Kingston Range

Mojave yucca and Creosote bush silhouetted against a backdrop of early dawn light and the Kingston Range in northern Mojave Desert.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mowing Vegetation as Mitigation: Trump Administration Practice Goes Unchallenged

Image
The Trump administration is again touting the practice of mowing thousands of acres of desert vegetation as environmentally-responsible, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.  The draft environmental review of the Yellow Pine Solar project in southern Nevada claims that vegetation mowing - as opposed to bulldozing - will yield positive outcomes that are highly doubtful.   This positive framing of the construction practice misleads the public and decisionmakers and ignores decades of scientific research regarding the impacts of mechanized disturbance on desert wildlands.  According to the draft environmental review: "Mowing is becoming the standard on large site-type ROWs to prevent permanent impairment of public lands (as mandated by FLPMA) and in lieu of off-site mitigation... Mowing methods are designed to help preserve soils, biological soil crusts, soil seed banks, native perennial vegetation diversity and structure, and cacti and yucca species, and t...
Read more

We Can Do This: Ending Fossil Fuels and Saving Wildlands

Image
As we gather to demand bold action to end fossil fuels, we can also ensure that wildlands no longer have to shoulder the sacrifice for our consumption of electricity.  Renewable energy technology is extremely flexible and scalable, which means that we can replace fossil fuels without replacing wildlife habitat. A Million Rooftops!: Even with relatively tame policy incentives, California was able to install over 8,240 megawatts of rooftop solar .  That is clean energy generated across over nearly 1 million rooftops.  And there is still room for plenty more!  In fact, a study found that one metropolitan area had enough rooftop solar potential to power half of the state of California.  Smart Locations for Large Projects: Through smart environmental policies, California has also guided thousands of megawatts of large-scale solar projects to already-disturbed lands .  One solar project on former agricultural land in the Central Valley could generate up...
Read more

Bird Deaths at Ivanpah Solar Project Likely Underestimated

Image
Birds with severely singed feathers are travelling over a half-mile from the center of the Ivanpah Solar project before falling to the ground, indicating that current research efforts are incapable of accounting for the full scope of project-related avian fatality.  Abengoa recently withdrew plans for a similar "power tower" project after acknowledging concerns about the technology's impact on wildlife, but also suggesting that the technology's benefits are uncertain and unreliable. Birds Dying Beyond the Reach of Research? Efforts to determine how many birds are killed by the project involve carcass surveys of only 29% of the project area and do not involve significant searches of the desert surrounding the Ivanpah Solar project's boundary.  According to the 2014-2015 Winter Report for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System Avian & Bat Monitoring Plan, (covering 21 October 2014 to 15 March 2015), seven birds with singed feathers were found far fr...
Read more