Thanks to volunteer Wendy Marcus for sharing this brief piece about her experience at Bridgeport Trails Day… “We’ve had a house at Twin Lakes for three years, but this is the first time I’ve had the pleasure of helping out Friends of the Inyo with Bridgeport Trails Day (June 30, 2018). I brought along my friend Beth, and we got to work with Astra Lincoln and Dylan Welcome (and Dylan’s mom’s dog, Lady Jane!) and three other volunteers on the Upper Twin Lake Trail, clearing trees from the path as we came across them, improving creek crossings, and trimming brush…
Stories
After a massive mudslide destroyed the beginning of the Lundy Canyon Trail in April, our Stewardship Crew has been busy repairing the damage with funding from Mono County. On Thursday, June 14, community members joined the crew in Lundy for Mono Basin Trails Day. We had a great morning learning about the rebuild process from our expert crew, and helping them solidify the new trail corridor. Afterwards we debriefed at the trailhead with watermelon and lemonade. Take a walk up Lundy and let us know what you think about our work!
Food, Friends, and Fun at our 2018 Open House Thanks for making our Open House another big success! Over 40 people arrived to ask about policy, events, and projects. With our packed summer calendar, everyone wanted to know about how to join us to work on their favorite trails at our volunteer events. Others came to chat about our hot policy issues, like the BLM’s decision to allow exploratory drilling at Perdito Canyon on Conglomerate Mesa. And with delicious snacks on every table and frosty beverages out back, there was truly something for everyone at the event. Enjoy some photos…
Last month, High Country News published an article that posited an interesting thesis; that there might not be a link between outdoor recreation and conservation. Or, as the author titled it “Your stoke won’t save us”. The piece has created some waves in our little world at the intersect of environmental conservation and public lands, as well as the outdoor industry as a whole. The article landed in my e-mail inbox a total of six times, made the rounds of social media, and even prompted a dissenting follow up letter published in this month’s HCN. These pieces come at a time when our public…
California’s State Mining and Geology Board (SMGB) is under pressure from the mining industry to weaken regulations that could pave the way to expanded open pit mining—including industrial-scale cyanide heap leach mining at Conglomerate Mesa. Current California mining laws are some of the strongest in the nation and include stringent backfill requirements which result in many mining proposals being economically infeasible. The SMGB (which has no environmental representative), has issued a “Notice of Pre-Rulemaking Workshop and Public Comment period” to “review, and possibly revise, state policy pertaining to Performance Standards for Backfilling Excavations and Recontouring Lands Disturbed by Open Pit Surface Mining…
June is here, and we are very excited to have our Friends of the Inyo staff more than double in size! Say hello to our amazing summer staff. You’ll find them out on the trails, doing the on the ground work to keep your Eastern Sierra public lands in tip top shape. Stewardship Crew Astra Lincoln, Crew Leader Astra’s spent many seasons as a trail monkey up and down the intermountain west, harvesting plants, teaching antique tool use, and championing the silence of open spaces. She’s passionate about manual labor as a means of spiritual atonement and cultivating a sense of…
On Friday, April 20, the Horton Creek Campground was alive with archaeological artefacts, bighorn sheep skulls, stream macroinvertebrates, interesting rocks, Leave No Trace flash cards, Paiute words, and sixty-two children from Round Valley Elementary School. Led by Friends of the Inyo and the Bishop BLM, Round Valley Earth Day is a chance for the elementary school students to learn about many different aspects of the place where they live, from its indigenous history, to its plants and animals, to its recreational opportunities. The students arrived at the campground at 8:30am, and the clock began ticking. Eight educational stations were set…
This summer, Friends of the Inyo’s seasonal crews will delve into a new kind of stewardship: scientific data collection. In partnership with CalTrout’s Sierra Headwaters Region, we’ll monitor greenhouse gas emissions from three meadows on the Sequoia National Forest to determine the relative rates of carbon sequestration in degraded vs. restored meadows. Meadows cover only 1.7% of the Sierra Nevada range1, but their soils may contain up to 30% of the region’s organic carbon stocks2. When meadows are degraded, preliminary research shows they transform from net sinks to net sources of carbon3. Functioning meadows sequester carbon at six times the…
A Talk with Mike Johnston Friends of the Inyo Executive Director Wendy Schneider sat down to talk with Eastern Sierra 4WD Club President Mike Johnston to learn more about his thoughts on the relationship between the OHV and conservation communities and the best way to move forward with helping each other to protect and care for our Eastern Sierra public lands. So, how did you get to the Eastern Sierra? Like a lot of the people here, I’m a transplant. I grew up in Palmdale. At that time it had one traffic light. I decided to leave the…
Friends of the Inyo is using a 360-degree camera to show our wild backyard in a whole new way. Google for Nonprofits donated rental of this new type of camera, and I ran to the field to test it with an enthusiastic office dog. Google’s donation allows us to create and share scenes of our favorite places and events on their Google Maps platform. Friends of the Inyo also retains full ownership of the images. To test the camera unit we set out walking to one of my favorite quirky locations near Bishop. The unit resembles an upside-down walking stick…