MBCA's 2nd Annual Desert-Wise Living Landscape Tour is Sunday April 22nd

Spend your Sunday on a self-guided tour of 20+ homes selected for their desert-wise landscape gardens. Become inspired to create your own vision of desert-wise landscape and learn how others have achieved unique sanctuaries using low water consumption with native, drought tolerant and water efficient plants. 

The gardens are located in Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, 29 Palms, Pioneertown, Landers, and Flamingo Heights. Tour hours are 9:00 – 4:00 pm. Tickets are $5 for MBCA members and $10 for the general public. (Discounted tickets are available when you combine the tour with a new MBCA membership). Visit the MBCA website to purchase your ticket on-line.

Registration will also be available at the following 2 locations on April 21:

Joshua Tree Farmers Market. Sign up at the MBCA table. 9am to 12pm

Yucca Valley Earth Day Celebration, Yucca Valley Community Center. Sign up at the MBCA table. 9am to 1pm 

After the tour, on Monday, April 23 – Sunday, April 30, you can purchase plants to fulfill your new vision and support the MBCA by heading over to the Cactus Mart in Morongo Valley. In support of the tour and as a fundraiser for MBCA, Cactus Mart will give a 10% discount for Landscape Tour participants and a 40% donation to MBCA, on plants purchased.

MBCA would like to thank AWAC, the Alliance for Water Awareness and Conservation, for their generous grant in support of the tour.

Upcoming Earth Day Events

 Founded on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day marked the birth of the modern environmental movement. Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, developed the idea in response to the destruction caused by a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California in 1969. An estimated 20 million people participated and paved the way for the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That number has grown over the decades, as citizen gather around the country to celebrate the planet and share information--and solutions-- to environmental concerns.


MBCA will have displays at two local Earth Day events, also including displays and information about the Morongo Basin Dark Skies Alliance (MBDSA):

Morongo Valley Spring Festival
Saturday, March 31, 10 AM – 3 PM
Big Morongo Canyon Preserve Education Center (and also Covington Park)

Yucca Valley Conservation Fair and Earth Day Celebration
Saturday, April 21, 9 AM – 2 PM
Yucca Valley Community Center
Say Hi, and also get your Landscape Tour Tickets!

Desert-Wise Landscape Tour Sunday April 22nd

Last year’s MBCA Desert-Wise Living Landscape Tour was a great success, so the Second Annual Landscape Tour has been set for Sunday, April 22.  Spend a few hours enjoying some of the most beautiful and water-wise gardens created by your neighbors in communities across the Morongo Basin, and learn how you can do the same.  The cost is only $5 for members, $10 for others, and special deals are available, combining a tour ticket and MBCA membership.  Read more details and sign up at the MBCA website.  And while you’re there, you might want to read the clever and enthusiastic responses of last year’s post-Tour essay contest winners, also found on MBCA’s home page.

(below, Robin Kobaly's Water-wise garden)

Mojave Max down for the count

It ain't easy being slow.

The threatened desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizzi), which had thrived for more than three million years and is the California State Reptile, is on the ropes, battered by incursions into its ancient habitat and a respiratory disease connected to human contact. Now, a translocation program at Fort Irwin, moving long-established tortoise populations out of newly designated combat training grounds and onto other public lands, has encountered grave morbidity as at least 15% of the tortoises have already died after just a few months. The military has suspended the relocation program for now.

Coyote predation at an unusually high rate has been blamed.

Biologists theorize the problem may be connected to severe drought conditions, which have killed off plants and triggered a crash in rodent populations. As a result, coyotes, which normally thrive on kangaroo rats and rabbits, are turning to tortoises for sustenance.They also point out that translocated tortoises tend to wander, sometimes for miles, making them lumbering targets for hungry predators.

Gashes and tooth marks in the shell of one translocated tortoise discovered in April by federal biologists indicated that it had been ripped out of the front of its carapace.

Other threats include vehicle traffic and an infectious respiratory disease. The disease was prevalent in the relocation area, and now the newcomers are catching it. - Los Angeles Times

Translocation is a highly controversial mitigation practice that has been rejected on previous occasions. Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a prepared statement quoted in the Times: "We predicted that the translocation of tortoises from Ft. Irwin's expansion would be disastrous and, unfortunately, we were proven right....This whole debacle needs to be significantly rethought. The loss of so many tortoises is certainly not helping this threatened population."

Two environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and Desert Survivors, sued the Army and the Bureau of Land Management in July, contending that the move exposed healthy tortoises to diseased animals and placed them in a poorer-quality habitat.

Ileene Anderson...said...that the relocated tortoises are more vulnerable to coyotes and other predators because, once they are dropped off, they try to return to their homes. Under normal circumstances, they would seek refuge in their burrows, she said.

"It makes them more visible on the landscape, and it makes it easier for coyotes and other predators to spot them and kill them," Anderson said. - Press-Enterprise

Read more in the Press-Enterprise and the Los Angeles Times.

PE.com columnist Cassie McDuff reviews these issues and questions the potential of more "unintended consequences" in a military expansion closer to home:

Now the tortoises face another threat. The Marine Corps wants to expand the Twentynine Palms Air Ground Combat Center onto an off-road recreation area. If displaced off-roaders push the government to open desert land now closed to off-roading, more tortoise habitat could be lost.

If that happens, creatures that coexist with them including burrowing owls could be lost, too. That must not happen.

Efforts to educate a new generation about the tortoise and its desert world continue, however, in the selection of a new "Mojave Max." Per the Las Vegas Sun:

A 10-pound successor to the Mojave Max legacy at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area has been selected to carry on educating people about their role and responsibility in the health of the Mojave Desert.

[snip]

On June 30, the first Mojave Max died of natural causes at an estimated age of 65 years old at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

The Mojave Max Emergence Contest encourages students to study the conditions of the Mojave Desert and the behaviors of desert species and then predict when the live Mojave Max will emerge from his burrow each spring. The original Mojave Max emerged as early as Feb. 14 and as late as April 14 during his nine-year tenure.

FOR MORE INFO ON THIS TOPIC: See the Desert Tortoise and Education pages on the MBCA Website. Previous blog posts: Wildlife, Marine Base.

Kids in the outdoors

Youngsters are "six times more likely to play a video game than to ride a bike, according to the Sierra Club, and fewer than 15 percent have taken part in an outdoor recreation program."

In an article about the harm that can result from a generation uneducated in the outdoors, Tom Stienstra details dangerous fire and water-safety encounters in the wilds and looks for solutions:

Many young people do not have outdoor skills, ethics or know the law, or in some cases, care how they impact others. Many do not hike, fish, go boating or try to see wildlife.

[snip]

One solution is to create a program that would pay for California's kids to learn outdoor skills, ethics and the law, and take part in outdoor education and recreation. The bill to do this, Assembly Bill 2989, authored by Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, D-Arleta (Los Angeles County) and sponsored by the Sierra Club, passed the Assembly and the Senate Natural Resources Committee, but has been stalled in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Read the rest of the article on SFGate.

The Morongo Basin Conservation Association has been supporting local environmental education programs in the Basin since 1997. Read more on the new Education page on our Website.

Reptiles for kids at the Museum

Through July and August the Hi-Desert Nature Museum in Yucca Valley is presenting Art and Science Tuesdays for kids, from 10 a.m. to noon. This week featured "Reptiles of the Desert". Future programs feature such diverse topics as animal scat, where our water comes from, and sand-painting. Find out more here.