Soil carbon sequestration study begins

Public lands as carbon sinks ?

We’ve spoken of the potential for our public lands to act as carbon sinks.

When you think about public lands and the value that these places have to serve our efforts to curb global climate change I’d like you to consider a new idea that is as old as dirt ~ passive restoration. Yes, I’m suggesting that part of the answer might be to remove our footprint on those places we can – and in doing so – let the land catch it’s breath.

Just as trees draw CO2 out of the atmosphere, so does the life of soil and other healthy plant communities.  In fact, even in places as arid as the Mojave desert, researchers have found that healthy, undisturbed living-soils may draw as much carbon out of the atmosphere as temperate forests !  Can you imagine ? Resting the land from soil disturbing activities that degrade living-soils and remove vegetation, precluding the living carbon from being recycled back into the soil, ~ preserving our natural environmental heritage ~ may actually be an important strategy in mitigating climate change – a way to actually and directly take carbon out of the atmosphere.

Perhaps these ideas will be considered in the study recently announced concerning sagebrush communities :

Soil carbon sequestration study begins – Casper Star Tribune

Scientists believe increasing the carbon in soils — a process known as soil carbon sequestration — may help reduce the rise of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere that contribute to global warming

Renewable energy sparks a probe of a modern-day land rush

New technology, same uninhibited ambition

You had better watch this, now and from now on.  The land grabbers are on the loose again and they can be stopped only as they were before, by the effective marshaling of public opinion.  Your property is in danger of being alienated, your interests and those of your children are being threatened[…]

Bernard DeVoto
Two-Gun Desmond is Back ~ 1951

They say history repeats itself.  At nearly every point in the history of western colonization there was an industry that was all the uproar among the well-intentioned.  Europeans moved West and trapped away the beaver, mined, laid claim to the land with homestead, sheep and cattle – don’t forget the logging.  That was no problem, the resource was infinite back then.  We did the impossible in harnessing rivers with dams and harvesting its inertia as our own, bringing power to cities and agricultural production to a western arid landscape that would not support such dense human habitation otherwise.  Hydroelectric dams were supposed to be the next perfect, “clean” source of power – remember ?

At each point in this history, calls for restraint, even timid caution against the unforeseeable consequences of the next great, faultless enterprise were brushed aside – dismissed as ‘nay-saying’ and the personalities behind the calls were labeled enemies of progress by even the most forward thinking and well-intentioned voices leading the charge.  The allure of human ambition has always enjoyed more volume than the practice of restraint.  ‘The land is infinite’ ~  ‘we’ve found the perfect technology, the perfect innovation’ ~ ‘we just need to make sure there’s good housekeeping’ ~ ‘you can’t stop progess’.

But, unfortunately – it seems to me, depending on how one looks at it, “progress” keeps happening over and over again in the same way as before.

Renewable energy sparks a probe of a modern-day land rush – The Los Angeles Times

A rush to stake claims for renewable energy projects in the California desert has triggered a federal investigation and prompted calls for reforms to prevent public lands from being exposed to private profiteering and environmental degradation.

Tortoise Goes to Court: Groups File Lawsuit Against Feds for Failing to Answer Request for Federal Protection

For immediate release – June 1, 2009

Contacts:
Nicole Rosmarino, Ph.D., WildEarth Guardians, 505-699-7404
Michael Connor, Ph.D., Western Watersheds Project, 818-345-0425

Desert Tortoise, Photo © Dr. Michael J. Connor

Arizona—June 1. Today, Western Watersheds Project and WildEarth Guardians filed suit in federal court in Arizona against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) over the agency’s failure to decide whether it will consider listing the Sonoran desert tortoise population under the Endangered Species Act. An answer to the groups’ petition requesting federal protection of the Sonoran desert tortoise was due in January.

The petition shows that Sonoran desert tortoises have declined by 51 percent since 1987, or about 3.5 percent annually, in monitored areas throughout the animal’s range in Arizona. The groups alerted the Obama administration about the urgency of the Sonoran desert tortoise’s situation in January, but the administration has failed to act on behalf of the beleaguered tortoise.

“We are very disappointed that the Obama administration has turned a blind eye to the tortoise’s unfortunate race toward extinction,” stated Dr. Nicole Rosmarino of WildEarth Guardians.

Oregon deserves another bowl of Wilderness

More wilderness, please.  Oregon still lags behind other Northwest states. Register-Guard.

Yes! but no cow Wilderness, please!

Grizzlies flunk test to open new kind of camp cooler

Breaking and entering experts at West Yellowstone Wolf and Grizzly Discovery Center can’t open (or smash) new coolers-

Although the problem solving can be tough for the bears at the Discovery Center, they usually manage to pry open, squash, or mangle a food container given them, but certain coolers made by Yeti Coolers and by Engel USA have proven to be bear proof.

Story: Grizzly Bear-Tested Camping Coolers Approved By Government. By Susan Gallagher. Huffington Post. AP