Biota

Feb 13, 2010
Reporter: Associated Press
Email Address: news@kolotv.com

TRUCKEE, Calif. (AP) - Conservation officials in the Sierra Nevada are expanding their efforts to combat invasive species at Lake Tahoe to other lakes and reservoirs in the area.

The Tahoe Resource Conservation District will work with local officials and conservation groups this summer to try to keep quagga and zebra mussels out of Donner and Independence lakes as well as Stampede, Boca and Prosser Creek reservoirs.

"It's in everybody's best interest," said Dave Roberts, manager of the conservation district. "If (invasive species) get into one of those lakes, it'll be that much harder to keep them out of Tahoe."

The effort is being funded through a $231,000 grant from the Truckee Meadows Water Authority, the Reno area's water provider. The agency is trying to protect the Truckee River, the Reno area's major water source.

All boats must undergo an inspection before entering Tahoe in an effort to keep invasive mussels out of its pure, blue waters.
Roberts said while officials ultimately hope to expand boat inspections to the other lakes and reservoirs around Tahoe, many details still need to be worked out.

A series of meetings will take place throughout the spring to work out logistics of the pilot inspection program, he said.

"We thought we could take our experience in the Tahoe Basin and share it in the region, and ultimately have universal inspections," he told Truckee's Sierra Sun newspaper.

Nevada County Supervisor Ted Owens suggested one place in the Truckee area where boats would be checked, then given a sticker to show they're clean when they show up to launch at one of the area's lakes.

"I've gone through the rigors of launching a boat in the lake," Owens said. "We have to make it user-friendly, perhaps create a universal inspection point."

Roberts said the $231,000 could pay for six full-time inspectors for the summer.

"So far the inspections have been extremely well received. Locals understand the risk involved with invasive species," Roberts said.

No quagga or zebra mussels have been found in Tahoe or any other area lakes or reservoirs. But if they become established within Tahoe or elsewhere in the area, they could massively disrupt aquatic ecosystems.

One federal study says a mussel infestation could cost Tahoe's economy $22 million annual in lost tourism and property tax revenue.

By LESLIE KAUFMAN, New York Times
Published: December 14, 2009

SPARKS, Nev. — Watching bulldozers pour crushed rocks to force the Truckee River into a more natural serpentine pattern, Mickey Hazelwood, project director for the Nature Conservancy, mused that like many acts of salvation, this one has its roots deep in sin.

For decades, this high-desert site eight miles east of Reno was best known as the home of the Mustang Ranch, the first licensed brothel in the United States. From thin to plump, dwarflike to Amazonian, women hired to suit a range of tastes would line up for inspection by clients in pink stucco buildings tucked into a cottonwood grove 300 yards from the river’s bank.

The brothel reopened a few miles downriver in 2006, after the land was confiscated by the Internal Revenue Service and the name and buildings were sold to the highest bidder. Working 12-hour shifts at their new complex, part of which was airlifted from the old site, the women still greet customers in knee socks, push-up bras and other intimate wear.

The old property, meanwhile, is undergoing a transformation. Workers are restoring it to floodplain, undoing the damage wrought when federal engineers straightened the Truckee River a half century ago.

For most of its recorded history, the Truckee meandered lazily 110 miles from mountainous Lake Tahoe through Reno, once a floodplain, to the great basin in Nevada. Dense forests grew at its banks, and 20-pound cutthroat trout swam its length.

But as rivers tend to do, the Truckee would flood. In Reno, where the population had been steadily growing since 1900, and passed 50,000 by 1950, the effects could be devastating. So in the next decade, the Army Corps of Engineers moved to control flooding by straightening and widening the river. The unintended result was that the Truckee deepened in its own channel, and the entire water table dropped along its banks.

Within years, the lower Truckee lost a majority of its native plants as well as dependent birds and wildlife. Only ancient cottonwoods with deep roots survived. Invasive weeds took over, and the river became an eyesore. More threatening to local residents, water quality declined.

Without the plants and with increased surface area, the river was also heating up. Its capacity to absorb treated waste water from the city declined and threatened to choke Reno’s growth. As city officials grew worried, the Nature Conservancy began peddling an ambitious plan that included moving the river back to its old beds, exterminating invasive weeds and replanting forest and other native plants along the Truckee’s banks.

In 2000, the $20 million effort to restore an 8 ½-mile stretch of the river began. The old Mustang Ranch is the final piece; bulldozers arrived at the site this month to begin forcing this stretch of the river back into a path constructed to mimic its old curving pattern.

Legalized prostitution, as it turns out, has made this parcel particularly promising to conservationists because it essentially kept development at bay, improving the chances of restoring the flora and fauna.

For entire article, please visit website below.

Saturday, February 21, 2009
The Associated Press

RENO, Nev. — Scientists are preparing to wage an all-out war against another threat to Lake Tahoe's famed pure waters: Asian clams.

The quarter-sized critters have turned up in numerous locations along Tahoe's southeast shore and prompted concern that they could pave the way for even more destructive invasive species such as quagga or zebra mussels. Scuba divers will be used in a $400,000 project designed to test ways to remove the clams. The effort, jointly funded by the federal government, Nevada and California, is scheduled to begin in mid-March.

"This needs to be done. We have to get our hands around the Asian clam problem," Tahoe Regional Planning Agency spokesman Dennis Oliver told the Reno Gazette-Journal. Native to Japan, China and Korea, the clams first turned up in the U.S. in the 1930s and at Tahoe in 2001.

The clams are suspected of releasing nutrients that fueled an algae bloom around Marla Bay on Tahoe's east s hore last summer. Algae growth threatens to turn Tahoe's blue waters green. But scientists are more concerned that the clams could promote an invasion by quagga or zebra mussels - mollusks already spreading across lakes and reservoirs across much of the U.S.

Decaying clam shells could boost calcium levels that permit mussels to become established, scientists say, and trigger major problems in the lake's ecosystem. Mussels could clog water intakes, attach to docks, litter pristine beaches and spread down the Truckee River, the Reno area's major water source, scientists say.

Those fears make the Asian clam a "serious threat" that can't be ignored, said Steve Chilton, aquatic invasive species coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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www.kolotv.com
Feb 14, 2009

RENO (AP) - A panel of local officials has approved a $7.2 million river restoration project at the former site of the infamous Mustang Ranch brothel east of Reno.

The Flood Project Coordinating Committee took the action Friday in its push to complete a long-awaited Truckee River flood control project.

Plans call for the river ecosystem to be restored to a natural condition on the land where the Mustang Ranch was located.

Improvements will include cutting new meanders into the river channel. When finished, the restored site will help floodwaters spread naturally over the landscape, improving fish habitat and boosting water quality.

The area is the site of Nevada's first legalized brothel, founded by Joe Conforte in 1971 and operated until 1999 when the federal government seized it after guilty verdicts against its parent companies and manager in a federal fraud and racketeering trial.

For entire article, please visit website below.

By Jeff DeLong • Reno Gazzette-Journal• December 1, 2008

Pockets of pines in the Mount Rose area and other stretches of the Carson Range are turning brown -- a disturbing sign that an insect assault that has decimated millions of acres of forests to the east could be headed for the Sierra. Whether that occurs or not, experts say, could likely depend on this winter's weather.

"The potential is there. If we continue with this dry weather, it could pretty much take over," said Gail Durham, forest health specialist with the Nevada Division of Forestry. What could take over is the mountain pine beetle, an insect smaller than a grain of rice that has already destroyed vast swaths of timber in Colorado and other nearby states.

"That little bugger has devastated a lot of property in the Rockies and in Canada," Nevada State Forester Pete Anderson said. "The potential is real high we could have a problem in the Sierra as well."

The threat looms as Nevada has begun to recover from another beetle infestation by the pinyon ips, which killed off millions of acres of pinyon pine until the attack began to slow over the past few years, Anderson said. But other bark beetles, particularly the mountain pine beetle, are waging war against western forests. According to a 2007 report by the Council of Western State Foresters, more than 7 million acres of timber contained dead or dying trees due to beetle assault, with another 22 million acres under the threat of significant mortality over the next 15 years. This level of bark beetle-caused tree mortality is the highest in recorded history, the report said.

Evidence that the problem could be happening locally surfaced in pockets of lodgepole pines around Mount Rose, at Heavenly Mountain Resort near South Lake Tahoe and in the Little Valley area between Reno and Carson City, foresters said.

"It's still at the very beginning stages but we're watching it very closely," Anderson said. "It's pretty grim."

A healthy tree can easily fend off attacks by a few beetles by secreting resin and essentially booting the bugs out of its bark. But when trees are unhealthy in overcrowded stands, particularly when stressed by drought, their defense mechanisms are weakened.

Sep 18, 2008
KOLO TV-8, Reporter: Ed Pearce

There were speeches beneath the big cottonwoods just east of the Tracy Power Station Thursday morning and shiny shovels stood ready for ceremonial groundbreaking. In fact, ground was broken at what was once the 102 Ranch a month ago. A brand new meander has been carved for the river. Nearby big earth movers are beginning to create what will be new wetlands.

By late fall, this stretch of the Truckee River will start to resemble the healthy habitat nature intended, like another spot a few miles upstream. There what was once McCarran ranch was bought by the Nature Conservancy and the river and the land was restored to something resembling what it was before the ranch was built in the 1880's. In fact, the meander there was built, rock riffles added to the stream bed, native vegetation restored. Nearby new wetlands are already well established. A few years after it was built, it's just about ready for public access and recreation. More than that it's also ready for the next flood.

"It slows the water and when it floods it just spreads out over the flood plain and holds it, creating storage and keeping it from rushing downstream where it could cause damage, says Danielle Henderson, the Natural Resource Manager for the Truckee River Flood Project.”It's like a big sponge."

For entire article, please visit website.

Tahoe Daily Tribune, Staff report
September 11, 2008

Photo provided by NDOWGame wardens with the Nevada Department of Wildlife have tracked down what they say is a source of prohibited African clawed frogs found throughout Nevada over the past few weeks, seizing 68 more frogs from homes across the state.

The company accused of sending the frogs, Florida-based Growafrog.com, paid a $3,600 fine Tuesday and agreed not to ship any more illegal frogs to Nevada, according to a statement Wednesday from NDOW. Cooperating with the state's investigation, the company provided customer records to NDOW, allowing game wardens to contact people who unknowingly purchased the frogs over the Internet, the agency said.

Growafrog.com sells tadpole kits intended for educational purposes, according to its Web site.

The president of the company, Paul Rudnick, said he was aware that the frogs are illegal in Nevada, but a mistake was made at their facility, according to the statement.

The frogs are illegal in many Western states but are legal in some states, including Florida, where the company is based, according to Cameron Waithman, the game warden captain leading the investigation.

Game wardens started the investigation last month with the seizure of 119 African clawed frogs from three Reno homes. The publicity surrounding the case prompted other people around Nevada to call NDOW to turn in illegal frogs. These calls allowed game wardens to track the source back to Growafrog.com and ultimately the seizure of 187 illegal frogs, NDOW stated.

Game wardens received calls and seized frogs in at least seven counties in Nevada, according to Waithman.

"I have been amazed at the level of cooperation we have gotten from citizens across the state," Waithman said in the statement. "People seemed to really understand the danger these frogs pose to our ecosystem and were very cooperative in turning them over to game wardens."

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Posted at the Tahoe News and Tribune, by Associated Press
September 10, 2008

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has rejected a petition to end federal protection for the Lahontan cutthroat trout — the Nevada state fish which has been listed under the Endangered Species Act for nearly four decades.

A group called Dynamic Action on Wells Group, Inc., had sought to declassify the fish as threatened, claiming among other things in a December 2006 petition that removing the fish from federal oversight was warranted because of habitat improvements in the Pyramid Lake-Truckee River Basin.

But Bob Williams, field supervisor for the service in Reno, said while efforts are being made to restore the native fish, it still faces many challenges to its existence across its habitat range.

“We did not find that the petition presented substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that removing Lahontan cutthroat trout from the list may be warranted,” Williams said.

Clifford Thompson, a Yerington resident and a member of the group originally formed to protect domestic water wells, characterized the fuss over Lahontan cutthroat a “farce.”

The “fish is a fake fish to start with,” he said when reached by phone Wednesday. “They’ve been extinct for how many thousands of years.” Thompson, who described himself as a “student of the constitution,” argued that the Lahontan trout found in the Walker River Basin were bred in fisheries and therefore are not the same genetically as the historic species and are undeserving of protection.

By Jeff DeLong • jdelong@rgj.com • August 28, 2008

A boat encrusted with invasive mussels and about to be launched into Lake Tahoe was stopped in what officials describe as a first-of-its-kind close call. The harbor master at South Lake Tahoe's Tahoe Keys Marina first saw mussels on the stern of a 32-foot cabin cruiser as it was about to be hoisted into the water Friday.

Experts later confirmed the mollusks were quagga mussels, which apparently attached to the vessel while in Lake Mead in late July, said Ted Thayer, natural resource and science team leader for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. The boat remains under quarantine as ordered by wardens with the California Department of Fish and Game.

"This is the first one we've actually found that actually had mussels on it," said Jenny Francis of the Tahoe Resource Conservation District, which is leading inspection efforts at the lake.

The incident, Thayer said, makes clear the danger posed by mussel-infested boats and the importance of mounting a program to detect any before they are put into the lake.

"This tells us boats do come from Mead and there may be live mussels on board," Thayer said. "It is both scary and encouraging at the same time."

The vessel owner said it was decontaminated when it left Lake Mead. The area where the mussels were found were near the boat's out-drive sprayed with hot water, Thayer said. That, combined with the time the vessel was out of the water, could mean the mussels were dead when discovered at the Tahoe Keys.

"They could have already been dead, but we decided: better safe than sorry," Thayer said of the decision to put the boat under quarantine. Biologists plan to recheck the vessel Sept. 3 to ensure it is clean and can be released to its owner, he said.

Quagga mussels, previously found only in the Midwest and Northeast, were first discovered in Lake Mead in early 2007 and have since spread to other parts of Nevada, Arizona and Southern California. In January, zebra mussels -- a close cousin of the quagga -- turned up in a California reservoir 250 miles from Lake Tahoe. Both types of mussels could cause widespread problems if they were to become established in Lake Tahoe. The rapidly reproducing mollusks could quickly disrupt the lake's ecosystem, clog drinking water intakes, encrust boats, foul docks and litter beaches with sharp and stinking shells.

In June, the TRPA board approved regulations requiring mandatory inspections of boats being launched into the lake in effort to prevent introduction of mussels.

By KATHRYN REED • Special to the Reno Gazette-Journal • July 13, 2008

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE — A $7 million renovation scheduled to begin next month will restore land along the South Lake Tahoe airport runway to a stream environmental zone and use porous asphalt to reduce runoff.

Part of the project is the city’s restitution to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency for cutting 387 trees without a permit in 2006.  The airport will remain open during construction.
The runway along the Upper Truckee River will be narrowed by 50 feet to 100 feet wide, wuith the same 8,544-foot length.  The narrower runway can accommodate 737s but not 757s. However, neither aircraft is likely to return to the South Shore airport that lost commercial service years ago.
 
“I see the airport as a safety center and a place for alternative transportation to reduce the vehicle miles traveled in the basin,” airport director Rick Jenkins said. “It has a substantial economic impact to the community.”