An 18-year-old South Lake Tahoe man is at Renown Medical Center in Reno after being hit while riding his bicycle.
The name of the victim has not been released.
He was struck by a vehicle at 3:53pm Aug. 11 on Ski Run Boulevard.
The cause of the collision is under investigation.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
Eldorado National Forest is conducting three meetings about the draft Travel Analysis Report.
The meetings are:
Eldorado National Forest staff will share how they developed the report, answer questions about the Travel Analysis Process, and have the draft Travel Analysis Report available for review at the meetings.
The Travel Analysis Process is required by the 2005 Travel Management Rule and requires that forests provide a safe, financially, and environmentally sustainable road system that can realistically be maintained. Due to increased use, aging infrastructure, and decreasing budgets, the forest cannot maintain all roads to standards for safety and environmental protection.
Any future project proposals regarding the forest’s system roads will be subject to a site-specific analysis and environmental documentation.
For more information regarding this project is online.
A South Shore man is scheduled to be arraigned next month in the July 9 shooting death of a bear.
Gilbert Wetenkamp faces one misdemeanor count of unlawful taking of an animal. This is a violation under the state Fish and Wildlife code. The maximum penalty if convicted is one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
The 2½-year-old bear was shot in the backside with buckshot from a shotgun. It was sprawled on its back at the base of a tree off Pioneer Trail near Minniconjou Drive in the unincorporated area of South Lake Tahoe.
Wetenkamp originally told investigators he shot the bear in self-defense.
The Sept. 25 hearing will be before Judge Steve Bailey in El Dorado County Superior Court in South Lake Tahoe.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
By Jim Carlton, Wall Street Journal
California’s cash-strapped parks system has a $1.2 billion maintenance backlog. But many of its 279 parks are getting spruced up anyway thanks to a secret weapon: conservation groups that have stepped in to rebuild trails, renovate restrooms and even buy more land.
Park Champions, a program run by the California State Parks Foundation, a nonprofit umbrella group, has had 3,202 volunteers work 23,790 hours cleaning up tarnished facilities around the state during the past four years. In Mendocino County north of San Francisco, two nonprofits recently picked up half the $160,000 tab to rebuild a dilapidated day-use area at Hendy Woods State Park that features a picturesque strand of towering, old-growth redwoods.
Similar public-private partnerships have formed in Florida, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. In Florida, the number of volunteer hours contributed to state parks by nonprofit workers in 2014 was up 33 percent from before the recession in 2008. Over the same period, full-time park staffing remained at about 1,060, according to the Friends of Florida State Parks nonprofit group.
· Visits to Nevada continue to climb, increasing by 2.6 percent in 2014 over the previous year. In 2014, Nevada saw 53.4 million visitors to the state.
· The Village at Squaw Valley hosts the sixth annual Peaks and Paws, benefiting the Humane Society of Truckee-Tahoe, on Aug. 22. For more info, go online.
· Nando Parrado, who survived Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 when it crashed in the remote Andes Mountains on Oct. 13, 1972, will share his story on Aug. 10 at Sand Harbor State Park as part of the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival’s Monday Night Showcase. He wrote “Miracle in the Andes.”
· The Food Bank of El Dorado County is in need of 10 volunteers on Aug. 26 from 9:30-11:30am to help with the mobile food pantry. For more info, call 530.621.9950 or email volunteer@foodbankedc.org.
· The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking comments on 31 petitions to reclassify species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 by Aug. 31. For more info, go online.
By Rebecca Klein, Huffington Post
Most kids are severely sleep deprived, and early school starting times aren’t helping.
Across the country, only 17.7 percent of middle and high schools start classes after 8:30am, contrary to 2014 recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Instead, the average school start time for middle and high schools around the country is 8:03am, according to a new analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The AAP recommends that schools start after 8:30 to help teens get 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep a night — the amount the AAP says is ideal. Currently, less than a third of high school students sleep eight hours a night, says the CDC analysis.
The analysis uses 2011-2012 information from the Department of Education to glean the start times of about 39,700 schools. Alaska has the latest average school start time at 8:33am, while Louisiana has the earliest at 7:40am.
By Laura Parker, National Geographic
TWISP, Wash. — The largest fire in state history swept through the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range with explosive force last summer. The Carlton Complex Fire burned more than 250,000 acres, devouring everything in its path at the hypersonic pace of 3.8 acres per second.
Until then, the top slot in the state’s fire rankings belonged to the Tripod Fire, which burned up 175,000 beetle-infested acres in two months on the same slopes in 2006.
Carlton and Tripod are “megafires,” part of a wave of extreme fires that are transforming the great forests of the American West. By the end of the century, scientists say, megafires—conflagrations that chew up at least 100,000 acres of land—will become the norm. Which makes them of critical interest to researchers.
These infernos, once rare, are growing to sizes that U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell describes as “unimaginable” two decades ago. Five alone have consumed more than 5 million acres in central Alaska since June. Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado also experienced their worst wildfires in the past seven years.
So far in the Lower 48, none of the thousands of fires that have burned across the 11 Western states have grown into megafire size. But the most perilous weeks of fire season are still ahead.
The incumbents on the Tahoe Paradise Resort Improvement District board are being challenged to force an election in November.
For years this parks board has been appointed by sitting members. Four of the five seats are supposed to be elected, with the fifth being appointed by the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors. The District 5 supervisor usually fills that seat.
Four seats will be open on the Nov. 3 ballot. The terms of Judy Clot and Pete Nelligan are expiring. Those are for four-year terms. The other two seats are for terms that expire Dec. 1, 2017. Joe Cardinale and Victor Babbitt are in those seats.
Running for the full term seats are Babbitt, Clot, Brandie Jordan-Griffith and Diane Verwoest. Cardinale, Nelligan, Jan Roman-Gonzales and Frank Jones are vying for the short-term seat.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
The Tahoe Heritage Foundation and Tahoe Institute for Nature Science is putting on a talk about Birds of Lake Tahoe and the Tahoe Big Year on Aug. 14.
This event will be at Taylor Creek Visitor Center at 8pm. A $5 donation benefits the Tahoe Heritage Foundation.
Will Richardson will talk about birds in the basin, including information about the Tahoe Big Year. The Big Year began Jan. 1, with participants in search of as many species of birds as they can find during 2015.
Taylor Creek Visitor Center is located approximately three miles north of South Lake Tahoe on the lakeside of Highway 89.
For more information, call 530.544.7383.
The South Lake Tahoe junior hockey team is looking for families to house players for the upcoming hockey season.
A billet family provides a home away from home environment for the players. Each player pays a monthly fee of $350 to the family to help cover meals and living expenses. Billet families also receive free home game tickets for each family member.
If interested in helping or for more information, contact Tom Maroste, general manager and head coach of Tahoe Icemen, at 307.578.6496.