Latest Vernal pool Stories

February Event Focused on Spring Pools that Host Amphibians HARRISBURG, Pa., Feb. 7, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The fourth season of an innovative series of speakers will begin Thursday, Feb. 28, at Messiah College with a talk on a unique feature that dots the landscape in the South Mountain region: seasonal wetlands, known as vernal pools. Additional topics in 2013 will include South Mountain rhyolite, native pollinators and conservation law. "The South Mountain Speaker...

SACRAMENTO, Calif., July 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The California Rangeland Trust is pleased to announce the permanent conservation of the 2,918-acre Ichord Ranch, owned by Paul Ichord, in Merced County. Funding from the California Wildlife Conservation Board purchased a conservation easement to conserve rolling grasslands with a high density of vernal pools and associated rare and endangered species. The conservation easement will ensure the existing habitat will continue to be managed...

Wildlands, Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of Laguna Terrace East Conservation Bank in Sacramento County, California. The 200-acre Laguna Terrace East Conservation Bank will permanently preserve habitat for endangered and threatened vernal pool species and the state threatened Swainson's hawk. Conservation bank credits are available now to be purchased by the development community and public sector to fulfill obligations required under federal, state, and county regulations such...

By Hudson Sangree, The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Aug. 6--Yolo County moved forward Tuesday with its effort to acquire a former military site near Davis and transform it into parkland replete with seasonal vernal pools and habitat for burrowing owls. The U.S. Air Force shuttered its Davis Global Communications Site -- an annex of McClellan Air Force Base -- in the late 1990s. The site, southeast of Davis, occupies 314 acres of mainly open, undeveloped grasslands near Putah Creek. It is...

By Mary Lynne Vellinga, The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Jun. 6--When the city of Rancho Cordova incorporated, it inherited the 18,000-home Sunrise Douglas housing project approved by Sacramento County supervisors in 2002. It also inherited a major legal headache. In the latest legal fallout, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly ordered Rancho Cordova to rescind the county's approval for the Sunrise Douglas community plan, and the more detailed plan for its first major section,...

An article published in the latest issue of Conservation Biology finds that cattle grazing plays an important role in maintaining wetland habitat necessary for some endangered species. Removing cattle from grazing lands in the Central Valley of California could, inadvertently, degrade the vernal pool habitat of fairy shrimp and tiger salamanders. Cattle grazing influences the rates of evaporation which work together with climate to determine the depth and duration of wetland flooding. Cattle...