A Varied Thrush spotted in Lee Vining in December 2009. Photo by Justin Hite.

As the holiday season approaches it’s nearly time for a wonderful winter tradition—Audubon Christmas Bird Counts. Join in on one of these local counts:

• Mono Basin—Tuesday, December 27. Contact: Kristie Nelson
• Yosemite National Park—Sunday, December 18. Contact: Sarah Stock
• Bishop—Saturday, December 17. Contact: Chris Howard

Christmas Bird Counts are one of the oldest and largest citizen sicence events in the world; this year the 112th annual counts will take place. The results (more…)

Researcher Sean Boyd from the Pacific Wildlife Research Centre in British Columbia spent the past few weeks diligently counting Eared Grebes on Mono Lake from over 425 photos taken this fall. Before going completely bug-eyed, Boyd was able to get a total count of Eared Grebes on Mono Lake for October 14, 2011 (the day volunteer Lighthawk pilot Geoff Pope and photographer Rick Kattelman did the aerial survey). Boyd was able to calculate the final number of grebes by taking the initial count from the photos, converting that number into a density (#/km^2), adjusting it for scale (which we created through three white X markers that were 50 meters apart near the lake shore), and used the current lake surface area to find the final count.  The final count was 886,500 +/-4.4% Standard Error.

The annual aerial Eared Grebe survey has been happening with the exception of a few years, for the past decade. See the listing of past year’s grebe counts here.

A cheery group of Mono Lake friends braved the December cold at Old Marina to celebrate the removal of Mono Lake’s state park from the closure list.

Mono Lake friends celebrated with cake and many toasts to the next 30 years for the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve.

State Park staff, Bodie Foundation board members, Mono Lake Committee staff and board members, hardworking volunteers, (more…)

On Thursday, December 1, California State Parks announced that the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve is off the closure list—wonderful and long-awaited news!

Smartphones are key to working during a power outage: Arya found the State Parks' press release on her phone as Bartshe and Geoff work on theirs in the background.

In a strange twist of fate, we got the call via cell phone since we had lost power along with much of the Eastern Sierra a few hours before. Relying on the few smartphones in the office, (more…)

Yesterday California State Parks announced in a press release that the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve has been removed from the closure list—exciting and long-awaited news! Major and local news outlets are covering the story:

Los Angeles Times: Mono Lake taken off state park closure list

San Francisco Chronicle: Bodie Foundation saves Mono Lake from closure list

Mammoth Times: Mono Lake State Park is off the closure list

After a six month grassroots public effort, the world-renowned state park at Mono Lake—the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve—has been removed from California’s 70-park closure list.

This great news means that the Reserve will remain open to the public, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors to the local economy, providing public access to Mono Lake, offering educational programs, and assuring ongoing public management and stewardship for Mono Lake’s unique ecosystem.

The December 1 announcement by California State Parks comes just in time for next year’s 30^th anniversary of the park, which was created in 1982. For Mono Lake friends and supporters this is certainly a moment to be thankful for, and cause for celebration.

“This is the best Christmas present we could ever wish for. The state park is critical to keeping Mono Lake protected for future generations,” said Sally Gaines, Mono Lake Committee Board Chair. “It’s great news that creative solutions will keep it open.”

Mono Lake leaves the closure list thanks to a broad public effort to keep the Mono Lake Reserve open combined with a new parking fee revenue solution. The news also puts to rest questions raised by many including the Mono Lake Committee about how Mono Lake was selected for the closure list in the first place.

Mono Lake Committee members and Mono Lake fans near and far wrote letters and signed locally-placed petitions all summer, opposing closure and offering possible solutions. Over 4,000 letters and petition signatures were hand-delivered to Governor Jerry Brown, Parks Director Ruth Coleman, Mono County’s State Assemblymember Kristin Olsen, and State Senator Ted Gaines.

Robert Hanna, active Mono Lake champion and great-great-grandson of John Muir, was bouncing off the walls with excitement. “Behind every great accomplishment you’ll find togetherness, and it was a pleasure to work alongside everyone who answered the call to protect Mono Lake. This is our legacy—we must all stand up and find solutions to protect the places we love.”

Important support for keeping the reserve open as a critical piece of the local tourism-based economy came from the Mono County Board of Supervisors, the Mono County Film & Tourism Commission, and the Mammoth Lakes Town Council.

Rusty Gregory, CEO of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, commented, “I applaud California State Parks for deciding to keep the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve open and operating. This decision is a win-win for the environment and the economy. The park’s quarter million visitors can now continue to support the fragile rural economies of our adjacent communities as they enjoy convenient access to the natural wonders of Mono Lake.”

The California State Parks agency, with its highly trained staff and depth of experience, will continue to manage and protect the sovereign state lands and waters of the Mono Lake Reserve sustainably for public enjoyment. A parking fee solution will address the agency’s concerns about the current lack of user fee revenue at the Mono Lake Reserve. The modest parking fee will be put into place at the state’s major west shore visitation site—Old Marina—and all funds collected will be used to offset operating expenses at the Mono Lake Reserve. Given the low cost and high efficiency of the Reserve operation, adding a user fee to the already strong level of volunteer and community support means it is possible to substantially strengthen the foundation of the Reserve and keep it open and operating.

Mono Lake is home to many partnerships, and the Mono Lake Committee commends the Bodie Foundation for stepping forward to operate the new fee collection system. The Bodie Foundation’s special relationship with California State Parks as a non-profit cooperating association allows it to operate park-based programs such as the museum and bookstore at Bodie State  Historic Park. At Mono Lake, that makes it the perfect organization to handle the collection and transfer of fees directly to Mono Lake Reserve operations.

State Assemblymember Kristin Olsen said, “I’m thrilled that the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve has successfully been removed from the state’s park closure list. Mono Lake is an integral part of Mono County’s economy, and is a world-renowned tourist destination. Finding creative solutions through public-private partnerships is key to ensuring that Californians continue to have access to state parks for many years to come. I congratulate the community members who have worked hard and creatively to keep Mono Lake open.”

With Mono Lake off the state park closure list, now is a perfect time to make plans to visit the lake’s unique tufa towers and scenic views, either in the winter or with the migratory birds next summer. Mono Lake visitor resources can be found at the Mono Lake Committee website www.monolake.org and for Mono County information, visit www.monocounty.org.

California’s budget woes played out over the summer as word of the planned closure of 70 state parks, including Mono Lake and adjacent shoreline lands that compose the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve, spread far and wide. The Mono Lake Committee has been hard at work seeking solutions to change the state’s plan. The chance of success is looking very good, which is rewarding given the common closure responses we heard at Mono Lake over the summer: “no way,” “how can we stop this,” and “what are they thinking?”

Campers with a tufa fire, 1970s. When you invite 250,000 people to visit your favorite lake, visitor management experts like state park rangers are a critical asset. When the first state park rangers arrived in 1982 tourists camped on the shoreline, made campfires in tufa, and carted whole tufa towers away in their cars to decorate their front lawns. Mono Lake Committee archive photo.

Indeed, it remains unclear exactly what the thinking was behind the closure list released on May 13, 2011. The Committee submitted a public records request the next day, seeking the analysis (more…)

It’s that time of year again, time for the Eared Grebe (Podiceps nigricollis) count at Mono Lake. Most visitors in the Mono Basin can easily say that they have seen a lot of birds at the County Park and Old Marina sites, but how many grebes are there exactly? That’s where photographer Rick Kattelmann, volunteer Lighthawk pilot Geoff Pope, and researcher Sean Boyd come into the picture.

What look like tiny white specks in a black abyss are actually Eared Grebes on the surface of Mono Lake. There are 76 dots in this photo. Photo by Rick Kattelmann.

Since the mid-1990s aerial photographs have been taken of the lake surface. These surveys of the Eared Grebe populations are (more…)

Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep. Photo by Bartshe Miller.

As head of the California Department of Fish & Game’s Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Recovery Program, Dr. Tom Stephenson has a job which takes him all over the range, from Mt. Langley to Dunderberg Peak. On Wednesday, August 31, it brought him to the Mono Lake Committee’s Theater & Gallery, where he gave a presentation as part of our “Refreshments with Refreshing ‘Ologists” summer lecture series.

Bighorn sheep are the only federally-listed endangered species in Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks, and the only federally-listed endangered mammal on the Inyo National Forest. The species has been (more…)

Researcher Sarah Dalrymple of UC Davis spoke at the Mono Lake Committee on Wednesday, August 4 as part of our “Refreshments with Refreshing ‘Ologists” lecture series. Dalrymple is a PhD candidate in biology whose work centers in the Jeffrey pine forest just south of the Mono Basin on the Deadman Plateau.

If you’ve ever taken a stroll in the woods near Obsidian Dome or Wilson Butte, you may have noticed distinct rings around certain pine trees where the ground has been cleared of needle litter. Intrigued by this phenomenon, Dalrymple did some preliminary investigation and discovered a strong correlation between the presence of these cleared rings and the survival of trees during a forest fire. In one recently-burned area, trees with clearings around their trunks had a 60% reduction in mortality compared to trees without clearings. Dalrymple set out to determine what creates and maintains these clearings and what role they play in the fire cycle of the forest.

The cleared area around a Jeffrey pine. Photo courtesy of Sarah Dalrymple.

First, Dalrymple compared clearings in forests that had and had not experienced a recent regime of prescribed burns. She found (more…)