CLEAR December 2014

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Petition · Reclaim the Trail System at Snake Hill Wildlife Management Area · Change.org
by Duane 24 Dec '14

24 Dec '14

https://www.change.org/p/wv-governor-earl-ray-tomblin-reclaim-the-trail-sys… Reclaim the Trail System at Snake Hill Wildlife Management Area Petitioning WV Governor Earl Ray Tomblin and 3 others The Snake Hill Wildlife Management Area (SHWMA) is an important public recreational asset enjoyed by residents of Monongalia County and visitors. It is popular with hunters and is also enjoyed year-round by outdoor recreationists including hikers, runners, cross-country skiers and birders. Three magnificent scenic views of the Cheat River canyon are achieved with a short hike. The SHWMA is managed by the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (WVDNR). A 115 acre timber project was initiated in February, 2014 to create habitat for wildlife. The logging activity has destroyed and disrupted significant parts of the established trail system, a system that is essential to the enjoyment of all permitted activities, including hunting. WV Code 20-2-1 states that it is public policy to protect the state's wildlife resources for the use and enjoyment of all citizens of the state, particularly for hunting, fishing and other diversified uses, economic contributions, and scientific and educational uses. Thus we ask the following: We ask that the WVDNR Wildlife Resources Division quickly reclaim roads and trails and that they do so in a way that promotes hiking. In particular, we request that the DNR refrain from using large (3”) gravel in reclaiming any significant section of these trails and roads, as this large gravel makes hiking extremely difficult. We request that the WVDNR relocate habitat designed for rattlesnake away from popular access points. We urge the WVDNR Wildlife Resources Division to develop channels of communication and work cooperatively in the future with local residents, recreational experts from WVU, and local nonprofit groups to develop and implement a plan for maintenance and improvement of the hiking trails at the SHWMA using local volunteer and donated labor and materials. Duane Nichols, Cell- 304-216-5535. www.FrackCheckWV.net

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URGENT: Forest Service Seeking Comments
by Duane330＠aol.com 17 Dec '14

17 Dec '14

____________________________________ From: elise(a)greenbrier.org Sent: 12/17/2014 5:49:18 P.M. Eastern Standard Time Subj: URGENT: Forest Service Seeking Comments December 17, 2014 The Forest Service is seeking comments on whether to allow surveys on a 12.6 mile segment of the George Washington National Forest for the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline in Highland and Augusta counties in Virginia. The Forest Service will use public comments and an environmental review to decide whether to issue a permit for surveys on the forest. Comments are being accepted through Friday, January 9, 2015. Comments may be submitted by: Email: comments-southern-georgewashington-jefferson(a)fs.fed.us FAX: 540-265-5145 Mail or Hand Deliver: USDA Forest Service Atlantic Coast Pipeline Survey Comments 5162 Valleypointe Parkway Roanoke, VA 24019 We are trying to focus our comments on a few main points: We are asking the Forest Service to make sure Dominion collects the kinds of data necessary to make a decision about the construction of the proposed pipeline. Now is the time to collect the data needed to document environmental conditions. Data collected should allow the Forest Service to do a comparative analysis of all three proposed pipelines that would impact the national forests in Virginia and West Virginia. Data should also reflect a correct and detailed assessment of the impact on habitat, wildlife and plants. The potential for slope failure should also be considered since certain soils and rocks are susceptible to failure - and because Dominion has a track record of slope failure and stream sedimentation at other pipelines projects. Dominion should also conduct an assessment of both water quality and quantity for all springs, wells, and streams within and adjacent to the forest and decide how water resources will be monitored if construction is approved. For more information please contact elise(a)greenbrier.org 304-647-4792 Greenbrier River Watershed Association | 120 W. Washington St. Suite #4 | Lewisburg | WV | 24901

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Growing Shiitake Mushrooms
by Duane 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

http://ahc.wvu.edu/remository/func-download/489/chk,ab4c0845afb9f103dbe65d9… Growing Shiitake Mushrooms Dave McGill, WVU Extension Specialist – Forestry WVU Extension Service Agriculture and Natural Resources Tiffany Fegel, Forest Stewardship Outreach Education Coordinator WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Design This fact sheet explains how to prepare, inoculate, and propagate shiitake mushrooms. About Shiitake Cultivation Shiitake mushrooms are part of the shiitake fungus, a species that consumes wood for energy. Cultivating shiitake mushrooms (Lentinula edodes) can be an integral part of forest farming. These gourmet mushrooms are a non-timber forest product that can be grown in the understory of woodlands as an added money-maker resource or in a backyard for personal use. See the link above for the details ......

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Successful tree planting
by Duane 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL TREE PLANTING BY DAN MAGILL Well it is the Autumn Season again with winter just around the corner and now is a good time to start planning woodland improvement activities such as planting trees in the upcoming Spring Season. Although this may seem too far ahead of time to get things rolling for Spring-time tree planting, there are several steps to accomplish successful tree planting, growth, and survival. Choosing the right site in woodlands or fields is important because different tree species require distinct site conditions like aspect, soil type and moisture, shade and sunlight conditions, terrain (bottom land, ridge-top, stream-sides) etc. Conducting a soil test for type, pH, moisture and nutrient levels is also one of the most crucial activities that should be conducted to insure successful tree planting, growth, and survival. Additionally, newly planted trees will need to be protected from damage from deer and rabbit browsing, and even bears that will often break off the trees either from curiosity or the bears are trying to get food such as nuts or fruits, or trying to get insects from the tree roots. It is likewise a good idea to order trees well ahead of time such as in autumn to insure the desired tree species to plant can be obtained for the Spring-time planting season. In WV, the Clements State Tree Nursery is currently taking tree orders for the autumn 2014 or spring-time 2015 planting season and the online store-front at:http://www.wvcommerce.org/ClementsNursery, allows customers to shop 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Deliveries start the week of Thanksgiving. The Clements State Tree Nursery can also be reached at 304-675-1820 Duane Nichols, www.FrackCheckWV.net

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'Bat-nav' system enables three-dimensional manoeuvres : Nature News & Comment
by Duane 04 Dec '14

04 Dec '14

http://www.nature.com/news/bat-nav-system-enables-three-dimensional-manoeuv… 'Bat-nav' system enables three-dimensional manoeuvres The brains of bats have a neuronal 'compass' that enables them to navigate in three dimensions. The discovery, published in Nature on 3 December, explains the long-standing mystery of how bats — and perhaps other mammals such as monkeys, which do not fly but swing between branches — manage to orient themselves in the air as well as on the ground. The ‘bat-nav’ system is “surprising — but also surprising in its beauty”, says May-Britt Moser, a neuroscientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, who shared this year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of a two-dimensional navigation system in the brains of rats. Computational neuroscientist Andreas Herz, from the University of Munich in Germany, adds that the simple elegance of the neural coding that makes up the compass has wider implications for how the brain computes. These systems are not 'compasses' in the sense that they detect the geomagnetic north, and in fact they are not sensory organs at all but simply systems for keeping track of information that the brain has integrated from the senses. Smart cells In her work, Moser and her collaborators had found that rats have specialized neural cells for navigation. In particular, the researchers found, the rodents have 'head-direction' cells, contained in a brain area called the presubiculum. Different cells in the head-direction system fire depending on which direction on the horizontal plane the animal points its head. Now, Nachum Ulanovsky and his colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, have discovered that the head-direction cells in the Egyptian fruit bats that they studied are more complex than those in rats. In addition to cells that fire depending on horizontal direction, the bats also have some that fire only when the creatures move their heads up and down (change pitch) or rotate in the roll axis. To find these cells, they implanted electrodes into the presubiculum area of the bats’ brains and recorded single neurons firing. They also mounted a special head-monitoring device comprising four differently coloured light-emitting diodes arranged in a pyramid onto the bats’ heads. By comparing the neuronal firings with head movement, the researchers could determine the particular head orientation — horizontal, vertical or a combination — at which each neuron fired when the bats were crawling or flying. They found that most neurons were tuned to horizontal directions, but more than one-fifth were tuned to head pitch. This established that the bats' navigation system is fully 3-D. Only a few of the neurons correlated to head roll, however. This may be because bats do not roll their bodies much in flight, says Ulanovsky. Flipping bats The team's findings included one additional surprise, which came when the researchers observed bats performing an upside-down flip to land hanging upside down (see figure below). As expected, the firings of the pitch neurons reflected the full 180° rotation. But even though the head ended up pointing in the opposite horizontal direction than it was during flight, the horizontal-direction neurons did not reflect the flip — something that would have required them to suddenly change from, say “east” to “west”. Ulanovsky says that he stared at his data for three months before he understood that this was happening. Once the penny dropped, the scientists worked out that the bat brain was computing the signals not as latitude–longitude coordinates on a sphere — as Ulanovsky intuitively imagined three-dimensional space would be represented — but as coordinates on a torus, a figure shaped like the surface of a bagel. Jasiek Krzysztofiak/Nature As on the sphere, on the bagel surface, the longitude (green circles in the picture) still represents horizontal direction, and the latitude (red circle) pitch. But the bagel representation allows the flip to be represented without a sudden change in longitude. “It has been a humbling experience,” says Ulanovsky, laughing. It may have taken him months to understand, but now when he explains the mechanism to other people, they get it in seconds. In a related News & Views article, Moser and her Trondheim colleague David Rowland speculate that the animals' skills may be reflected in their anatomy. In rats, the head-direction cells can be imagined as a network of neurons arranged in a circle, describing the full 360° of possible directions. But in bats, Moser and Rowland write, the head-direction cells “may have connections between cells that follow a toroidal arrangement“. Scientists are divided in their expectation about whether bat nav will show up in animals such as humans, who do not fly or enjoy spending time upside down. Some, including Herz, suspect that it will not, arguing that such creatures may not need it, and that the toroidal model in any case works only for animals with little rolling movement. But Moser says that she has a feeling that it will, maybe to explain feelings of vertigo when we lose our sense of up and down, or the disorientation we sometimes feel on emerging from an underground train. “Well, we just have to find out by getting the data,” she says. Duane Nichols, Cell- 304-216-5535, www.FrackCheckWV.net

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Fwd: December 6 Cheat Lake Waterfowl trip
by Duane 03 Dec '14

03 Dec '14

> From: Ella Belling > Date: December 3, 2014 7:56:02 AM EST > > Subject: Re: December 6 Cheat Lake Waterfowl trip > > I just received a call that there are hundreds of Tundra Swan at Cheat Lake this morning. Ella > >

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CLEAR December 2014