Open Space Happenings: 11.30.11

Your weekly helping of Bay Area conservation news and inspiration...

Click here to see a video, Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

 

• Partnership Preserves Livelihoods and Fish Stocks.  A lifelong fisherman, Mr. Fitz is part of a very unusual business arrangement with the Nature Conservancy, an environmental group that is trying to transform commercial fishing in the region by offering a model of how to keep the industry vital without damaging fish stocks or sensitive areas of the ocean floor. (NY Times)
• Thankful for State Parks.  This Thanksgiving, we are feeling thankful for state parks. And thankfully there has been a lot of positive park news this week. Here’s a recap.  (CA State Parks)
• Drought and rising temperatures will challenge state's farmers, experts say.  The succulent cherries and juicy ripe peaches that Californians enjoy every summer could disappear in some regions as climate change warms the cold winters that trees need to bear fruit in the spring. (Mercury News)
• The right to know what you are eating.  An unprecedented agricultural experiment is being conducted at America's dinner tables. (SF Chronicle)
• Study aims to reduce number of deer hit on freeway.  Researchers are hoping a project that includes capturing and tracking deer will reduce Interstate 280 roadkill along the Peninsula. (Mercury News)
• Videophilia: Implications for Childhood Development and Conservation.  Direct experience with nature is the most highly cited influence on environmental attitude and conservation activism. Yet our research (using U. S. national park visits asa proxy) suggests a trend away from interactions with nature and a concurrent rise in theuse of electronic entertainment media. We suggest this trend represents evidence of a fundamental shift away from “the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes,” or“biophilia” (Wilson, 1984) to “videophilia.” (The Journal of Developmental Processes)
• Bay Trail, Dog Policy Talks Pick Up at Waterfront Panel Meeting.  Monday's special meeting of the Albany Waterfront Committee was the group's first session since last week's postponed decision by Berkeley Lab regarding its proposed second campus project. (Albany Patch)
• Fed grant targets transit-oriented development in the Bay Area.  Mayor Ed Lee and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were joined in San Francisco by a host of regional and federal officials this afternoon to celebrate the awarding of a nearly $5 million federal grant to plan for Bay Area projects that create affordable housing and jobs along transit corridors. (SF Chronicle)
• New food blog: Civil Eats

 

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This is the weekly Happenings, a weekly round-up of news - with some art and fun thrown in - related to the members, partners, supporters, and friends of the Open Space Council.