September Stewardship Update & Highlights The dog days of summer are here, and our Trail Ambassadors are out and about doing a doggone good job! Whether it’s picking up trash, working with the Athenian School, or heading out on trips with our Forest Service partners, August has been one heck of a month for our Stewardship team. Here are some of the highlights of the month: Lindsay and I (Stewardship Director Alex Ertaud) got to head into French Canyon, just over Pine Creek Pass and the Sierra Crest to spend four days working alongside Tim Crosby and Michael Sax from…
Trail Ambassadors
August Stewardship Update & Highlights Holy smokes it’s already August! They say time flies when you’re having fun, and that certainly applies to our stewardship activities this summer. Along with Trail Ambassadors Lindsay Butcher and Julia Tawney, our trio has been out and about lopping overgrown trails, bucking logs off of trails, interacting with and educating the public, and packing out all trash we find on trail or at the trailheads. Some highlights include: I (Stewardship Director Alex Ertaud) just got back from two days of crosscutting downed logs with students from the Athenian School’s Athenian Wilderness Experience, a 26-day…
Additional Trail Ambassador for the Owens River Headwaters Wild & Scenic River Area Friends of the Inyo has received a grant to do some great work around the Owens River Headwaters Wild & Scenic River Area. Our grant entails doing restoration work to aid in ecosystem, riparian habitat, and stream quality, as well as sharing the area with a wider audience, particularly in the local schools. FOI has had an exciting hand in the history of this area, protecting it from development and promoting its designation as wilderness. Our Trail Ambassador, Julia Tawney, will be putting together a series of videos…
Summer Stewardship Shaping Up for 2020 Hello from the wide world of all things Stewardship! Things have been touch and go as of late, with the pandemic throwing our plans into uncertainty since the beginning of March. Our plans have changed seemingly every couple of weeks or so, but now we’ve entered a welcome state of solid ground for what we can expect our work to look like this summer with regards to our stewardship program. Below are some updates of what stewardship and programmatic offerings will be this summer: Thanks to grants from the National Wilderness Stewardship Alliance and…
In early March of 2020, Stewardship Director Alex Ertaud sat down with Adam Barnett, the Inyo National Forest’s Assistant Public Services Staff Officer. This conversation dives deep into the ins and outs of the two organization’s working relationship. It is always a pleasure to chat with Adam and I hope you enjoy! Alex Ertaud, Stewardship Director: I am here with Adam Barnett, of the Forest Service. Thank you for sitting down with me Adam. Just to start things off, when was the first time you came to the Eastern Sierra? And I guess in this case, the Inyo National Forest….
DEATH VALLEY, CA –Recently, volunteers from the Friends of the Inyo and National Park Service staff spent a weekend attempting to remove tire tracks from the Racetrack playa in Death Valley National Park. Nineteen people used garden tools and 750 gallons of water to attempt to restore 512 feet of tire tracks. The tire tracks were very visible and this effort helps to eliminate the tire track depressions and bring back the natural polygon shapes on the playa. By the conclusion of the project, the geometric patterns could be seen beginning to reform. “The Racetrack is a unique geologic oddity found within Death Valley,” stated Superintendent Mike…
Thank you volunteers for helping Friends of the Inyo make a difference Friends of the Inyo volunteer projects in 2019 engaged 457 volunteers for 1,316 hours of work on our Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands. We removed a total of 1,615 pounds of trash, restored 52 improper fire rings, cleaned trash from 24 campsites, and restored 40 illegal campsites. Thank you to all of our public lands volunteers, We couldn’t do our important work without you!
The last two times I volunteered for Friends of the Inyo on backcountry stewardship projects, I unearthed a strong sense of purpose and a deep connection with nature. This time, however, I felt myself making a connection with a rich past….
Summer Stewardship Season Goes Out with a Bang on National Public Lands Day Mother nature sent our stewardship events calendar out in style with moody skies and a clear indication that summer was indeed over. Saturday, September 28th was National Public Lands Day, and we celebrated with two stewardship events. We partnered with the Bodie Hills Conservation Partnership and the Bureau of Land Management to rehabilitate some fencing to let-down fencing that is friendlier to sage grouse, deer, and pronghorn antelope. Further south on the 395, our Stewardship Crew partnered with the Inyo National Forest, the Eastern Sierra 4WD Club,…
Though the cliché is the enemy of originality, they often develop because there are nuggets of truth in there. In this case, “Time flies when you’re having fun,” has proven to be the apt descriptor of our summer season of stewardship thus far. We kicked things off at the 10th Annual June Lake Trails Day, where 65 volunteers came out to take care of the Rush Creek & Parker Bench Trails, and clean up around Gull and June Lakes. What a great day! The next weekend, we partnered with the Sierra Eastside Mountain Bike Association (SEMBA) to brush the Lower…