By Matt Weiser, Sacramento Bee

State wildlife officials voted to consider the declining mountain yellow-legged frog as an endangered species. But they said the Pacific fisher, a forest carnivore, should not get that consideration.

The California Fish and Game Commission took those actions at its meeting Wednesday in Sacramento. The vote to consider the frog for protection under the state Endangered Species Act means it now becomes a “candidate” species under the law.

The frog, a native of the Sierra Nevada, has declined in population by more than 90 percent, according to surveys conducted since 1995. It is threatened by a variety of human activities, from the state’s own fish-stocking practices to dam operations, water diversions, logging, pesticides and a deadly fungus.

Read the whole storoy

The Animal Coalition of Tahoe has planned a fun, family event where you can get a little exercise with your pooch, play poker, and maybe win some prizes.

The Sixth Annual Mutt Strut Poker Run will begin at the Super 8 Motel at 3600 Lake Tahoe Blvd. in South Lake Tahoe on Oct. 10 between 11 and 11:30am.

Participants will pick playing cards at stops along a 1.2 mile route, hoping for the best poker hands. No experience is necessary.

The fun continues after the walk, with a party at Timber Cove Marina featuring music, giveaways, raffle drawings, and contests such as best trick, best smooch, and musical sit.

Poker hands may be purchased for $10 each, or three hands for $25. One free raffle ticket with each poker hand purchased.

ACT was established in January 2004 as a nonprofit, all-volunteer corporation with the goal of raising funds to support a low-cost spay-neuter program for local residents. ACT also donates 10 percent of funds raised to the El Dorado County Animal Shelter.

For more information on the Animal Coalition Mutt Strut Poker Run, call (530) 400.4766 or click here.

By Bay City News Service

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board voted unanimously today to reject a claim by the mother of kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard for emotional and psychological injury caused by her daughter’s abduction, a spokeswoman for the board said.

Government claims and victim compensation are two distinct programs, both overseen by the board, spokeswoman Janice Mackey said.

Terry Probyn

Dugard’s mother, Terry Probyn, filed her claim with the board as a government claim against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Mackey said.

In the claim, Probyn said she was psychologically and emotionally injured by “various lapses by the Corrections Department contributing to daughter Jaycee Dugard’s continued captivity, ongoing sexual assault and mental and/or physical abuse.”

Read the whole story

By Jeff Delong, Reno Gazette-Journal

Lake Tahoe could provide a global example of a sustainable environment and economy if full advantage is taken of its many natural attributes, conservationists, business representatives and others agreed Thursday.

Toward that purpose, members of the Lake Tahoe Stewardship Congress — many arriving at Sand Harbor State Park by boat, bus or other means of alternative transportation — discussed early details of a Tahoe Sustainability Exposition planned for several days next August across the Tahoe Basin.

Jacquie Chandler

Nature hikes, water transit and recycling tours, demonstration gardens and similar activities were discussed as possible events that could help “launch Tahoe as a world stage for sustainable stewardship” through the exposition and related efforts, said Jacquie Chandler, executive director of the nonprofit group Sustainable Tahoe.

Read the whole story

Squaw Valley is hosting an Oktoberfest celebration complete with a Bratwurst Toss, authentic German beer and plenty of entertainment. The 9th Annual Squaw Valley Oktoberfest will transform The Village at Squaw Valley into a miniature Bavaria on Oct. 2 from 2-6pm.

Modeled after the original Oktoberfest, a 16-day annual festival in Munich, Squaw Valley’s event is a day for the whole family. Guests gather for traditional German entertainment including performances by Joe Smiell and his 20-piece Bavarian band on the main stage. The Almenrauch Schuhplattler and Alpentanzer Schuhplattler Austrian Dance Troops also will entertain Oktoberfest visitors.

Event attendees may participate in games and compete for prizes. Festival-goers compete in Stein Holding, plus Keg and Barrel-Rolling Races.

Guests are encouraged to get into the spirit of the event by wearing traditional Lederhosen and Austrian clothing.

Beer lovers can toast each other in the Biergarten, where they’ll find a wide selection of authentic German brews including Gordon Biersch, Spaten Premium lager, Spaten Oktoberfest, Trumer Pilsner, and Franziskaner Hefeweizen. The first glass of beer is $10, which includes a half-liter festival glass and one beer. Additional beer tickets will be available for $5.

Guests also can savor traditional German bratwurst with sauerkraut and a variety of other items served at the eight Village restaurants, including a root beer float station.

The Village at Squaw Valley’s Oktoberfest celebration and entertainment are free, but proceeds from beer sales benefit the Tahoe Truckee Lacrosse Foundation.

For more information, visit here or call (530) 584.6266.

By Kathryn Reed

How many piers and buoys should jut out and bob on Lake Tahoe has been the center of a 22-year fight. With Thursday’s federal court ruling, the fight rages on.

On Sept. 16, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton issued his 65-page ruling in favor of the League to Save Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Club. On the losing end is the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.

The fight over buoys in Lake Tahoe is not over.

The League said it would not comment until Friday. Nothing was on Earthjustice’s or the Sierra Club’s websites Thursday about the ruling.

Earthjustice represented the environmental groups in court pro bono. TRPA officials say they spent at least six-figures worth of taxpayer dollars on in-house and outside legal counsel.

“It remains to be seen what we do next. We need time to regroup,” Julie Regan, external affairs director for TRPA, told Lake Tahoe News shortly after the ruling came out.

The shorezone issue has been contentious for 22 years and became even more so after the Governing Board of the TRPA adopted a shorezone plan in October 2008. That month the League and Sierra Club filed suit in U.S. District Court in Sacramento.

Today there are about 800 piers and 4,000 buoys on Lake Tahoe. TRPA’s plan would have allowed an additional 128 private piers and 1,822 buoys.

Regan said she thought the bi-state regulatory agency had found the middle ground between those who don’t want piers or buoys and those who think all private property owners should have them.

“We did our best to craft that compromise,” Regan said.

The League was part of the process, as were other stakeholders. But officials were never satisfied and believed suing to halt the installation of more piers and buoys was the answer.

Karlton’s decision says the TRPA did not prove the shorezone ordinance meets the thresholds the agency works under.

Regan said the judge had “technical concerns with the environmental analysis.”

Regan said it’s possible TRPA will file motions to allow some of the shorezone ordinance, like the Blue Boating Program, to stay intact while the more contentious buoy-pier issues are worked out.

By Richard N. Velotta, Las Vegas Sun

The Nevada Commission on Tourism, partnering with Google.com, expects to produce more than 8 million page views from its target demographic in an Internet winter tourism ad campaign that begins in November.

The commission began working with Google late last year and will spend $835,000 of its $2.4 million media budget on Internet marketing in the current fiscal year. Google has embraced the Nevada Tourism Commission campaign as a case study to show a cost-effective, high-tech means to reach customers.

Nevada tourism officials want to focus on Tahoe ski resorts with views like Heavenly's. Photo/Kathryn Reed

The commission will use Google In-Stream Video ads targeting winter sports enthusiasts in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Dallas, Chicago, Seattle, Phoenix and Las Vegas.

The commission’s Web presence is geared to steer business to Nevada’s Lake Tahoe resorts and ski areas.

Read the whole story

To the community,

The Lake Tahoe Unified School District has been keeping parents, staff, and community members “informally informed” on current events, local and school news, Board of Education meetings, and community happenings for the past six years.

If you are not currently receiving regular emails from the district’s public information officer, Angie Keil, and wish to join the email list you may contact her at akeil@ltusd.org.

Please indicate whether you are a LTUSD parent or a community member.

Charter Internet customers will need to use an alternate email address as Charter now blocks these community emails from being sent to their customers. Charter customers who have been receiving these updates are being advised to contact Charter to resolve the issue or provide an alternate email address such as @gmail.com or @yahoo.com.

Lake Tahoe Unified School District

Join the Tahoe Rim Trail Association for a series of short Saturday hikes in September and October that encourage people of all ages and abilities to get outside this fall.

These hikes are designed to be family friendly and are all less than seven miles. The hikes are scheduled each weekend to travel counter-clockwise around the lake, promoting the diversity of the TRT from each shore. Everyone is welcome. To learn more about this program visit the website.

All hikes begin at 9am.

Sept. 18 – Tahoe Meadows Ridge Hike, 3.8 miles

Sept. 25 – Fall Hike to Galena Falls, 6 miles

Oct. 2 – Tahoe City Tromp, 6.8 miles

Oct. 9 – Page Meadows Poetry and Nature Journaling, 3 – 4 miles

Oct. 16 – Dardanelles Lake Day Hike, 6.8 miles

Oct. 23 – Spooner Summit South, 6 miles

Oct. 30 – Crazy Costume Fun Run in the Tahoe Meadows, 1.2 miles.

Publisher’s note: This is from a fall 1972 Lake Tahoe Historical Society newsletter.

By Marie Walsh, Lake Tahoe Historical Society

Special program guest for the annual meeting was Alva Barton, a well-known Tahoe pioneer who had much to share with her audience.

Lake Tahoe Historical Society

Miss Barton is a 66-year Tahoe resident, having lived here continuously since the year 1906. She also has the unique distinction of being a direct descendant of one of the Lake Tahoe’s earliest pioneer families, a family whose name has long since become legend at Tahoe.

Alva Barton began her talk by taking her listeners back to well over a century ago when her grandparents came west from New York on the train that brought the news of President Lincoln’s assassination. After first settling at Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento [her grandmother cooked the first Thanksgiving dinner at the fort, and her mother was the first white child to be born at the fort], they moved to the Sierra foothills and spent their summers ranching at Tahoe – over in Hope Valley, and on property they homesteaded in the Meyers area that today is the site of the Lake Tahoe Country Club.

Her own parents the Wm. D. Barton’s, daried at Webber Lake [where she was born outdoors in a mountain meadow], and then move to the South Shore in 1915. They settled on property that today is occupied by the South Lake Tahoe Airport, and established a dairy that was known as Meadow Edge.

Later on, she and her parents and her sister Fay ran a milk route which took them, every morning, to Echo Lakes, Camp Sacramento, Twin Bridges, Tahoe Meadow, Beecher’s Country Club [where Harrah’s is now], and to Camp Chinokis [then located behind the present Crescent V Shopping Center].

Several years later her parents built a one-room cabin [which today still exist as part of Miss Barton’s tidy green and white home] just south of the present Tahoe Valley Y. “This was when the Y area was wide-open land, and when the only ‘road’ in the Basin was Pioneer Trail,” recalled Miss Barton. It was in this cabin that the dozen or so youngsters in the Basin at the time attended school – “until 30 children showed up one day, and we had to move school over to Lampson’s Market.”

At the Y, the Barton Family also ran a 200 horse stable and rented horses to such groups as the Mt. Ralston Fish Planting Club. Interestingly, it was her parents’ horses that were used in the movies “Lightnin” [made at Emerald Bay in 1939 and starring Will Rogers], and “Rose Marie” [made in 1935 at Emerald Bay and starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald]. “Those fancy horses from Hollywood just weren’t used to this altitude and the cold water, so we painted Papa’s horse and let them jump in the lake!”

By 1927, the Barton Ranch in Tahoe Valley has grown to 1,000 acres, encompassing land which extended from the Y, along Pioneer Trail to the old garbage dump, then running north through Barton Meadow by the present hospital and continuing all the way to Camp Chinokis.

The Barton family name is still very much a part of the Lake Tahoe today, not only in lore but in natural and physical elements also. It was Alva Barton and her sister, Fay, who donated the land for the Barton Memorial Hospital, named in memory of their pioneering parents, William Delos Barton and Ouida Kyburz Barton.