Alabama Gates 2024 is a weekend of FREE community events in Lone Pine, California, November 15 – 17, 2024, commemorating the centennial of the Alabama Gates Occupation. This significant historical event occurred when the people of Owens Valley non-violently seized the Los Angeles Aqueduct’s control gates just north of Lone Pine on November 16, 1924, diverting the entire flow of the aqueduct into the historic Owens River channel in protest of the City of Los Angeles’ aggressive land acquisition and water harvesting activities within the valley that began with the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. The 1924…
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Join Friends of the Inyo, Earthworks, and Community Environmental Advocates, for a virtual Mining Threats in the Sierra Nevada webinar, hosted by the Sierra Nevada Alliance. California and specifically the Sierra Nevada region is both an old and new extractive frontier, with hotspots of environmental injustice. Abandoned gold rush era mines have left a toxic legacy that continues to impact communities and ecosystems. Recently, high gold prices have sparked renewed interest in exploration for open pit mines, threatening biologically diverse and sacred landscapes from the Sierras to the desert. Meanwhile, rising demand for electric vehicles is driving a “white gold…
This Spring, we have a trio of volunteer opportunities in our desert and high-desert ecosystems. Saturday, March 23, 2019 – Death Valley National Park Badwater Basin Effacement Volunteer Project – Our partners at Death Valley National Park are looking for enthusiastic volunteers for a day of restoring a playa in the Badwater Basin, treating OHV trespass. Space is limited to twelve people, so please RSVP to me at alex@friendsoftheinyo.org and I will send you the full details. Sunday, March 24, 2019 – Flash Foxy Women’s Climbing Festival Stewardship Day – Join us and partners as we send off the Women’s Climbing Festival…
Below is an excerpt from Julia’s Jeffrey Pine Journal article. Pick up a copy of our Spring JPJ this April for more stories from the Racetrack Project. My first sight of Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa was like a glimpse of another planet. The ancient lakebed was the color of tahini, spread out smooth and flat between jagged desert peaks. At one end, the startling black rock pillars known as the Grandstand caught the eye like a pin on a map. At the other, the famous “racing rocks” lay scattered, each sitting in the furrow it had etched as a mysterious…
***New Development*** The Inyo County Board of Supervisors will be discussing their draft letter to the BLM regarding the re-opening of the DRECP. The Board is currently scheduled to discuss the topic on March 20, 2018 at their Board of Supervisors meeting. Here are some talking points to help you prepare for the meeting: 1. Thank the Board for its stance taken at the February 27 meeting to oppose re-opening the DRECP. 2. Remind them that they wanted to insure that their letter sent a clear signal and not mixed messages, and the current letter does not clearly oppose re-opening. The draft’s…