The incredible efforts of the CCC helped Big Bend gain national attention, eventually leading to the establishment of a national park in 1944. Every time we drive into the Basin, hike the Lost Mine Trail, or stay in one of the stone cottages we are experiencing their legacy. Nationwide the CCC was responsible for planting 3 billion trees, saving 20 million acres of soil from erosion, and creating facilities at hundreds of state and national parks.
Legacy of a Conservation Giant
In 1996 when the giant pandas first arrived at the San Diego Zoo, the species was considered Endangered in the wild, and with fewer than 1,600 left on the planet, conservation breeding efforts were the focus of a broader initiative to develop the capacity to supplement the wild population of pandas. However, there were many challenges to successful breeding under human care, and we worked with our colleagues in China and with other panda holding zoos to address these.
With the return of Bai Yun, Gao Gao, and Xiao Liwu to China and the conclusion of our current panda loan agreement, it is clear that an era has come to an end. However, our panda conservation work continues, and continued efforts to use scientific study to develop enduring conservation management strategies for the giant panda and its habitat will continue. We are no less dedicated to the survival the panda in the wild than we were 25 years ago. While we can say with confidence that there is now HOPE for the survival of the giant panda, we know that continued efforts are necessary, and that our international, multi-disciplinary, team approach is still the way to go. Our work continues.
There is no getting around the fact that we will all miss having giant pandas at the San Diego Zoo. Personally, I have been lucky enough to work in close proximity to them for more than 22 years and so am at a bit of a loss imagining my day-to-day work life without being able to look outside my office window to see Bai Yun and her family. Things will really be different around the Giant Panda Research Station in the near future, but with countless shared memories of panda milestones big and small, we are proud of the many individuals that have been a part of our panda-family (including the thousands - perhaps millions - of panda-supporters from around the world) and excited for the future.
Now we can stand on the shoulders of these conservation giants and continue to build on this legacy. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks is working with two landowners on the south side of the Big Snowy Mountains in Golden Valley County to create a 14,000-acre WMA.
A legacy of economic and social decisions made by forest landowners and managers over the past 150 years have precipitated the need to develop a range-wide conservation strategy with a firm scientific foundation. These decisions have significantly altered forest structure and function across the Sierra Nevada landscape. The dramatic loss of old growth forests and larger tree structures and the resulting suppression of key ecological processes, including the alteration of natural fire regimes, have stripped the mountain range of its resilience, structural components, and vegetation diversity. The result has been endangered wildlife diversity, increasing uncharacteristic fire risk, accelerated density-related forest health threats, and shifts in tree species composition. These changes have compromised forest resilience, biodiversity, and species viability at large spatial scales. Without a new scientifically sound planning direction, the impacts of climate change and other stressors can be expected to further destabilize forest ecosystems.
Forest plans are legally enforceable management documents which set the planning direction for all natural resources on national forests for the coming 15 to 20 years. These plans affect approximately 12 million acres of public lands on 11 national forests in the Sierra Nevada, and represent the best opportunity to comprehensively address climate change as a stressor in this region while securing improved forest and wildlife conservation at the landscape scale.
Using the Conservation Strategy, we seek to promote forest plans that will address landscape-level conservation strategies for ecosystems and specific terrestrial and aquatic species, incorporating the best interpretations of changing climate adaptation scenarios. We will support plans that are tied to robust adaptive management scenarios and respond in a timely manner to feedback from monitoring, and incorporate new scientific understanding as it evolves over the planning period. We will also support forest plans that promote diverse economic options that are consistent with ecologically sustainable management and restoration.
The results and recommendations of this document are intended to complement the forest plan revisions and other conservation strategies being developed for fisher, climate adaptation, and reintroduction of these four species.
In December 2011, Sierra Forest Legacy hosted a workshop with Pacific Rivers Council, CalTrout, UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, and UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, to discuss new scientific research for management of aquatic and riparian habitats, focusing on watershed protection and restoration in the Sierra Nevada since the 1996 Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project (SNEP). The two-day workshop was attended by representatives from Federal agencies, academia, research, and conservation organizations to discuss trends and share information about aquatic diversity and species conservation; fire, fuels, and forest management in riparian areas; and restoration of Sierra Nevada meadows and meadow-dependent aquatic and riparian species at multiple scales.
The workshop proceedings compiled by Pacific Rivers Council summarize areas of agreement, disagreement, and the critical points of uncertainty for aquatic, riparian, and watershed protection. This effort lays the foundation for recommendations on aquatic diversity and species conservation, fire and fuels management in riparian areas, and recommendations for meadow restoration in the Sierra Nevada. Download the summary below.
If you didn't know, Iowa was once passed over by a glacial drift. That's right, the Ice Age happened right on top of Iowa. So what does that have to do with wetlands? Let us explain: these glaciers that once surfaced over our land began to melt, and when they did, they started sliding just like a giant ice cube. The glaciers weighed millions of tons, so when they began to slide and wiggle, they carved the earth beneath them. We call this "glaciation", and it produced potholes in the ground along with lose rock or sand, and Hardin County's scenic bluffs. The melting water filled the craters and turned them into ponds, creating a unique historical landscape like here in Hardin County. This landscape is commonly referred to as the prairie pothole region. Alongside these prairie potholes and rock outcrops are a mix of native grasses, forbes, and shrubs which took root and created Iowa's diverse wetlands ecosytems.
WWF was the first international conservation organization to work in China at the Chinese government's invitation. Our main role in China is to assist and influence policy-level conservation decisions through information collection, demonstration of conservation approaches, communications, and equipping people with the tools and knowledge they need to protect pandas and their habitat.
Camera traps are not the intricate and elaborate devices you might imagine. These innovative conservation tools are in fact nothing more than everyday cameras, armed with infrared sensors that take a picture whenever they sense movement in the forest.
Aldo Leopold is a conservation giant from American history who built on the legacy of John Muir and Henry David Thoreau to greatly expand the conservation movement by developing and fostering a vision for Land Ethic. In his seminal work, A Sand County Almanac (1949), he wrote that there is a need for a "new ethic", an ethic dealing with human's caring relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Leopold states the basic principle of a land ethic is the recognition that people are a part of the biological community, when he wrote: "The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land... [A] land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such."
Born in 1887 along the still semi-wild Mississippi River in Iowa, Leopold was always drawn to the outdoors. Even his earliest drawings featured local birds and school essays chronicled his hikes through the countryside. He graduated from Yale University's Forest School in 1909 before beginning his career with the U.S. Forest Service in Arizona and New Mexico. During this period he and colleagues advocated setting aside large areas of the National Forests as wilderness and in 1924 succeeded in having the Gila Wilderness Area established. The Gila was the first administratively determined wilderness and would be a critical precursor to the Wilderness Act passed by the US Congress in 1964. After a 24-year career with the Forest Service he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin in Madison to focus on wildlife conservation. Early in his university career he purchased 80 acres of logged, repeatedly burnt, overgrazed land. Putting his conservation theories to work and seeing the slow revitalization of this land was the basis for A Sand County Almanac. While building his ideas about a land ethic, Leopold, along with others such as Olaus and Mardy Murie, Bob Marshall, and Benton McKaye, formed The Wilderness Society. The purpose of this new organization was to insure that wild blank spots on the map always remained to inform our scientific understanding of how the earth functions as well as places for people to reconnect with the wild that would reinvigorate our collective spirit. They also understood and worked to establish wild places everywhere from window boxes and urban gardens to state parks and federally designated wilderness areas. Today, wilderness is the highest protected status of land in the United States of America and is the clearest and strongest embodiment of Leopold's land ethic. 2ff7e9595c
コメント