Dan's Outside

I go, I see, I do, I walk, I think, I like…

Joining the Site

One can join this site and comment on posts. That said, I automatically and immediately delete any membership applications that come from generic (random letters and numbers) yahoo, etc. email addresses and which do not include a real name, etc. Been getting a few of those the past week or so…

January 26, 2008 Posted by | Site News | Comments Off on Joining the Site

Another End of Term Bush Insult?

Expect to see a string of this stuff during the remaining (mercifully short) year of the environmental disaster known as the Bush administration. A week or so ago it was the opening of sensitive arctic areas to unnecessary oil production, yesterday it was a plan to kill more wolves, and today it was a plan for more corporate welfare for logging firms in Alaska.

About the wolves:

Under pressure from another alpha predator, human hunters (along with state officials eager to keep hunters happy), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has changed a rule in a way that has wildlife campaigners howling.

The complaints are not about the section allowing someone to kill a wolf attacking, say, a dog or livestock. It’s the part about states and tribal governments having the right to allow greatly expanded killing of wolves in “non-essential” populations where local officials determine that wolf packs are taking too big a share of deer and elk herds also coveted by hunters.

What is a “non-essential” wolf. Anyone?

January 26, 2008 Posted by | Commentary | 4 Comments

Yosemite Valley Railroad – A Piece of History Lives

Almost since I’ve lived in California I remember wondering about the railroad bed that follows the Merced River along the canyon bottom approach to El Portal and Yosemite Valley.

Thanks to Andy Frazer (see here also) I came across the web site describing the restoration of the observation car from the train that travelled between Merced and El Portal (at the Yosemite border) for something like 40 years during the first half of the last century.

January 26, 2008 Posted by | Commentary, History | Comments Off on Yosemite Valley Railroad – A Piece of History Lives

   

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