Don’t miss your chance to participate in the eleventh annual Mono Basin Bird Chautauqua on June 15–17. Join us for three full days of fascinating field trips, workshops, and presentations exploring the natural wonders of the Mono Basin. This family-friendly event is open to everyone, and kids under age 12 attend for free.

Wilson's Phalaropes on the wing at South Tufa. Photo courtesy of Marie Read.

Registration opens Sunday, April 15th bright and early at 6:30am so be sure to mark your calendar with that important date. We recommend you take the time to identify your first and (more…)

Calling all saline lake fans…. Register now for the 2012 Great Salt Lake Issues Forum, May 10 & 11 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Great Salt Lake. Photo by Charles Uibel.

Hosted by our sister organization, Friends of Great Salt Lake, the forum will examine “Changing Conditions and the Future of Salt Lakes” this year. This year the program will include speakers from Owens (dry) Lake, the Salton Sea, the Dead Sea, and—of course—Mono (more…)

Come on out to the Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area Visitor Center next Thursday, March 22 for a fun day of sprucing up the building and grounds in preparation for season opening!

The Mono Basin Visitor Center. Photo by Arya Degenhardt.

Volunteers are needed starting at 9:00am, and the Eastern Sierra Interpretive Association will provide lunch for everyone. Wear work clothes and bring gloves if you’d prefer to do outside clean-up work. Call the Visitor Center at (760) 647-3042 with any questions. We look forward to seeing you there!

Interested in learning more about the leading water issues of today? Make sure you check out the California Water Policy Conference 21: From Water Woes to Water Wise in West Los Angeles on March 8 and 9. This conference will take place at the Westin LAX Hotel and will be two days filled with stimulating discussions and problem-solving on current water issues. Plenary speakers include (more…)

Lets talk water recycling … to be more specific, reusing wastewater to make clean drinking water, also known as indirect potable reuse. Many people may recoil or say “yuck!” to that concept, but according to a recent New York Times article, the use of reclaimed water is starting to be accepted in major cities, very slowly. Both Orange County and San Diego have established successful water recycling plants. San Diego’s plant produces a million gallons of water a day, while the plant in Orange County has the (more…)

The Mono Lake Committee is one step closer to turning on the first commercial greywater project in the Eastern Sierra. As part of the Committee’s larger storefront remodel, the new greywater system will connect the public bathroom’s sink water to the surrounding landscaping potentially saving thousands of gallons of potable water each year. The irrigation is sub-surface, and when visitors and staff wash their hands, the water will drain through dedicated plumbing to underground mulch boxes. From there it will slowly (more…)

Congratulations to friends and supporters of South Yuba River State Park—on Wednesday, February 8 it joined eight other state parks that have come off the closure list!

The South Yuba River.

Similarly to the effort that removed Mono Lake’s state park from the closure list, South Yuba River State Park’s allies collected 10,000 letters of support for the park, got the Nevada County Board of Supervisors unanimously on board, and are working on a parking fee collection strategy to bring funding to the park. Grassroots organizing, practical solutions, and making our voices heard is working—save our state parks!

In December of 2010 NASA researchers announced that they had found bacteria in Mono Lake that could subsist on arsenic instead of phosphorus. The study prompted much discussion on the web and in the scientific community, and raised welcome awareness for Mono Lake’s unique and exciting ecosystem as well as the ongoing research in the area.

Recently, Nature published the news that a team of researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada have been trying to reproduce the results of the original study without success.

Since the January 20 post the web has been buzzing with fresh debate about the original study, the refutation of it, and the further research that is surely to come. Those of us at the shores of Mono Lake look forward to hearing and reading about GFAJ-1 for a long time. And the bottom line? Mono Lake—the source of the bacteria in question—is definitely worth protecting for many, many reasons, including the fact that there is value in looking deeper into research like this.

Have you heard? Mono Lake is for the birds … the Mono Basin Bird Chautauqua planning team is hard at work putting together the eleventh annual weekend. Make sure June 15–17, 2012 is marked on your calendar.

Wilson's Phalaropes in flight at South Tufa. Photo courtesy of Marie Read.

Check out the recent updates to the website, and stay tuned as we add this year’s program and schedule. Remember to get up early to register on Sunday, April 15 since spaces fill so quickly.

Mono Lake Committee Outdoor Experiences Manager Santiago Escruceria gives everyone a nickname. Beyer High School senior Tom Rydquist’s was “Mr. Muffin.”

In December 2011 the California Museum and Comcast announced that Rydquist won the Northern California Grand Prize in their Dreamers Challenge for a video he produced. His video “Funding the American Dream: Helping California Lead the Way in Water Reclamation”  suggests a fee on sewage utilities to create water recycling programs. You can see Rydquist’s video here.

Beyer High School senior Tom Rydquist, left, monitoring water quality at Mono Lake with his classmates. Photo by Santiago Escruceria.

Along with fellow Beyer students from Modesto and their teacher Kay Myers, Mr. Muffin (more…)