Birdwatchers are needed to help with the Joshua Tree National Park Christmas Bird Count. This year's
count will mark the 51st Christmas Bird Count held at the park. Christmas Count data is used in many scientific studies and constitutes the
world's largest body of information about wintering bird populations.

✔ When: Friday, January 4, 2019, 7:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
✔ Where: Group 1, Indian Cove Ranger Station
Group 2, West Entrance Station
✔ What to bring: Lunch, something to drink, binoculars, field guides,
warm clothing (you will be in the field all day)

For more information, contact:
Joe Zarki at
jwzarki@gmail.com

What: Board of Supervisors Meeting on the Centennial Development

When: Tuesday, December 11, at 9:30 a.m.

Where: Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, Room 381B, 500 West Temple Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Who: Concerned community members, scientists and activists

Centennial would destroy habitat for rare kit foxes, California condors, mountain lions, and irreplaceable grasslands and wildflower fields. The project would also add 75,000 new long-distance commuters to the Southland’s overburdened freeways.

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2018/Centennial-12-10-2018.php

A sweeping conservation bill introduced Wednesday by U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris would expand the boundaries of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument to include popular hiking trails north of Pasadena and create a federally designated recreation area along the San Gabriel River, including the western portion of the Puente-Chino Hills.

https://www.sgvtribune.com/2018/12/05/more-than-100k-acres-would-be-added-to-the-san-gabriel-mountains-national-monument-with-this-sweeping-conservation-bill/

On a midsummer evening earlier this year, Tracy Pham was on a walk along Huntington Beach, California, an outing she usually made to photograph birds. This time, along the way, she noted a collection of fiddler crabs scuttling along the mud and determined they were worth recording as well.

After posting her crab photos to iNaturalist, a mobile app and website used to document sightings in nature, sudden interest picked up in these crabs. A crustacean expert identified them as large Mexican fiddler crabs (Uca princeps), and their appearance at Huntington Beach was well out of the known geographic range – 240 kilometers farther north than any had been observed before.

https://news.mongabay.com/2018/12/photos-highlight-evolving-roles-of-ai-citizen-science-in-species-research/

Scientific research on wildlife in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreational Area and surrounding habitats has detected startling evidence on how widespread the exposure to anticoagulant rodenticides is amongst native carnivores. Specifically, by monitoring the populations of three meat-eating species (bobcats, coyotes, and mountain lions), researchers found that a significant percentage of these animals had been exposed to these poisonous compounds. Bobcats and mountain lions both displayed 92% exposure, while coyotes, despite only having 83%, had rodenticides as the 2nd leading cause of death within the duration of this study.

https://coloradoboulevard.net/whats-happening-to-our-coyotes-in-the-region/