Cold Splinters

Yes, it started on Friday, April 16th, but it goes until April 24th, so don’t miss your chance to get out to your favorite national park this week FOR FREE. That’s right, all 394 national parks are waiving their entrance fee until Sunday, so you still have one more weekend if you can’t manage a weekday trip. It’s all part of National Park Week, brought to you by the National Park Service.

Or you could stay home, pay the small fee on a weekday/weekend that’s way less crowded, and avoid the mayhem of the big parks.

NPR did a piece last week about the alarmingly dwindling gray wolf population on Isle Royale which is definitely worth reading. Isle Royale, for those unfamiliar, is a large (200+ sq. miles) island in Michigan, off the northern shore of Lake Superior near Ontario. Isle Royale boasts no roads, flying or floating its visitors in by small bush planes or via ferry. The island also only provides year round home to a very small handful of people. Less people visit Isle Royale National Park in a year than the Smokies get in a day.

Isle Royale sits 15 miles off the shore from Ontario, its location playing an important role in the island’s moose and wolf relationship. This predator-prey relationship has been studied for quite some time, virtually untouched by human interaction. The island’s location allowed moose to swim to the island, it is suspected, sometime around the turn of the 20th century. This distance does not allow other “similar” predators or prey to swim to the island, like deer or coyote. It is thought that wolves then traveled an ice bridge from Canada as soon as 60 years ago, and numbers flourished to near 50+ until recent years. Wolves tend to prey on the weakest of the moose, allowing both species to in turn grow stronger and more vital.

Recently, because of “parovirus, bitter winters, hunger and warfare between packs” the Isle Royale wolf numbers have dwindled to 15, with a suspected one or two reproducing females. If both of these females were to die without raising a healthy litter of pups, this would spell the end of the gray wolf on the island.

Cold Splinters is hoping to make the jaunt to Isle Royale later this summer. Beautiful place.

A former coworker of mine sent me this gem of a brochure in an email a couple of weeks ago. This is the 2010 (yes, 2010) brochure for Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest. I mean, come on, no matter how small of a budget any public land has, to hold onto this thing until 2010 is, well, fantastic. I think…

The MTNF covers approximately 1.5 million acres, 78,000 acres of which are Wilderness and National Scenic River area. It spans 29 counties and represents 11% of all forested land in Missouri. I’ve never been there. Have you?

Download the full brochure here. The awesome pictures don’t stop at the cover.

On February 28, Tim DeChristoper goes to trial in the state of Utah. One month prior to President Bush leaving office, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) intended to auction off thousands of acres of southern Utah wilderness to private oil and gas companies. Twenty seven year old student and environmental activist Tim DeChristoper threw a stick in the spokes, and that stick was a bidders paddle.

In their mad rush to sell the land before President Obama was sworn into office, the BLM failed to properly clear each bonded bidder, something that DeChristopher quickly understood when attending the auction. DeChristoper, intending only to protest and stir things up, realized his chance amidst the haphazard operation to stall the sale by buying as much land as possible. In the end, DeChristoper had bought over 22,000 acres of land surrounding Arches National Park, land that he never intended to pay for. The truth quickly surfaced that he bid falsely to save the land from sale, but his ploy worked. The BLM, now under the Obama administration, is still sorting out the sale.

Abbey’d be proud.

Check out this article for more info on DeChristopher, and his upcoming trial.

Being that I celebrate the entire Bill Mason catalog, figured I’d highlight this promotional mini-documentary that he did in the early eighties for the Pukaskwa National Park on the Ontario shores of Lake Superior. The Pukaskwa Park is still really young, having become a National Park in 1971 to protect the natural wonders of our northern lakes, but more specifically the Pukaskwa Pits.

The Pukaskwa Pits are small holes (1-2 meters long, and half a meter deep) dug by the ancestors of the native Ojibwa. The pits are dug in the rough, cobblestone beaches along the Superior shore. Theories on the pits purposes range from hunting blinds and seasonal food storage to spiritual sites. The park itself spans 700 square miles of thick, remote hardwoods, separated by the White River on it’s way to the world’s largest freshwater lake.

Watch Bill Mason’s take on the park over at NFB.ca.

On February 2nd, The U. S. Forest Service, with partner organizations, the National Association of State Foresters and the American Forest Foundation, announced the U.S. celebration of the official United Nations International Year of Forests 2011. The theme of the U.S. campaign is “Celebrate Forests. Celebrate Life.”

More PR blabble here. Thank you BP.

The Continental Divide Trail runs for 3,100+ miles from Mexico to Canada, along you guessed it, the Continental Divide. The Continental Divide Trail Alliance (CDTA) was formed in 1995 to aid in the completion of the trail, and help maintain the miles already blazed. In 2007, Francis Tapon round-tripped the CDT, by first hiking from Mexico to Canada, then back. The trip took him 6 months to finish, and rounded out his Triple-Crown. There is a similar mountain bike trail through the Great Divide Basin spanning from Banff, Canada, to Mexico. Check out the trailer for Ride the Divide, a documentary about the “world’s toughest mountain bike race”. Sheesh.

High on LeConte is a blog that acts as a daily journal/weather record for those who work at the LeConte Lodge, on Mt. LeConte (Elev. 6,593 ft.) in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. During the winter months, only one person at a time acts as caretaker of this snowed in lodge and set of cabins, which remain closed for the most part until spring. They keep tabs on the weather, take videos/photos for the park, and have lots of time to themselves. Sign me up.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy is looking for an experienced volunteer to carve/paint a couple signs. They’re looking for someone in or around Harpers Ferry, WV with experience making routed wooden signage for their visitors center. The signs will have several lines of text like the one pictured above. Email Laurie at the ATC if you can help ‘em out.

The Sierra Club is helping to lead a petition to establish the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) as a National Monument. This year marks 50 years since President Eisenhower signed the papers to protect Alaska’s upper-most reaches and it’s wildlife. Established in the northeastern extremes of Alaska, the ANWR holds the largest variety of flora and fauna of any reserve north of the arctic circle. Growing concerns about oil drilling in this sensitive area of our nation and the building effects of climate change are the Sierra Club’s cry for establishing this area as a new National Monument, with more restrictions on such private interests. And for good reason. Pictured above are Sierra Club Conservationists Edgar and Peggy Wayburn, who in 1980 were instrumental in the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which expanded the Arctic Refuge and effectively doubled the size of the US National Park System.