A great day at work on the Preserve (Pics included)

Nice Pics, THANKS For Sharing!

 

We volunteered for a grassland audit in the Chicago Wilderness region a couple years back as well for Audubon. The data are used for base line info and then also to draw upon for future land management and restoration policy. If I remember correctly they were allowing data access to public entities for this purpose as well. Not surprisingly, the results were not very good.

It would have been nice if Audubon had provided for subsequent status reports on how this data has affected the land management, but we haven't heard a thing.

 

It's amazing how some incidents become tipping points in our lives. I only hope everyone reaches their own understanding that global warming is real, we are having an effect on it, species are dieing because of our actions, and that we can actually work to stop all this before it is too late. For me it was, of all things, my spiny friends. Sure, as a "child of the '60's" I believed in ecological awareness, but I've become so much more aware as I've gotten older. We may not be the cause of the loss of the horned lizard from the South-Central US, or we may (the science is still unclear).

I bought a Prius to save money commuting to work. It and this forum have taught me there is more to it than just money, just as the horny toad taught me we have to invest in the future of our planet NOW!

So, thank YOU for sharing your pics and stories. I miss the Tallgrass Prairie of north-central Oklahoma now that I'm on the Front Range. But here we have Black Tail Prairie Dogs, another cause of mine since the days we had one as a "pet" at the US Army Corps of Engineers. But that's another story...

 

F8L:
Where are you working at? That looks like Stone Lake Preserve??

Back in college I did volunteer work for the Nature Conservancy near Twin Cities Road with Oak Trees among other things. Our class did a bunch of statistical analysis on the best survival rates for fresh oak tree plantings; the end results was a two foot by two foot weed block with a plastic tube over the sapling . Now you see these all over the Sacramento region along the 50 corridor.

 

Due to finacial reasons, I went to Sacramento State. Graduated in 1994 with a special major BS in Environmental Science, also have a minor in Geology. In process of trying to get hired by the SWRCB or RWQCB but state hiring freeze is slowing this down. Their are openings, but most are being filled by SROA (people given their layoff notices back in Feb/march). I work in the private sector of engineering/geology dealing with a mydrid of groundwater contaminants TCE, PCE, PCBs, MtBE.