Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog (Rana Muscosa), candidate for endangered species status. USFS Photo.The frogs were there first. Then people--Basque sheepherders, gold miners, recreational anglers served by the USFS and the Department of Fish and Game--brought the fish. The fish ate the frogs. Oops.

Now the Forest Service, in a setup ripe for a new Pixar/Disney blockbuster (Finding Nemo meets Watership Down), is proposing to treat the interlopers to a few years of thorough gill-netting and electroshock.

Once the door is open, so the thinking goes, the frogs will leap back to their ancestral homeland. "They are capable of moving on their own," USFS spokesman Rex Norman told the AP, "and we prefer for them to do that."

The Forest Service Yellow-Legged Frog Page.

Check it out.

Image courtesy Hot Creek Aviation.Horizon has officially announced new daily service from LAX to Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH) starting Dec. 18, 2008, running through April 12, 2009. The one-hour-and-five-minute flight will depart Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) daily at 2:20 p.m. and arrive at Mammoth at 3:25 p.m. The return flight leaves Mammoth at 4:05 p.m. and arrives at LAX at 5:10 p.m.

FARE RULES: Valid between Los Angeles (LAX) and Mammoth (MMH). For $79 each way fare shown, valid Sun-Wed to Mammoth and Tues-Fri from Mammoth on flights Jan. 4-30, 2009. Fares of $79 and $99 must be purchased 7 days or more before travel. Etc., Etc.

In the meantime, the Mammoth airport has been closed since the end of May (and will remain so through September) in order to undergo a $6 million "runway rehabilitation and terminal remodeling."

The press release.

Alaska/Horizon Airlines MMH page.

Baseball, Jazz, War... and now "The National Parks: America's Best Idea."

"In Europe, you had the Roman coliseum or Notre Dame or the Cologne cathedral, but we didn't have anything like that in America," said Dayton Duncan, who wrote the script and authored the companion book, to be published by Alfred Knopf. "But we did have these spectacular natural landscapes that were as unique and ancient as anything in the Old World. But unlike in Europe, they did not belong to monarchs or nobility. They belong to everyone."

The 12-hour, six-part series is set to air on PBS in fall 2009.

The full press release on EarthTimes.

Spurious spruce (Business Week)"Go for Verizon Wireless and stay away from T-Mobile," writes Alena Samuels (LAT). "Although your best bet is probably to get a homing pigeon."

The LA Times compares reception in the national parks.

(The Clover Fire, Backcountry Sequoia National Forest, from US 395, June 22, 2008. Photo: Steve Hyman, LA Times) "The fire has burned about 4,000 acres," writes Steve Hyman on his Bottleneck Blog for the LA Times, "and grew big enough that the U.S. Forest Service had to divert hikers from the Pacific Crest Trail over the weekend."

Smoke continued to clog the skies across the Eastside of the Sierra into Tuesday.

(Dust Storms over Badwater, June 2007. Burke Griggs Photo.)"When you get into Death Valley National Park, which is where I spend a lot of time, Alltel is the only game out there," said Dan Yahro of Bishop, CA, voicing concerns that Verizon's $5.9 billion takeover bid might leave desert dwellers (and travelers) stranded in silence.

Peter Svensson, AP.

(David McNew / Getty Image)"We must recognize the severity of this crisis we face," said governor Schwarzenegger, proclaiming a statewide drought (and blaming court-ordered protections for San Joaquin salmon).

"The snowpack has been disappearing," said state Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow, "and it has not manifest itself as runoff."

The solution? "Upgrade California's water infrastructure," said the governor. "Let's fix all of these things that need to be fixed rather than waiting and waiting and waiting."

Evan Halper, LA Times.

(Old-school fireproofing, Converse Basin, Giant Sequoia National Monument.) "Check out this plot hatched deep in the bowels of the Interior Department," writes Joan McCarter, in her Diary of a Mad Voter.

“The financial incentive of the forest service in implementing the forest plan," wrote Judge John T Noonan Jr of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, "is as operative, as tangible, and as troublesome as it would be if ... the agency was the paid accomplice of the loggers...”

Hamilton Lake, High Sierra Trail, Sequoia National Park. The California Desert and Mountain Heritage Act and The Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park Wilderness Act, together aimed at granting Wilderness status to more than 300,000 acres in California, passed the House Committee on Natural Resources last week, thereafter to face the full House.

"This legislation," said Senator Barbara Boxer, who is pushing companion bills in the Senate, "will ensure that these beautiful areas will be sustained and preserved as part of California’s identity and rich, natural heritage.”

Senator Boxer's Press Release.