Treehuggers International » Recent News

Wildlife Neighbors at the Living Coast Discovery Center

tommy — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:39:59 +0000

Dr. Brian Joseph and Anna Ransler from the Chula Vista Nature Center

A world-renowned ecological institution located on San Diego Bay just south of the city San Diego, the Chula Vista Nature Center has been a South Bay institution for over 20 years.

Executive Director Dr. Brian Joseph and Development Coordinator Anna Ransler talk about the center’s mission, animals, activities, commitment to the community, and the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are Food and Wine Classic on Saturday, June 2nd.

Located along San Diego Bay, the Chula Vista Nature Center is a world-class ecological institution.

Transition to the Living Coast Discovery Center

Playing host to thousands of schoolchildren for field trips, science classes, scouting events and other kid-friendly opportunities, the Chula Vista Nature Center – soon to become the Living Coast Discovery Center – is dedicated to providing environmental education on local wetlands and estuaries, the importance of keeping plastics and other pollutants out of our oceans and waterways, native plants and wildlife, and instilling a respect for nature and wildlife in people of all ages.

Hawkeye, the center's resident Golden Eagle.

A surprising array of birds and other creatures call the wetlands around San Diego Bay and nearby Canyon Country home, including owls, pelicans, gnatcatchers and eagles. Along with these native species, rescued raptors and other predators thrive at Nature Center exhibits as well.

In 2010, with city funding coming to an end, the Chula Vista Nature Center made the transition from a public, taxpayer-funded institution to an independent, 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

To recognize their newly-independent status, the Chula Vista Nature Center is in the midst of a name-change transition to the Living Coast Discovery Center, but the location, mission, and staff are all the same.

Where the Wild Things Are

As part of their fundraising efforts, the Living Coast Discovery Center is hosting their Where the Wild Things Are Food and Wine Classic on Saturday, June 2nd from 3:00 to 7:00 pm.

Dr. Brian Joseph

The event will feature food and wine, live cooking demonstrations, jazz, and opportunities to meet the different animals who call the Living Coast Discovery Center home. Guests will also be able to experience the center’s Washed Ashore exhibit, featuring massive sculptures and art pieces made from marine debris, designed to raise awareness about the global crisis of single-use, disposable plastics winding up in the world’s oceans.

On the program to talk about the Chula Vista Nature Center and its transition to the Living Coast Discovery Center is Dr. Brian Joseph, the Executive Director of the Living Coast Discovery Center.

A Chula Vista native, Dr. Joseph is a graduate of Southwestern College and San Diego State University, as well as the University of California School of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Joseph is also a marine veterinary consultant and serves as a veterinary officer in the U.S. Army Reserve.

Also on the program to talk in depth about the Where the Wild Things Are event is Anna Ransler, Development Coordinator for the Living Coast Discovery Center.

Tickets for the June 2nd Where the Wild Things Are Event are $65 for members, and $75 for non-members (you must be 21 to attend). The event runs from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm on Saturday June 2nd. To purchase tickets, contact Anna Ransler at (619) 409-5903.

For sponsorship opportunities, connect with Gigi Schroeder at (619) 787-9616.

For more information click on the graphic below. The main phone number for the Living Coast Discovery Center is (619) 409-5900.

Radical Plans Threaten Balboa Park’s Historic Integrity

tommy — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:33:02 +0000

Bruce Coons from the Save Our Heritage Organisation

A proposal to build a freeway-style off ramp from the iconic Cabrillo Bridge at San Diego’s Balboa Park is raising more than a few eyebrows among preservationists and park advocates. Even the National Park Service is voicing its concern, stating the development threatens Balboa Park’s status as a National Historic Site.

On this special edition of Living Better In San Diego, produced in conjunction with Treehuggers International, Bruce Coons of the Save Our Heritage Organisation joins Tommy to talk about the proposed redesign’s threats to the integrity of Balboa Park as a special place which values history, open space, park design, taste, and respect for the public trust.

The Botanical Gardens Building and Lily Pond at San Diego's Balboa Park.

One of North America’s Great Urban Spaces

With 1,200 acres of parkland in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the U.S., Balboa Park preserves canyons and mesas and trails through desert gardens, exotic plants and even a grove of “imported” Redwoods from Northern California. The park is also home to an amazing array of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, built for the 1915 Pan-American Exposition and praised by no less than former President Theodore Roosevelt, who complimented the park for ”buildings of rare, phenomenal taste and beauty” during a visit.

After nearly 100 years, Balboa Park remains one of San Diego’s great open space meeting places and exercise locales, where residents jog, bicycle, walk their dogs, and explore a network of urban and not-so-urban trails. The Plaza de Panama is the symbolic center of San Diego’s Balboa Park, and the midway point between the Cabrillo Bridge to the west, and the Bea Everson Fountain along Park Blvd. to the east.

In an effort to restore some of the park’s natural grandeur and space, recent conservation plans have proposed closing the Plaza de Panama’s limited parking areas in front of the San Diego Museum of Art, and instead only allowing traffic into the park via the Cabrillo Bridge during certain times of the day or for special events. Auto traffic would still be allowed into the park and to access parking areas via Park Blvd. entrances on Balboa Park’s east side.

Proposing Incompatible Infrastructure

Alcazar Gardens at Balboa Park.

However, a radical re-design proposal by La Jolla billionaire Irwin Jacobs, endorsed by San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, seeks to exploit the desire to close the west end of El Prado to auto traffic for something else completely.

Using an automobile-free Plaza de Panama as a rationale, the Jacobs plan proposes building a freeway-style “off ramp” from the iconic Cabrillo Bridge over the 163 freeway. The off ramp would wrap around the Museum of Man’s chapel and Alcazar Gardens, necessitating a new, wider bridge over Palm Canyon, on the way to a multi-story (!) parking garage behind the world-renowned Spreckels Organ Pavilion.

Why would anyone seek to build a multi-story parking garage and funnel more traffic into Babloa Park? Especially when the rationale for closing the Plaza de Panama to traffic is to free the western end of El Prado from regular auto traffic and restore the Plaza de Panama to its pre-automobile state?

It is of course counter-intuitive, and a shallow attempt at piggybacking an unnecessary and destructive construction project onto a conservation plan which requires no grand additions to existing park structures or any new construction.

Respect for San Diego’s Historic and Cultural Heritage

Founded in 1969, the Save Our Heritage Organisation, or SOHO, and has been protecting some of San Diego’s special places for decades. If you’re familiar with the Marston House near Balboa Park, or the Whaley House or Adobe Chapel Museum in San Diego’s Old Town, you’re likely familiar with the Save Our Heritage Organisation. SOHO makes it their mission to preserve, promote and support preservation of the architectural, cultural and historical links and landmarks which contribute to San Diego’s identity, depth, and character.

A lifelong San Diegan and preservationist, Bruce Coons is the long-time Executive Director of the Save Our Heritage Organisation, and has been a guest on Tommy’s programs before. Bruce appeared on Living Better In San Diego in 2008 to talk about the State Normal School Training Building on Park Blvd. in University Heights, and appeared on Treehuggers International in 2009 to discuss the ongoing threats to Rancho Guejito in northern San Diego.

The proposed developments to Balboa Park brings Bruce back to Living Better In San Diego, and also offers Bruce and Tommy a chance to talk about SOHO’s recent acquisition and plans for the Warner-Carrillo Ranch House near Lake Henshaw and Santa Ysabel General Store between Ramona and Julian, as well as the current state of the Villa Montezuma in Sherman Heights.

The bizarre, and some say haunted, Villa Montezuma in San Diego's Sherman Heights.

California State Parks Foundation Legacy Award Winners Video

tommy — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 19:10:01 +0000

Heroic Legislators, Advocacy, and State Parks

We’re pleased to present a video co-produced and directed by Treehuggers International founder and host Tommy Hough, in tandem with his Primary Focus production partner Gary Meade, for the California State Parks Foundation.

Created for this year’s Parks Advocacy Day, an annual lobbying event which Tommy takes part in to support California State Parks, the clip is a collection of the foundation’s Legacy Award winners from the past 10 years.

Since 2002, the California State Parks Foundation has given the Legacy Award to state legislators who go above and beyond the call of duty in protecting and enhancing California’s magnificent state park system.

We were especially honored to have Sen. Christine Kehoe, Asm. Wesley Chesbro, and Sec. of Natural Resources John Laird present for the March 20th screening of the video during the Parks Advocacy Day reception in Sacramento, when this year’s Legacy Award winner, Asm. Jared Huffman, was honored. Asm. Huffman is currently running for the U.S. House of Representatives from California’s 2nd Congressional District.

A big thanks to Traci Verardo-Torres, Jerry Emory, Linsey Fredenburg-Humes, and Kate Litzky at the California State Parks Foundation for their extraordinary help and support in making this project happen.

Primary Focus is continuing to assist former Asm. Lori Saldaña‘s campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives in California’s 52nd Congressional District with communications, media and video support.

San Bernardino National Forest Association

tommy — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:52:55 +0000

Listener Neal Lenzen in the San Jacinto high country of the San Bernardino National Forest.

Sarah Miggins, the Executive Director of the San Bernardino National Forest Association, talks about hiking the high country of the San Bernardino and San Jacinto ranges (including a one-day ascent of 11,400 ft. Mt. San Gorgonio) and living the mountain life, along with the history and development of the San Bernardino National Forest Association, one of the leading park and forest conservancies in the nation.

A native of Cleveland, and like Tommy a fellow Bobcat and graduate of Ohio University, Sarah also talks about the San Bernardino National Forest Association’s role in the funding and operation of the Big Bear Discovery Center and the National Children’s Forest, re-planting burned forest areas, wildfire awareness and prevention, and preserving the historic network of fire lookouts in the San Bernardino National Forest, from the drive-up Strawberry Peak lookout to the hard-won trail to the top of Tahquitz Peak above Idyllwild.

Learn more about how to see bald eagles wintering at Lake Hemet and Big Bear Lake, where you can find the nation’s biggest Lodgepole Pine, and how you can volunteer with the San Bernardino National Forest Association in a variety of roles, from planting trees to maintaining trails.

Big Bear Lake after a winter snowfall.

Peg Reiter and the Legacy of Jerry Schad

tommy — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:18:07 +0000

San Diego's famous Spruce Street suspension bridge in Bankers Hill.

The author of Afoot and Afield In San Diego and well over a dozen other trail and guidebooks related to the outdoors of Southern California, we were very fortunate to enjoy Jerry Schad‘s company as a guest on Treehuggers International on two occasions: in July 2008, and again in July 2009. He was definitely a friend of the show.

Flowering Sea Dahlia at Torrey Pines.

Sadly, we lost Jerry to cancer on September 22nd, 2011. Treehuggers International presented a memorial show in the weeks after Jerry’s death, and one of the key people in his life mentioned during the memorial program was his wife, Peg Reiter.

Jerry’s last book, 50 Best Short Hikes San Diego, has just been released by Wilderness Press, Jerry’s long-time publisher. Jerry worked on the book over the course of the spring and summer of 2011, even as the effects of his illness grew more severe. By his side the entire time, helping and assisting in every way possible, was Peg.

Peg Reiter came to play an instrumental role in the completion of 50 Best Short Hikes San Diego, and after consulting with Susan Haynes, the Senior Editor at Wilderness Press, Treehuggers International producer and host Tommy Hough felt the best way to feature the book, and Jerry’s lasting legacy, was to welcome Peg onto the program to talk about her involvement with the book, and the precious time she was able to spend with her husband doing so.

Over the summer, Peg told Steve Schmidt from the San Diego Union-Tribune, “Even though Jerry took me to many beautiful places geographically, the most wonderful place he took me was to his heart. I shared more with Jerry Schad in our short time together than I have with some who have known me my entire life.”

The teams at Treehuggers International and KBZT FM 94/9 express our deepest condolences to Peg and the members of Jerry’s family.

Special thanks to Susan Haynes, Amber Kay Henderson and Rachel Freytag at Wilderness Press, Menasha Ridge Press, and Keen Communication.

All photos on this page were taken by Jerry Schad, and appear in 50 Best Short Hikes San Diego.

The Treehuggers International Jerry Schad Memorial program is now also on-line, featuring excerpts from Jerry’s July 13, 2008 and July 19, 2009 appearances on the show.

A placid bend in the San Diego River in Mission Gorge.

Carbon Nation Director Peter Byck

tommy — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:00:13 +0000

A Documentary About Energy Innovators and Climate Change Solutions

Winning a slew of praise and accolades since its release last fall, the movie Carbon Nation has been gaining attention and traction throughout 2011, and we are thrilled to have director Peter Byck on the program.

Big thanks to green energy and cleantech advocate Lee Barken for his help and assistance in making this edition of Treehuggers International possible, with additional thanks to the San Elijo campus of Mira Costa College in Encinitas, California.

Terrawatts and the Magic Number of 16

Carbon Nation takes an honest, often humorous look at global warming and the long-term effects of industrialization and fossil fuel use on our planet, and features success stories of private citizens, communities and organizations moving forward with alternative energy applications. If applied en masse, these alternative and renewable energy opportunities could meet – and surpass – the current, daily energy needs of the United States.

It wasn’t too long ago, during the heady days of 2006 following the release of Al Gore’s landmark global warming-awareness film An Inconvenient Truth, when pubic demand for government and private sector solutions to address not only our addiction to oil, but mankind’s cumulative, industrial effect on climate change was reaching a fever pitch. Political leaders from both parties began to call for remedies to global warming, as phrases like “cap and trade” and “carbon credits” began filtering into the lexicon.

By the late 2000s even GOP standard-bearers like Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman were proposing creative, free market-based ideas to encourage more responsible behavior by persistent industrial polluters. Sen. John McCain wisely stated in the early, pre-Sarah Palin stages of his 2008 candidacy:

“We have many advantages in the fight against global warming, but time is not one of them. Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring. We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge.”

Unfortunately, the intervening years have seen a complete lack of leadership on climate change issues from the White House and Congress, coupled with a bizarre, frequently anti-science backlash from entrenched energy and oil interests and their congressional and media allies. Over time, the absence of a strong voice on climate change, the recession, and the science-defying drumbeat from the political right has eroded the upswell of public support for addressing global warming and exploring renewable energy options.

While Europe and the rest of the western world have begun to plan for the consequences of climate change and taken steps to reduce their carbon footprint, the U.S. has remained notoriously idle. In the current House of Representatives, congressional minions of the Koch Brothers and other big energy industries have been actively working to gut functional environmental regulation and oversight which has made significant strides over the last 40 years in ensuring the cleanliness of U.S. air and water.

Green Energy Grassroots Efforts and Applications

While the U.S. government has so far failed to take a strong lead on the green front, and sometimes works against the best interests of the nation’s environmental health, cities and communities, citizens’ groups and green energy innovators haven’t been waiting for anyone to tell them “go.” The business of making the world a cleaner, healthier, more energy-efficient place is right at home in the U.S. with abundant innovation, complimented by some federal and state tax breaks available for green outlets.

Among the many fascinating characters we meet in Carbon Nation, one is Texas farmer Cliff Etheridge, who currently counts wind as one of his “crops.” As the owner of Peak Wind, one of the world’s largest wind farm outlets, Cliff had seen how other energy companies were leasing his neighbors’ land to develop wind farms. Instead of leasing his own land, he opted to utilize hundreds of acres of his own farmland to build a wind farm business, with dozens of giant windmills taking him off the grid and creating a functional, lucrative business for himself, his son, and others from his west Texas hometown in need of jobs.

Peter Byck also spends time with Alaska geothermal pioneer Bernie Karl in Carbon Nation, and the good news with geothermal is you no longer have to be sitting atop a geyser or volcanic field to tap into the earth’s energy. Bernie invented a way to use water heated to only 165 degrees to create geothermal power; previously water had to be at least 250 degrees, and more realistically, had to be on the way to 400 degrees to be effective. With this new geothermal innovation, it’s now possible to draw hot water from the earth’s crust nearly anywhere, even in the middle of Manhattan, and utilize the power of the planet for electricity and energy needs.

One face in Carbon Nation may be already familiar to some. Van Jones is the author of Green Collar Economy and the former Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality under President Obama. Van was also the primary advocate for the Green Jobs Act, signed into law by President Bush in 2007, and notable for being the first federal legislation to utilize the term “green jobs.” In Carbon Nation, Van takes the filmmakers to a Solar Richmond and Grid Alternatives project site in the Bay Area, as employees and trainees work to make pre-exisiting structures as energy efficient as possible, and in doing so, help create a green energy industry and workforce with real-world applications.

Peter Byck also introduces Carbon Nation viewers to retired U.S. Army Col. Dan Nolan, and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, both are members of the growing number of “Green Hawks” in the U.S. military and national security agencies. Led by policy makers, intelligence professionals, and hardened veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Green Hawks have become a formidable voice within the military, leading the Pentagon towards energy efficiency to make overseas operations less costly and more effective, and to make supply lines and energy independence for overseas missions less vulnerable.

Carbon Nation Director Peter Byck in the editing suite.

Restoring Gettysburg Battlefield

tommy — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:31:13 +0000

Cinda Waldbuesser of the National Parks Conservation Association

Treehuggers International welcomes Cinda Waldbuesser, the Pennsylvania Senior Program Manager with the National Parks Conservation Association, to talk about the restoration work done at Gettysburg National Military Park over the last 10 years by the National Park Service, in conjunction with the Gettysburg Foundation.

Thanks to Treehuggers International friend Perry Wheeler with the National Parks Conservation Association office in Washington DC, and Katie Lawhon at Gettysburg National Military Park for their help and assistance making this show possible.

The statue of Union Gen. G.K. Warren surveys the view from Little Round Top.

No Shortage of Carnage

Fought over the course of three days in July 1863, Gettysburg is the most famous of Civil War battles, and one of the most terrible, even for a war which had no shortage of carnage or butchery, with some 50,000 casualties on both sides, including 10,000 killed.

The battle was the culmination of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s second invasion of the north, following an inconclusive invasion of Maryland the previous September, which resulted in the savage bloodletting at the Battle of Antietam, a battle whose scope and casualties shocked both sides.

Rather than an attempt to seize territory, Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania was prompted by supply necessities. The Army of Northern Virginia could no longer forage for food or live off the land in war-torn Virginia, so following the Confederate victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863, Lee gambled on Union confusion to launch a summer invasion of the north.

While Confederate cavalry under General J.E.B. Stuart threatened Harrisburg and briefly occupied Carlisle, the bulk of Lee’s army barely penetrated the Keystone State’s border by more than 12 miles. Federal forces under the Army of the Potomac’s new commander General George Meade positioned themselves between the Confederates and Washington DC, buying time for reserves to be drawn out of the capital to help repel the southern invasion. Federal cavalry, newly energized after an impressive stand at the Battle of Brandy Station, initiated flanking maneuvers against Stuart’s cavalry units.

Following several days of small-scale firefights, both armies jockeyed for position near the crossroads town of Gettysburg, through which the major east-west National Road and north-south Taneytown Road pass. Lee’s forces, now advancing from the north, pushed panicked federal defenders through the streets of Gettysburg after engagements at Barlow Knoll and Oak Ridge smashed the Union line on July 1st, but Meade fell back to excellent, high ground defensive positions anchored at Cemetery Hill, forming a line running some four miles south of town.

As the lines coalesced, Confederate flanking attempts were made on July 2nd on the Federal right at Culp’s Hill, and horrific, daylong close-quarter bloodbaths took place in benign-sounding locales like the Wheatfield, which changed hands several times in a matter of hours, and at the Peach Grove, which fell to Confederate advances by the end of the day on July 2nd.

At the chillingly named Devil’s Den, at the base of Little Round Top, Federal troops held off Confederate assaults during hours of macabre hand-to-hand fighting, often in narrow gaps and draws in bizarre, otherwordly rock outcroppings.

The fighting sapped southern strength on the Union left, enabling Meade’s forces to quickly claim and hold Little Round Top. By late afternoon Union artillery was raining devastating fire onto southern forces attacking out of Pitzer Woods and Warfield Ridge to the west and south.

By the end of July 2nd, the Union line held: to the north along the edge of Gettysburg at Cemetery Hill, and to the south at Little Round Top, where the 20th Maine under Colonel Joshua Chamberlin held the southern end of the line, thereby maintaining Union control of the battle, but under murderous, non-stop Confederate attack by newly-committed Alabama troops.

Union defenders paid dearly at the Wheatfield and Devil’s Den, but bought time for reinforcements, which continued to arrive from Washington even as Lee was committing his reserves with a failed assault on East Cemetery Hill.

Three Confederate divisions attempted to advance across this field to attack the Union center.

A Massed, Futile Assault

Realizing he needed to break the back of the Union line, Lee chose to do so at the center with a massive assault, which almost all of his staff, including his deputy, General James Longsteet, vehemently opposed. Union General Meade had correctly anticipated Lee’s moves throughout the battle, falling into excellent defensive positions by the end of the first day, and at a Council of War at the end of the second day predicted Lee would advance on the Union center, just over the hill beyond his headquarters near a farmhouse and several groves of trees.

After several cavalry actions on July 3rd, including a renewed assault at the northern end of the Union line near Culp’s Hill, Lee unleashed the largest artillery bombardment of the war up to that time on the Union center. Holding the high ground along Cemetery Ridge, Meade knew he held an advantage against an attack from the west, and only ordered batteries on either end of the barrage to fire on Confederate positions, leaving artillery in the center to remain largely silent during the two-hour bombardment. There was no secret as to what was coming next.

Advancing in three division-sized groups from Seminary Ridge and Spangler’s Woods along a mile-long front, Longstreet placed General George Pickett in command of the assault, which saw the bulk of nine regiments of the Army of Northern Virginia advancing uphill against fortified artillery and infantry positions.

The weather was hot and humid, in the 80s, and the objective was a grove, or copse, of trees a mile away at the center of the Federal II Corps position, but this was academic to Confederate officers. The advance was in broad daylight over a mile of open ground, with zero surprise.

Union artillery began firing before the southern infantry had advanced beyond the treeline, and even long rounds did damage to Confederate troops massing along Seminary Ridge. The Confederates advanced in a skirmish line at a medium pace, and largely held discipline while under withering artillery fire from the federal left and right. The center remained silent, even though the advancing southerners could clearly see cannon pointing at them.

About halfway across the Confederates jumped into double-time, at which point federal artillery in the center at last fired, wiping out half of the advancing troops within a matter of minutes. Federal infantry opened up on the advancing survivors as they closed in on Union lines, cutting down soldiers one and two at a time, though a few Confederate troops managed to reach the Angle near the bullet-pocked Brian farmhouse before being surrounded and gunned down. One New York battery grimly summed up the point-blank use of artillery at this stage of the Confederate charge as “double canister shot at 10 yards.” It was a mass, grotesque slaughter.

The High Water Mark of the Confederacy

Today, the Angle and Copse of Trees literally mark the Confederate High Water Mark, dotted up and down the line with Union unit monuments, facing Confederate monuments a mile away along Seminary Ridge.

The High Water Mark didn’t just represent the failure of the southern effort at Gettysburg, it marked the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. Though the south would have one last major victory at Chattanooga later in 1863, the die was cast with Pickett’s Charge. The war would drag on for nearly two more years, but never again would a Confederate army manage a large-scale offensive.

By 1864, newly-installed Union commander Ulysses Grant initiated total war against the south, bringing to bear the full might of Union industry, technology and manpower against the southern states, and the U.S. at last found a way to grind out a winning formula, however hellish, to a war it had once taken far less seriously than it’s adversary, at first dismissively referring to motivated Confederate troops as rebels and mutineers.

The rocks of The Angle mark the High Water Mark of the Confederacy.

A New Cyclorama Home, and A Casino Threat

Preservation of the Gettysburg battlefield began shortly after the battle ended, with a portion of East Cemetery Hill developed by the War Department into Gettysburg National Cemetery. Many of the near 5,000 Union troops killed in the battle were buried at this new National Cemetery, where President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address during the cemetery’s dedication four months later in November 1863. The Department of the Army managed the battlefield site for decades before transferring the property to the National Park Service in 1933.

National Battlefields and Historic sites play somewhat the same role in the eastern U.S. as National Monuments do in the west; that is, protecting resources and practicing conservation within a smaller footprint, but on a scale which still enables wildlife corridors and open space aesthetics, and acts as a bulwark to encroaching urbanization.

The Battle of Gettysburg retains a place in history as a turning point in the war, but its legacy extends beyond military history, as Gettysburg National Military Park preserves some 4,000 acres of the battlefield and adjoining areas, including streams, fields, meadows, orchards, and several good-sized hills for its area within the Pennsylvania Piedmont coastal plain and Potomac watershed.

Working in conjunction with the National Park Service in renovating the battlefield to its state on the eve of battle in 1863, the Gettysburg Foundation is representative of the kind of locally-based, quality public/private partnerships which have developed over the last decade, enabling Park Service professionals to focus on resource protection and law enforcement, while foundation volunteers and employees staff the new LEED-certified visitor center and museum.

Opened in 2008, the new Gettysburg visitor center not only features outstanding historic artifact displays and film experiences, it is also the new home of the restored Gettysburg Cyclorama, painted by French artist Paul Philippoteaux and first exhibited in a tour of the U.S. in 1883.

The National Parks Conservation Association has also worked with the National Park Service and Gettysburg Foundation to help remove the Gettysburg National Tower, built in 1974 on private property but considered a park eyesore by battlefield conservationists until its demolition in 2000. The NPCA has also helped combat the threat of a proposed casino in significant proximity to the battlefield’s borders.

Monuments along Cemetery Ridge mark where Union firepower decimated the Confederate advance.

Jerry Schad’s Afoot and Afield Legacy

tommy — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:19:59 +0000

A Thoughtful Advocate for Southern California’s Outdoors

Treehuggers International founder Tommy Hough relates how Jerry Schad and his Afoot and Afield series had a profound effect on his perception, acceptance, and eventual peace with Southern California’s varied outdoor environments and landscapes.

Springtime poppies, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

Stranger In An Arid Land

by Tommy Hough, Treehuggers International founder and host.

When I first arrived in San Diego, I was despondent. I was enjoying a tremendous career shot in the arm and broadcasting opportunity at a dynamite new radio station bending rules and going rogue, but I was a sad and homesick guy. You could see the cloud over my head a mile away. It’s a wonder my now-wife ever put up with me on our first few dates.

The despondency came from the trauma of uprooting myself from a place I’d fallen in love with, and a place I never wanted to leave and never once took for granted. It was the trauma of moving myself far away from every outdoor adventure I loved, every reason I had for living for the weekend (and indulging in more than a few sick days), every place worthy of strapping on a pair of old, comfortable hiking boots and taking along an ice axe for a “just in case” contingency.

For five years, the Pacific Northwest had been my absolute outdoor sustenance. It still very much is, but I had just moved to a part of the country which, as far as I could see, was arid, brown, hot, and living on irrigation-fueled life support. I do not exaggerate when I say this separation was akin to heartbreak; I could not shake myself from it.

Unused as I was to dry climates and desert particulates, the week I moved to San Diego a hot wintertime Santa Ana blew in and immediately gave me a terrible cold as my eyes dried and my nose bled. The winds were strong and sustained enough to collapse a huge branch from a big, old eucalyptus tree in Old Town, which crushed an old woman to death as she was walking her dog in the middle of the day. Welcome to town.

To me, San Diego was a catalogue of things missing and sorely lacking: wide, visceral rivers, dense rainforests, dramatic, glaciated peaks. The local mountains, to my sensibilities, were puny, brown, with zero trees or any confiers to brag about except for the highest reaches of the Lagunas, which upon close inspection were baked, bone-dry and alarmingly flammable. And what’s the point of all this sunshine if there’s no snow-capped mountains to fix one’s gaze on? No glaciers or snowfields or high alpine terrain, with a kingdom of lush forest and crashing waterfalls below?

While I could appreciate the wildness of the desert, it initially held little interest for exploration. It was vast, hot, and definitely not green. It was the inverse of the verdant outdoor environments I’d come to love as I developed my outdoor jones as a kid in the Laurel Highlands of Western Pennsylvania, at college in the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio, and later in the waterfall-spray soaked forests and rocky, granite massifs of the Pacific Northwest.

Summit markers atop snowy Mt. Baden-Powell, San Gabriel Mountains.

Finding Familiarity In Old Cuyamaca

Of course, an outdoorsman explores, and an explorer does so outdoors. If you love the outdoors, you don’t sit around inside thinking about it. Within days I was attempting to come to terms with my new environment, trying to find something I could latch on to and find familiar. I was certainly looking for something to soothe my outdoor jones.

With Gram Parsons and Buck Owens providing the soundtrack in the car, I made my way to the pre-Cedar Fire wonderland of Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, and found myself reminded of parts of Montana, as well as the oak-dotted hills of California’s magical Central Coast and Bay Area.

I spent days wandering around Cuyamaca Peak. There were no glaciers. There were no wildflowers. But I saw deer and even a fox in the old Jeffrey and Ponderosa pine forest, and was reminded of some of the forests of eastern Oregon, or the underrated (and soon to be closed) Castle Crags State Park near Mt. Shasta.

This was progress. At least I’d found something which felt comfortable, and a little more familiar.

The next thing I did was pick up a book I’d actually heard about in Seattle called Afoot and Afield In San Diego County. The book was written by a Mesa College astronomy professor named Jerry Schad, who’d appeared several years earlier in a TV adaptation of the book on KPBS, San Diego’s public radio and TV outlet.

Judging from the size of the book, Jerry appeared to have hiked every trail ever blazed in the county, and I mean every one. I devoured the contents of Afoot and Afield, first looking for hikes and trails which reminded me of home, then checking out coastal trails through chaparral (an ecosystem I’ve only just learned to appreciate with the help of Rick Halsey), and then, taking a few curious looks at the desert hikes detailed in the book’s Anza-Borrego sections.

Reading through the text of various trips, Jerry made the hikes tangible and interesting, and seemed to have a particular zeal for desert trails, especially some of the more sheer and brutalizing treks in the Santa Rosa range, which even piqued my admittedly low interest for badland adventure.

Before long, I was driving up fire roads on the Los Coyotes reservation near Warner Springs to the forests at the base of Hot Springs Mountain, only to be sideswiped by a view of the Salton Sea I will never forget, appearing like a giant mirage through the trees. I visited the oak groves of Oakoasis in Lakeside and was pleased to find such heavy tree wisdom so close to civilization, cared for as a county park. I walked along the headwaters of the wild Santa Margarita River on the backside of Camp Pendleton, and was calmed by the stillness and quiet of the wilderness.

I found myself in a wildflower riot bright with yellow monkeyflower, hyacinth, and morning glory on the western shoulder of Otay Mountain one March morning. I swear I nearly drowned as I walked through literal walls of water in a late winter cloudburst atop Mt. Woodson, heartened to see freshly-fallen snow through the raindrops blanketing the Santa Ysabel ridge above Ramona. I met a friend for life on a morning trek up Stonewall Peak, and laughed with gallows delight as weather turned cruel on an outing to Garnet Peak. I ascended through the changing ecosystems of the Southern California forest on the Observatory Trail at Palomar Mountain, delighted at finding genuine old-growth cedars near the top.

I returned to Cuyamaca Peak, feeling a little wiser with my newly-minted Southern California explorer’s stripes.

San Ysidro Oak Woodland Open Space Preserve, Santa Barbara County.

Gratitude and Recognition

While I made it a point to explore and hike my way through my separation trauma, I had Jerry Schad to thank for planting ideas in my head as I read pages and pages of Afoot and Afield before falling asleep at night, and guiding me to a trailhead or destination as I kept one hand on my Jeep steering wheel and another holding my rapidly-fraying copy of Afoot and Afield.

Later I picked up Jerry’s Afoot and Afield editions for Orange and Los Angeles counties, and found myself on the wander-worthy San Juan Creek trail in the wild Santa Ana range one day, and ascending 9,399 ft. Mt. Baden-Powell in the San Gabriel range on another, finding some of the freshest air I’ve ever breathed at the summit, along with one of the strangest mountaintop mysteries I’ve ever beheld.

I want to thank Jerry Schad for giving a me an outdoor compass for Southern California, and helping me find my way in a region of the country I’ve sometimes been at odds with personally, but which has always embraced me back.

Through his enthusiastic, clear writing, Jerry helped me find my bearings at a time when I needed it, and helped replace my traumatic sense of loss with a newfound appreciation for where I was, and the self-healing to embrace and be thankful for what I had, as opposed to what I was missing. For that, there are no words which say thank you well enough.

“Just Get Out There”

These days, Jerry is very sick with stage four cancer, having reached a point where treatment is no longer a viable option. He wrote about his condition in the final edition of his long-running outdoor column for the The Reader, Roam-A-Rama. I know from his wife he is resting comfortably at home.

I sincerely hope this piece goes a little of the long way of expressing to Jerry just how much of an impact he’s had on me, and how, with his help, I came to be enticed by Southern California’s remarkable outdoors through his experiences, and confirmed them with my own.

I know there are tens of thousands of outdoors fans in Southern California who eagerly lace up their boots every chance they get, and feel exactly the same rush of excitement when they make sure they have their copy of Afoot and Afield before leaving for a trailhead. I hope Jerry knows how much of an impact he has made on generations of hikers and outdoors fans. As he wrote in his final Roam-A-Rama column for The Reader, “just get out there.”

And when getting “out there,” take along your friends and family, and colleagues and neighbors. Get the novices on the trail to breathe in the fresh air and to enjoy a vista or view they can’t get from a parking lot. When people make a tangible connection to the outdoors and wilderness, the more inclined they will be to help save it, and preserve it as is.

A Canopy of Stars

In September 2008, shortly after Jerry’s first appearance on Treehuggers International, he invited me to an astronomy lecture he was giving to a new crop of Mesa College students, from a wide parking area along Sunrise Highway, a few miles above the I-8 Laguna Summit. Using his laser pointer as the sun fell away and the canopy of stars opened, Jerry diagrammed the constellations and explained their origins, compared and contrasted the remarkable similarity different civilizations had of the same constellations, and pointed his array of telescopes at heavenly bodies from the moon to the rings of Saturn to the Jovian moons. Astronomy is Jerry’s true passion, and I thank him for letting me come by and enjoy his lecture as a guest.

Thanks for everything Jerry. We’re thinking about you.

Jerry Schad has made two appearances on Treehuggers International: July 13, 2008 and July 19, 2009.

Zuma Canyon wildflowers, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

A Century of Conservation At Muir Woods

tommy — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 20:49:18 +0000

Ranger Lou Sian of Muir Woods National Monument

Treehuggers International is pleased to welcome Ranger Lou Sian to talk about the magnificence of the coastal Redwood forest ecosystem, and the effort a century ago to save a surviving old-growth grove minutes away from the growing metropolis of San Francisco, resulting in Muir Woods National Monument.

Thanks to Lindsay Bartsh at the National Parks Conservation Association, and Muir Woods Sight Supervisor Mia Monroe for their help with this program. A very special thanks to Paul Lancour for his technical assistance with this edition of Treehuggers International.

The older a Redwood gets, the more rot and fire-resistant it becomes.

“My Dear Mr. Kent: By George! You are right!”

Sprouting from a seed no bigger than a tomato, Redwoods have a special place in western conservation culture. Along with being the tallest trees in the world, California’s Redwoods are also some of the world’s most rot-resistant trees, and by virtue of their bark, size, and typical surrounding ecosystem, Redwoods are amazingly fire-resistant. Other than man, or the occasional well-placed windstorm, Redwoods have no natural enemies, and can thrive for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Growing in groves of five or six in a small, thin coastal band from Big Sur to the Oregon border, Redwoods once covered some two million acres of the Northern California coast. But due to over-logging, and a lack of understanding about the Redwood forest ecosystem, those once great stands were denuded to the few stands which survive today. While most surviving old-growth Redwood groves have since been preserved in various California state and National Parks, some old-growth Redwood groves do survive today on private timberland, and calls for their preservation occasionally percolate to the surface.

One of the few surviving stands of old-growth Redwoods in the San Francisco Bay Area, Muir Woods lies in a canyon along the Pacific coast in southwestern Marin County, and was one of the first National Park Service units of what is now collectively referred to as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Like classic old-growth Redwood forests, it relies upon fog for regular moisture, and this abundance of fog results in a locally wet environment which ensures abundant plant growth similar to that seen in the Pacific Northwest.

Named for the great naturalist, savior of Yosemite, and Sierra Club founder John Muir, Muir Woods was set aside as a National Monument in Muir’s honor by his friend and fellow conservationist, President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, at the urging of area businessman and future congressman William Kent, after a Sausalito water company announced plans to dam the canyon.

Muir Woods became the first National Monument to be created from land donated by a private individual, rather than land already in federal government inventory.

Salmon-spawning Redwood Creek on it's way to the Pacific Ocean.

Fireworks Over La Jolla Cove

tommy — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 00:17:44 +0000

Environmental attorney Marco Gonzalez is the co-founder of the Coast Law Group and the Executive Director of CERF, the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation, and has been in the vanguard in the fight against fireworks displays over the beaches at La Jolla Cove.

Mr. Gonzalez and his team have also been active in pointing out the willingness of elected officials, and even the pubic, to turn a blind eye to blatant violations of state and federal clean water and clean air laws.

Smoke from the 2011 La Jolla fireworks drifts lazily in the thick air.

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