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Geos Institute helps communities build resilience in the face of climate change

Author: eric Gotfrid

As spotted owl’s numbers keep falling, some fear it’s doomed

By Warren Cornwall
The Seattle Times

Buffeted by years of logging and the invasion of a tougher owl, populations of the northern spotted owl are falling year after year, despite sweeping protections for the old-growth forests it inhabits. Now, genetic problems are adding to the reasons for worry. A just-released study found the remaining birds are so genetically similar, they are at risk of entering an “extinction vortex.”  Read more…

A new owl plan with the same old goal: more logging

By Daniel Jack Chasan
crosscut.com

What will President Obama do about the Northern Spotted Owl? He — or his opponent — will be the fifth president to deal with the threatened bird and the old-growth forests in which it lives. Many people assumed that the owl wars had ended when the Clinton administration’s Northwest Forest Plan took effect in 1994. But then, many people assumed that European wars had ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1918.  Read more…

Scientists seek protection for 26 million acres of public lands

Researchers ask Congress to vote yes on National Landscape Conservation System

Contact:

Richard S. Nauman, conservation scientist
GEOS Institute – Ashland, Oregon
(541) 482-4459, ext. 307

Christopher Lancette, communications director
The Wilderness Society
(202) 429-2692

Ashland, OR    A group of 31 independent scientists representing 14 states today endorsed a national effort to provide permanent protection for the National Landscape Conservation System — a unified system of conservation lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). All the scientists have extensive experience in field research, particularly involving Conservation System lands, and are calling on Congress to support the National Landscape Conservation System Act (HR 2016). The legislation received a yes vote today from the House Natural Resources Committee and now makes its way toward a vote by the full House.

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House Bill Would Expand Oversight of Lands

By Michael Farr, intern
The Washington Times-Fishwrap Blog

Hunters, miners and off-highway vehicle users could be affected by legislation that would limit access to more than 26 million acres of federal land, including Oregon’s Steens Mountain area, Headwater Forest Reserve in northern California and more than 4,000 miles of national trails.  Read more…

Requiem for a River

By Tim Folger
OnEarth

More than 80 years ago, seven western states hammered out a pact dividing up the water in the Colorado River. Agriculture was king and Las Vegas just a railroad watering stop in the middle of nowhere. Today, after an eight-year drought, the river is in crisis. Tim Folger traveled from its snow-fed headwaters to the feeble trickle that enters the Gulf of California, asking everyone he met: What comes next?  Read more…