At age 80, USFS cabin is still in shape, and it’s historic

http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090509/NEWS0107/905090445/1006/NEWS01&nav_category=NEWS01

The small log cabin near Elk Lake has been a summer base for U.S. Forest Service guards and their families and, more recently, an interpretive center for visitors.
And now, 80 years after it was built, the Deschutes National Forest’s Elk Lake Guard Station has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building, located about 30 miles west of Bend off Cascade Lakes Highway, was added to the list because of the role it played in local events, said David Bogan, communications coordinator for the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office. The building’s application for the National Register notes that the guard station helped make the area a center for recreation.

"Paul Claeyssens says it in a nutshell...Historic buildings listed on the National Register still need a purpose, just like people, in order to survive. It sounds like the old Elk Lake Guard Station continues to have a purpose, long after its use as a guard station is long gone."--aggie castronuevo

Stimulus to help NPS

http://www.inyoregister.com/content/view/120871/1/


Obama stimulus bucks headed for Death Valley

Friday, 08 May 2009
By Mike BodineRegister Staff5-7-2009
National parks are getting a chunk of President Barack Obama’s Economic Stimulus money. Congress has approved more than $900 million in stimulus funding to make long-overdue improvements to infrastructure at more than 500 parks, including Inyo County’s own Death Valley National Park.It’s been just a little over two months since Obama signed the bill into law on Feb. 16, and already park officials are deciding where to spend the cash.However, the decision will not be very difficult to make, as the list of items in need of repair or upkeep is long after years of inadequate funding. Terry Baldino, Death Valley Park’s public information officer, said Tuesday that all national parks have had insufficient funding to keep up with maintenance for years, and so the money will go to repairing necessities such as roads and employee housing.

"It's good to see that money is finally getting to programs that have suffered in recent years; especially those that preserve and protect our Heritage resources. Unlike natural resources, vestiges of our heritage are not renewable, once they have succombed to time, disrepair, and the effects of vandalism." --aggie castronuevo

COURT DECISION: OTERO MESA

http://wilderness.org/files/TWTD-NM-Otero.pdf
http://wilderness.org/content/otero-mesa-drilling-court-decision


Our victory on New Mexico's Otero Mesa this week took a turn for the pithy in the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision rejecting the Bureau of Land Management's drilling scheme for the mesa.
If you're not familiar with Otero Mesa, it occupies a blank spot on the map between Las Cruces and Carlsbad, and, at 1.2 million acres, it's the largest untouched Chihuahuan Desert grassland found anywhere in the United States.

http://www.alamogordonews.com/ci_11883566

"Lincoln Forest to benefit from recovery package funding

WASHINGTON ­ U.S. Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall said the Forest Service will soon release nearly $5 million in federal funding for two projects aimed at improving national forests in New Mexico.
Congress set aside $650 million in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to improve national forest lands and another $500 million for wild fire management.
The U.S. Forest Service has approved two projects, one in the Santa Fe National Forest and another in the Lincoln National Forest. "

An Ancient Place to Wonder about our Survival

'It’s a fairly pristine desert landscape. When former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt recommended national monument status for the area to President Clinton, he said, “this landscape offers us a chance to study an entire culture, one that may have been as rich and diverse as the one we have today.” He argued that archaeological sites should not just be protected individually, “but rather as part of a landscape or ‘anthropological ecosystem.’”'

He said, “The real science on these landscapes doesn’t come out of digging out a room and extracting a few pots. The real discoveries today come from asking the deeper question of ‘How did communities live in spiritual and physical equilibrium with the landscape?’”

...a question I often ask; a question relevant for the past, as well as for the present. Native Americans seem to have lived as part of the landscape, as part of the entire universe. They did not command control over the earth, rather they showed immense respect for the environment that supported them through their lives. The footprint left by prehistoric and modern Native American peoples is slight compared to that being created by non-natives of today. Compare the pueblo dwellings with the concrete and skyscrapers of modern American urban environs.

http://www.archaeologynews.org/Link.asp?ID=306241