LeConte Memorial Lodge, The Sierra Club’s Home in Yosemite National Park

 

LeConte Memorial Lodge is nearing the end of its 107^th season of service to both the Sierra Club and Yosemite National Park.  We have seen an increase in visitation of nearly thirty percent for the months of May, June, and July.  This is great news because we have been able to share with our increasing number of visitors the Sierra Club message—Enjoy, Explore, and Protect the Planet.  We have distributed hundreds of Nature Journals to our visitors as well as Sierra Club tattoos and Beyond Oil window stickers, LeConte Memorial postcards and brochures, and the Sierra magazine and “Outings” brochures. 

LeConte Memorial embarked on a new project this season BEAR IN MIND taking for our focus the John Muir quote: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”  While the installation in 2010 of a Climate Change exhibit created by George Pettit, the LML Exhibition Chair, focuses heavily on the scientific underpinnings of global warming, our BEAR IN MIND project set out on a journey encouraging visitors to remember that Climate Change affects all life on our planet Earth—after all, without plants (and there are about 250,000 angiosperms which are flowering plants) life as we know it would not exist.  Plants and animals matter too when it comes to global warming just ask the Pika (Ochotona priceps) and the Sky Pilot (Polemonium eximium). 

Protecting the Owyhee Canyonlands

 The Owyhee Canyonlands fall in three states: Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada (Image: Sierra Club/Mike McCurry)

Jagged rock formations, sagebrush steppe, and strikingly colored desert characterize the Owyhee Canyonlands. Located in the southeast corner of Oregon, the area provides an outdoor experience unlike any other in the state. The whitewater of the Owyhee River system draws river runners from across the country and the remote canyons provide homes for some of the nation’s largest herds of bighorn sheep.

The Owyhee Canyonlands are a national treasure, and truly one of the most remote and beautiful places in the United States. This landscape contains one of the largest unprotected deserts in the West at the intersection of the Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada state borders. In fact, the Owyhees are home to over two million acres of the largest unprotected roadless area in the continental United States.

Crashes and Crossings: Resilient Habitats and Highway Fatalities

Hundreds of thousands of collisions occur between Utah drivers and deer, elk (pictured above) and moose each year.  (Image: USFWS/Lee Eastman) 

Two of my friends were driving home one evening when they hit a beautiful mule deer buck. The buck was thrown onto the hood of their car and his antlers went through the windshield, pinning my friend Vicky in her seat. Fortunately, she was a slim woman and the antlers penetrated the seat on either side of her. It did take several hours to get her out. She suffered a broken arm and their car was totaled.