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.

(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.

(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.

Playa, lee side Red Hill cinder cone, Owens Valley

February looked good, with 98% normal snowpack and the reservoirs nearly full. Then came March and April, together the driest since 1921.

"I have not seen a more serious water situation in my career, and I've been doing this 30 years," said Timothy Quinn, executive director of the Assn. of California Water Agencies.

Uh-oh. What are we going to water our lawns with?

From the LA Times.

What’s the process for writing a guidebook? Obviously, it involves a lot of research, but how much of that is done first-hand? In other words, how many of the restaurants have you eaten in, etc? And how much is done through other avenues of research?

The full interview.

The 6-ounce ochotona princeps can't handle the heat. CA DEPT. OF FISH & GAME.The American pika is the first animal for which endangered species protection has been sought because of global climate change. When the temperature rises over 77 degrees, they have a tendency to die. One study projects they may be all but gone by the end of this century. The California Department of Fish & Game has unanimously denied the petition, finding no evidence of their decline in the Sierra Nevada.

"It strikes me that this petition isn't so much about pika as it is about the effect of climate change on alpine wildlife," said F&G Commissioner Michael Sutton. "This threat is better dealt with in a much more comprehensive way."

From The Sac Bee.

The tail end of a wolverine--likely a long way from home. Photo by Katie Moriarty.

"We know a little more than we did a few weeks ago," said Bill Zielinski, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station. "To the best of our knowledge, it does not appear to be a California native."

Tom Knudsen, Sacramento Bee.

Slate.com investigates.

The tail end of the California Wolverine. Photo by Katie Moriarty.

Katie Moriarty was hoping to get pictures of weasels. What she got--so it seems--is the first documented wolverine sighting in the Sierra Nevada since 1922. "The conventional wisdom was that they were pretty much gone from California," said Bill Zielinski, a research ecologist for the Forest Service who was working with Moriatry.

"We know they are in the Sierra," said Paul Spitler, public lands director for the Center for Biological Diversity. "We don't know how many and we don't know how far they travel, but we certainly know they exist."

The AP Story.

Plenty Magazine's Extinction Blog.

Sampling for Contaminants, NPS PhotoIn Yosemite and Sequoia: mercury, PCBs, pesticides in rivers and lakes... male fish developing female organs, etc.

Where's the stuff coming from? Industrial-scale farming in California's Central Valley—and, of course, China.

The AP Story.

The National Park Service's Western Airborne Contaminants Assessment Project

Continuity of Parks.