Herger Amendment Would Lift Off-Road Vehicle Restrictions In National Forests
Named for Congressman Wally Herger, representing California’s 2nd District since 1987, this seemingly benign piece of legislative-speak attached to an otherwise crucial piece of defense legislation would “prohibit the use of funds to implement or enforce the Travel Management Rule, relating to the designation of roads, trails, and areas for motor vehicle use, in any administrative unit of the National Forest System.” The measure is intended to force the Forest Service to lift restrictions on off-road vehicle use in National Forests.
Earth Day Restoration at California State Parks and the Crystal Cove Alliance
With the failure of Proposition 21, California’s remarkable state park system remains faced with similar threats of closure faced in previous years, but with $22 million in proposed cuts to state parks in Governor Jerry Brown’s proposed budget, park closures have gone from a worst case scenario to a certainty. The only question, at this point, is which parks will be closed and which organizations, conservancies, and local governments may be able step up and help. The Crystal Cove Alliance establishes a template for how it can be done.
George Wuerthner and the Humility of Wilderness
With hopes for an omnibus public lands bill during the lame-duck session of the 111th Congress, Treehuggers International presents an encore presentation of our conversation with ecologist George Wuerthner. The author of a two-volume guide to California’s Wilderness areas, George has spent an extraordinary amount of time on the trail in our nation’s National Parks, National Forests, BLM lands and Wilderness areas, and is a prolific writer with 34 books and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles to his credit.
Treehuggers International 2010 Voting Guide
With coverage of state, federal, and local races, and propositions on the ballot for California’s November 2nd general election. For Treehuggers International, Prop. 21 remains the most important measure on the ballot. Tommy Hough has spoken at length on the air, at gatherings, and in conjunction with conservation partners about the need to preserve California’s laudable state park system, which preserves some of the Golden State’s finest landscapes and historic environments for its citizens, offering an affordable retreat for exercise, reflection, and recreation.
The Beating Heart of the Mojave Desert
If passed, the California Desert Protection Act will protect over one million acres of the Mojave Desert’s last wild, scenic areas, with the creation of two new National Monuments: the Mojave Trails National Monument on former railroad lands adjoining historic U.S. Rt. 66, and the Sand to Snow National Monument, which would include areas from the desert floor of the Coachella Valley to the high country of the San Bernardino Mountains, along with several new wilderness areas providing greater species connectivity across the region.
Exploring the Roadless Area Conservation Rule
The Obama administration recently granted a new yearlong extension to the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, originally enacted in 2001 in the waning days of the Clinton administration after the largest Forest Service public comment effort since the 1960s. Treehuggers International welcomes Mike Anderson from the Wilderness Society’s Pacific Northwest office in Seattle to talk about the creation of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, the benefit of roadless areas, and the Roadless Rule’s hurdles during the Bush years.
The Bureaucratic Plight of the La Jolla Seals
Helen Browning Scripps was one of the great civic patrons of San Diego, leaving behind a legacy of parks and civic projects which continue to enhance the lives of the city’s residents today. While not intended as a philanthropic misstep, one of Mrs. Scripps most beloved projects, the Children’s Pool at La Jolla Cove, has become something of a controversial legacy. In the late 1980s huge numbers of seals began returning to the Children’s Pool, an area which originally had been used by generations of seals who instinctively called the rocks it was built upon home.
Below the Surface at the Gulf of Mexico
The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and resulting three-month well blowout has become the largest maritime oil spill in history, and one of the worst environmental calamities ever. The spill has also come to personify the worst excesses of elite corporate greed, enabled regulatory laxness, bureaucratic inertia, and the destruction of a way of life dependent upon the sea. Below the Surface co-founder Jared Criscuolo recently returned from an emergency trip to the Gulf Coast.
