Sagehen Speaker's new book

Last year, Sagehen researcher Pam Ronald spoke at the Sagehen Summer Speaker Series about genetic engineering in agriculture. "Tomorrow's Table", her new book on the merging of organic agriculture & genetic engineering is now available.

Read the author's blog here.
Order the book here.

Blue Grouse attack!

Some friends on a recent ski tour had to deal with a cranky male Blue Grouse that attacked their legs & chased them out of his territory. I had no idea they were so aggressive!

Here's a pic of the belligerent bird.

Snowcat arrives!

After 7 long years of trying, Sagehen finally has a bladed snowcat again--and it's a beaut! Thank you, thank you, thank you to our Faculty Director, Jim Kirchner.

At 275 horsepower, it can really move snow. Jeff's used it to clear 6' of snow off our 2-miles of access road, & the sun has now dried it out so it's drivable again. He's also stripped the huge piles away from the edges of our buildings, allowing the roofs to slide & taking pressure off the walls.

Great learning tool.

I just found a fantastic learning tool for math & science: Explore Learning provides really interesting & illuminating on-line math & science simulations for grade school kids. There are hundreds of modules, ranging from algebra to biology.

There's an intro video on the homepage.

Get automatic notifications of new blog posts.

This is a great new service: instead of having to remember to check our site regularly, you can now receive an e-mail whenever "Sagehen News" [& your other favorite blogs] gets a new post added.

Go to Blogarithm & add our URL to start getting notified about new posts.

Sagehen Researcher photographs rare animal in the Tahoe National Forest.

Dear Agency Friends and Research Colleagues,

It is with a mixture of joy, and some trepidation, that I share the attached photograph and solicit your help in managing the circumstances it may precipitate.

The previous evidence of this species in California, by method other than sightings, dates back to the 1930s. The photograph was taken on the Tahoe National Forest during a marten research project managed by a graduate student named Katie Moriarty. It has been reviewed by Jeff Copeland, of the Rocky Mountain Research Station (a wolverine expert) who said that he "can't convert it into anything else" and that "it looks like the real deal".

It was photographed at one of a large arrays of cameras that are continuing to operate in the vicinity thru the end of March, at least. New effort will be dedicated to the collection of genetic information, to try to confirm the population of origin, and to expanding camera surveys.

Your thoughts and suggestions for next steps are welcome.

Bill Zielinsky

More info & updates about the sighting.

ARC Alumni produces radio program.

Sagehen ARC graduate Tanya Cabrera participated in the KVMR Youth Voices radio program in 2007, producing this segment on Sagehen's ARC program.

More info about the "Youth Voices" program available here.

More digging.

The break in the weather is giving us a chance to catch up with the digging. Which is a good thing since we almost lost the Leopold cabin during the storm.

Here are some pics of Jeff digging its roof off for the last time [hopefully].

And a couple shots of rafters. First is a normal one, resting nicely on the wall-top plate.

The other shot shows several rafters that slipped off the wall when the heavy load bulged the walls out. One of them even broke in half. Next stop: pancake.

Books by Sagehen researchers on Amazon.com

Here's a list of some publications available on Amazon.com about the Sagehen Basin &/or written by Sagehen researchers.

Takes a little while to load the widget--hang tight!

Local mystery solved.

This news from our winter pine marten researcher, Katie Moriarty:

Well, my curiosity is more settled and I wanted to share the wealth. I've been seeing what I thought were a lot of kill sites without any sign of struggle or fur... As it turns out, red pee in snowshoe hares (and other lagomorphs) is fairly common. Never had a rabbit as a kid, never knew...

Changes in urine color in hares seems to be linked to ingestion of conifer needles. The citric acid created contains porphyrins, which are some sort of circular carbon chain, and through digestion these combine to form heme (iron compound). Another source stated this is a symptom of excess calcium. It seems that the phenomena of red urine is temporary, lasting only a few days and does not occur uniformly across rabbits with the same diet.

Another website (probably unreliable) stated that blue urine in hares was caused by a diet of Rhamnus cathartica, European or cathartic buckthorn. The urine of domestic buckthorn eaters is initially yellow or brown, but within ten minutes of exposure to sunlight turns bright blue in the snow or on paper.

I never knew that urine naturally changed colors. I also thought it was curious that there could be photosynthetic blue urine (maybe) of all things.

Hope you have an enlightened day...

Peace, katie