It's NATURE not human nature that keeps humans alive

Ed Barajas teaching kids and their parents about NATURE.. the old fashioned way! Out IN IT!

Read another article today.... another group of experts talking about Climate Change. This time this group, from the United Nations, says that protecting biodiversity is MORE important then working to stop Climate Change! Then I read that another group of scientists who have grouped together to try to get President Obama to DO something about the BP spill.. but he is setting up another panel to study BP's destruction of this huge water body ... OH, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! But the real problem may be that government types are scientifically ignorant and illiterate. And being on the edge - sort to speak - of a massive global ecological collapse (see articles above) it makes sense why smart things are not done like they are in "DeMovies" (my grandparents, who made their living in the entertainment business, used to say, "In da moo-in pit-tsures!"). Humans have always made terrible messes of their environment (read 'Collapse', by Jared Diamond, and don't forget his other book, 'Guns, Germs, and Steel') and this Discovery Center Authority is just another blip in the paleontological scheme of things.

So, why do I write about this on a blog about a California Governmental Agency... the RMC ... (as per my grandparents, again - Govern-mental) that calls itself a CONSERVANCY (HA!) and wants so badly to build a huge building, with a big parking lot (where's the 'green mentoring' on public transportation????), a giant catch basin for the gas and the (?BP?) oil from the parking lot (of COURSE it won't leak into the soils above the drinking water aquifer!)? And then they say this is all for... da children, to TEACH dem 'bout NATURE? Well, it's kinda the same. Just a smaller tragedy.

Remember, the best Shakespearean tragedies were of smart people with really large-dumb-blind spots which cause them to eventually kill themselves and their loved ones.

Ok.... now I have written this downer article ... I am going to do something positive! Let's stop this stupidity by demonstrating how to teach nature to kids and the adults.

Meet me half way! LET'S GO!

Well, it MET ALL of our expectations!

It was a..... U.S. Green Building

Council's Leadership in Energy

and environmental Design of the

HIGHEST Platinum level!!!!

(not really.... but folks followed the

orders from folks at the top... and

no one questioned their motives or

their deficiencies in their work ethics.)

Photo taken by a Department of Energy Contractor.

BIRD-A-THON! May 14 - 16 ....on your mark, get set...

GO!!!!!!!! BIRD-A-THON!!! COUNT THE BIRDS

(hint: 5 birds, 2 invertebrates on this page)

The Friends are holding their inaugural Bird-a-thon May 14 - 16 to raise money for the cause of saving the Whittier Narrows Natural Area.

The proceeds from the Birdathon, an event in which individuals or teams count birds and collect sponsorships based on the number of species they spot or in a flat amount, will go to the Friends to support their efforts to protect the natural area,including their lawsuit against the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority.

The Friends have been one of the few voices consistently defending the historic wildlife sanctuary from ill-conceived and destructive development plans being pushed by water district executives and government bureaucrats. (You can read the latest story to appear on the house of cards that is the Discovery Center here.)

But as they say, all work and no play . . . So the Birdathon is intended as a fun way to raise money and raise awareness of the variety of birds we have in Southern California and of the importance of the dwindling open space we have here.

The great thing about the Birdathon is that you can do it anywhere and for a length of time of your choosing. You might choose to do it at El Dorado Park in Long Beach or sitting in your living room watching birds come and go from your birdfeeder. You don't even have to live in LA to participate. You could do your birding anywhere on the planet and at your own pace.

More information on the Birdathon, including the participant/sponsor form, is available at http://naturalareafriends.net/how_you_can_help

LA Weekly: Lack of money, poor financial planning the 'gorilla in the room' for Discovery Center

Don't miss the LA Weekly's stunning, sobering story on the proposed San Gabriel River Discovery Center: "Pave to Save Whittier Narrows?"

"Funding — including some of the construction money — has not been secured. The Discovery Center Authority does not even have an updated estimate of future operating costs."

While reporter Tibby Rothman looks at the important environmental questions that plague the controversial project, her story focuses on the project's other ongoing green problem: lack of money.

As Rothman writes: "Ultimately, however, the gorilla in the room is not about environmental ethics but about money.

Belinda V. Faustinos, executive director of the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority, "concedes that, in fact, that funding — including some of the construction money — has not been secured. The Discovery Center Authority does not even have an updated estimate of future operating costs."

But as Rothman points out -- and as readers of this blog already know -- serious financial troubles have plagued projects too similar to the Discovery Center to ignore or brush off.

"What comes to me is that it's easy to build something [but] it's hard to sustain the operation," says Michael Feeney, executive director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, speaking of Santa Barbara's troubled Watershed Resource Center.

Rothman tells the cautionary tale of Santa Barbara's "largely shuttered" Watershed Resource Center and includes quotes from someone familiar with that troubled project:

"'What comes to me is that it's easy to build something [but] it's hard to sustain the operation,' says Michael Feeney, executive director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County.

"Feeney points to the experience of Santa Barbara's Community Environmental Council, which constructed the Watershed Resource Center at a county beach, but no longer owns it.

"'Everyone was excited to build it and there was a lot of enthusiasm at first,' he says. But the officials at the various agencies grew reluctant to devote the funds needed to keep it going."

Southern California taxpayers and ratepayers watched this same sad story play out on at least two other occasions -- first with the Center for Water Education in Hemet, then with the Children's Museum at Hansen Dam -- losing tens of millions of dollars in the process.

Feeney gets the last word in the LA Weekly article, suggesting the fatal flaw of projects that try to graft indoor, entertainment-oriented facilities onto areas where the focus is naturally (no pun intended) on outdoor recreation and education.

"Everyone goes to the beach to go to the beach," he notes. "They don't go to go inside a building."

'Fault that could eat L.A.' runs beneath Whittier Narrows location of proposed Discovery Center

Would you situate a multimillion-dollar building intended to be used by tens of thousands of people -- including children -- each year in a liquefaction zone sitting atop "the fault that could eat L.A."?

That appears to be exactly what the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority intends to do with its controversial project.

A story at latimes.com last Saturday reported that the March 16 Pico Rivera earthquake occurred on the Puente Hills thrust fault, which stretches from the Puente Hills through downtown Los Angeles and "is capable of producing a devastating, magnitude 7.5 quake."

This is the same fault, described by a USGS seismologist as "the fault that could eat L.A., that experts believe produced the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake, which killed eight people.

The latimes.com Web site also provides a good map showing the location of both quakes just about in the center of the fault area -- which turns out to be the same spot where one finds the Whittier Narrows, the location for the proposed Discovery Center.

An additional risk factor is that the Discovery Center would be located in a liquefaction zone, a high risk area in which "liquefaction occurs when an earthquake jars loosely compacted, moist earth, causing the soil to lose its stability, often becoming gelatinous."

The authority's choice to approve the Discovery Center apparently before adequately identifying and disclosing seismic hazards is part of the Friends lawsuit against the authority and the project. (You can find a link to the lawsuit here.)

I find it incredibly troubling that the authority insists on proceeding with the Discovery Center when everything seems to argue against the project, such as:

• Earthquake and flood hazards of the proposed location
• Community opposition to the project
• Likely damage to habitat and wildlife
• Inability to secure private or foundation funding

Perhaps its too broad a statement to claim that the whole authority is 100 percent behind the project. At last Monday's RMC board meeting, when the board voted to approve RMC funds to defend against the lawsuit, one board member asked if any of the other authority member agencies were contributing money.

Nope. Just the RMC.

It looks to me like three out of four of the member agencies are either unwilling or unable to pay their fair share.

So much for their "full support" of the Discovery Center.

Act locally this weekend: San Gabriel HS e-waste collection; yard sale for Montebello Hills effort

A couple of events this weekend are giving people in the San Gabriel Valley opportunities to take concrete steps to help the environment.

The San Gabriel High School PTSA is hosting a free e-waste collection 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday in the school's south parking lot at 801 S. Ramona St. in San Gabriel.

For more information, call (626) 308-2352.

And the Sierra Club's Montebello Hills Task Force is having its spring fundraiser yard sale 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The location is 337 N. 19th St. in Montebello.

The yard sale goes on, rain or shine.

RMC's 'edifice complex' siphoning millions of public dollars from conservation mission in SG Valley

Remember the movie Contact? Remember when, after the destruction of the first spaceship, billionaire S. R. Hadden reveals to scientist Eleanor Arroway that a second spaceship had been secretly built?

"First rule in government spending," Hadden says. "Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?" But such spendthrift ways don't appear ambitious enough for the RMC.

"First rule in government spending," Hadden says. "Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"

Well, it appears the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy saw Contact and decided even Hadden's spendthrift ways weren't ambitious enough: within only two or three miles of each other, the RMC wants built not one, not two, but three interpretive centers -- and all, one can assume, to be built with our tax dollars.

The Friends published a press release recently connecting the dots on the RMC's intentions. And although it might sound absurd, it's all true.

The RMC and its partners want the San Gabriel River Discovery Center at the Whittier Narrows Natural Area. They want the "Duck Farm on the San Gabriel River" less than three miles up the river from the natural area. And they want a Whittier Narrows "welcome center" on Rosemead Boulevard, again only a couple of miles from the site of the Discovery Center.

Friends board member Gloria Valladolid called the plan “indefensible and obscene” when placed in the context of the budget cuts that are eviscerating state, county and local services.

Spending $30 million on a "watershed education facility" (the Discovery Center) and who knows how much more on the Duck Farm and Whittier Narrows welcome center seems especially scandalous -- Can it get worse? you ask -- when you learn that the RMC simply gave itself $3 million for the Discovery Center without vetting the grant through its competitive grant process.

The RMC spends tens of thousands of dollars -- maybe into six figures -- developing its grant guidelines and then simply ignores those guidelines, doesn't even bother with a grant application, and writes itself a big, juicy check for what can only be considered a pet project.

It all reminds me of a line from another movie:

"It's good to be the king."