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…
restoration
In 2007, a massive fire flared up along Oak Creek, just north of Independence in the southern Owens Valley. A catastrophic flood then scoured the creek in 2008, destroying much of the remaining riparian vegetation. Nearly a decade later, the creek is still barely vegetated and unprotected from future floods. We joined the Fort Independence Tribe, the California Native Plants Society, and the Inyo National Forest on December 14 to take a small step toward restoring Oak Creek’s streamside forest. With a troop of 20 volunteers, we worked until sundown and put over 250 locally grown native plants in the…
We had a great day out at Smokey Bear Flat working with Girl Scout troops from Mammoth. We spent the morning using native materials to restore areas where vehicles had driven off-road — kind of like an ecological art project!