrecking-public-lands-meet-t-1833781844)
One person who is doing something about it, prefers to remain anonymous in fear of retaliation. He posts on Instagram as publiclandshateyou. His forcus is on educating instagramers, and if that doesn’t work, contacting their sponsors. Concerned that his Instagram account might be silenced, he started a website/blog Here
I will cover more on this new approach next week. Can we use instagram and other social media to change the course of destruction – sometimes one person at a time, other times, trying to change a whole industry? I submit we can, trying education first, and then perhaps by finding ways to take away the motives behind these social media pushes for fame and money.
Another recent post on this same website:
The Impact of Reposting Without Context
***Originally posted 4/8/19 on @publiclandshateyou***
This picture, originally posted by @everchanginghorizon, has been shared all over social media. Many people have sent it my way. @hike.vibes recently reposted this picture, and many of you commented on the @hike.vibes repost to say that this picture is sending the wrong message. @hike.vibes replied by saying “if you refer to the original post, this shot was actually taken on the trail. No flowers were harmed”. This is why I will continue to reiterate the following message. In pictures like this, it doesn’t matter if you’re on the trail or not. It doesn’t matter if you used good camera work or Photoshop to make it look like you’re in the middle of the flowers. It doesn’t matter what your caption says. You know why? Because these pictures can, and likely will, be reposted and taken out of context. The repost by @hike.vibes is a prime example of that.
@hike.vibes reposted the picture without the context provided by @everchanginghorizon in the original post. Now 100,000 people will see this picture without the original context, and it sure appears that the model in the picture had to go off trail to get the shot. When people try to replicate this shot, will they actually stay on the trail, or will they take the easy way out and bulldoze through the flowers to the most photogenic spot? How many people will follow the new “path” that was just blazed?
Individuals, influencers, and companies that have platforms to broadcast to huge numbers of people have a responsibility to think about the impact their content will have. They need to be thinking “With this post, am I going to be sending thousands of new people to an ecologically sensitive area? Will all those people treat this place with respect? Am I treating this place with respect?”. Many accounts clearly are not considering these important factors. Their primary concern always seems to be, “How can I take the best shot, from the most unique angle, that will position myself or my product in the most attractive way possible”. Your digital footprints can turn into physical footprints. The before & after pictures of the Walker Canyon poppies a depressing illustration of that phenomenon.
Tourist Tuesday, 4/9/19 – In Nature
WARNING: Some of the information contained in the article is graphic, and if you care about Mother Nature, will make you sick.
”It’s no secret that people aren’t always appreciative of their surroundings. Whether up in the air or traveling abroad, people have done some horrible things to their environment.
Poaching Elephants in a protected Sanctuary is only one.
When it comes to nature, this rings especially true. [In 2018] people have made headlines by vandalizing, destroying, or tampering with some of the world’s most gorgeous natural environments.
From defacing a national monument to shattering a rock formation millions of years in the making, here’s how people have damaged nature in 2018. Here is an article about tourists behaving badly all over the world in nature: https://www.thisisinsider.com/bad-tourists-nature-2018-12
Leave No Trace, the Center for Outdoor Ethics has begun to address the LNT ethics in terms of the digital age. (See https://lnt.org/blog/new-social-media-guidance)
New Social Media Guidance
Boulder, CO: There is little question that social media plays a role in the promotion of various outdoor locations, and in some cases, has led to significant resource and social impacts. It’s logical to ask, “Would this place be as impacted as it is now had it not been for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or Pintrest?” Social media, like any tool or technology, can be a force for good or it can have the opposite effect. What if every social media post also included a message of stewardship? Think how different things would or could be if this were the case.
Leave No Trace isn’t black or white, right or wrong. It’s a framework for making good decisions about enjoying the outdoors responsibly, regardless of how one chooses to do so. If outdoor enthusiasts stop and think about the potential impacts and associated consequences of a particular action, it can go a long way towards ensuring protection of our shared outdoor spaces. To that end, we encourage outdoor enthusiasts to stop and think about their actions and the potential consequences of posting pictures, GPS data, detailed maps, etc. to social media. Furthermore, we urge people to think about both the protection and sustainability of the resource and the visitors who come after them.
When posting to social media, consider the following:
Tag thoughtfully – avoid tagging (or geotagging) specific locations. Instead, tag a general location such as a state or region, if any at all. While tagging can seem innocent, it can also lead to significant impacts to particular places.
Be mindful of what your images portray – give some thought to what your images may encourage others to do. Images that demonstrate good Leave No Trace practices and stewardship are always in style.
Give back to places you love – invest your own sweat equity into the outdoor spaces and places you care about. Learn about volunteer stewardship opportunities and get involved in the protection of our shared lands.
Encourage and inspire Leave No Trace in social media posts – given the millions of social media users in the world, think of the incredible potential that social media has to educate outdoor enthusiasts – first timers to seasoned adventurers – about enjoying our wild lands responsibly.
As we have contemplated this issue we’re left wondering what the future will bring in terms of technology, communication, and outdoor recreation. Will posting pictures to social media be a thing of the past in five years? None of us know. Social media, if used the right way, is a powerful tool that can motivate a nation of outdoor advocates to enthusiastically and collectively take care of the places we share and cherish.
Enjoy Your [OUR] World, Leave No Trace!