By Henry Brean, Las Vegas Review-Journal

More than 300 off-road racers have won permission to drive across Nevada’s newest national monument next week, but they won’t be allowed to race or go off-road.

On Friday, the Bureau of Land Management issued a special recreation permit for the Best in the Desert “Vegas to Reno” off-road race, which is scheduled to begin Aug. 19 near the Lincoln County town of Alamo and end Aug. 20 in Dayton.

As a condition of the permit, race participants have been cleared to cross the newly designated Basin and Range National Monument, but they won’t be allowed to drive faster than 35 mph or pass other vehicles.

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By Melinda Myers

As summer fades into fall it is time to help lawns recover from summer stress and prepare for the winter ahead.

Continue to mow your lawn as long as it continues to grow. Grow cool season grasses like bluegrass, fescue and ryegrass 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 inches tall.  Warm season grasses like bermudagrass, carpetgrass, centipedegrass and zoysia should be grown at 1 to 2 inches tall while St. Augustine should a bit higher, 2 to 3 inches, for best results.  Taller grass is better able to compete with weeds. And there is no need to cut it shorter for the health of your lawn.

Mow often, removing no more than one third the total height. Leave these short clippings on the lawn. They will quickly break down, adding organic matter, moisture and nutrients to the soil.

And as you mow you can take care of all those fall leaves at the same time. Shred the fall leaves and allow them to remain on the lawn. As long as you can see the leaf blades through the shredded leaves your lawn will be fine. And just like the clippings, they add nutrients and organic matter to the soil.

A fall fertilization can help lawns recover from the stresses of summer. Photo/Mark Avery

Fertilize your lawn with a low nitrogen, slow release fertilizer. University research has shown that fall fertilization is the most beneficial practice for home lawns. Less disease problems and slower weed growth means your lawns – not the weeds and pests – benefit from the nutrients. Fall fertilization also helps lawns recover from the stresses of summer because it encourages deep roots and denser growth that can better compete with weeds and tolerate disease and insects.

Those in colder regions growing cool weather bluegrass, fescue and perennial ryegrass should fertilize around Labor Day and sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving, but before the ground freezes.

Homeowners in warmer climates growing warm season grasses like centipede, Bermuda and zoysia should fertilize around Labor Day. Apply a low nitrogen slow release fertilizer then and in early October if overseeding the lawn. Make sure the last fall application is at least one month prior to the average first killing frost. Fertilizing later can result in winter damage.

Weeds often gain a foothold in the lawn during the stressful summer months. A healthy lawn is the best defense.  Even with proper care weeds can bully their way into the lawn. Try digging, root and all, to remove small populations of weeds. Weeding can be a great tension reducer and physical workout.

If this isn’t possible, consider spot treating weeds or problem areas with a broadleaf weedkiller. Those looking for more organic options may want to try one of the more eco-friendly products with the active ingredient Fehedta or Hedta. Whether using traditional or environmentally-friendly products read and follow label directions carefully. All these products are plant killers and can cause damage to other plants if not applied properly.

Fall, when the lawn is actively growing, is the best time to core aerate or dethatch northern lawns suffering from thatch build up or compacted soil. Thatch is a layer of partially decomposed dead grass plants that prevents water and nutrients from reaching the grass roots. Use a dethatching machine to remove thatch layers greater than one half an inch. Or core aerate the lawn to create openings in the thatch layer and help reduce soil compaction to encourage root growth and allow water and nutrients to infiltrate the soil.

Overseeding your lawn in the fall helps increase thickness and improves the overall health and appearance of the lawn. For best results, overseed directly after aerating.

Begin implementing some of these strategies and soon you’ll be on your way to a healthier, better looking lawn for the coming growing season.

Gardening expert Melinda Myers has more than 30 years of horticulture experience and has written more than 20 gardening books, including “Small Space Gardening” and the “Midwest Gardener’s Handbook”. 

By Cassie Wilson, KRNV-TV

Dry weather is common in Northern Nevada; we are of course a high desert. But as of Aug. 10, the Reno-Tahoe Airport officially hit a 79-day dry spell.

In the last 10 years, the longest dry pattern we’ve seen was 92 days in the summer of 2011. And the current dry spell record is 129 days, which was set from July 19-Nov. 24, 1995.

The airport hasn’t registered rain since May 23, but many other places across Nevada have.

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Middle and high school girls who want to improve their bike skills and learn race strategies and tips are invited to a series of clinics presented by Bike Like a Girl.

They are Aug. 17, Aug. 22 and Sept. 12 at North Tahoe High School from 5:30-7:30pm.

Bring your bike, helmet, gloves, snack and water.

The clinics are free, though organizers are asking for a $25 donation per session to benefit girls cycling.

To register, email colleenwanty@gmail.com. Provide your name, age, team, and location.

On Aug. 12-13, more than 60 of North America’s rarest and finest classic wooden boats will be on display at the historic Obexer’s Boat Company on the West Shore.

In its 44th year, the Concours d’Elegance is celebrating the anniversary of a boating icon: Chris-Craft Racing Runabouts. These boats have a rich history that pre-dates World War II. The featured Marque for Concours is the 19 foot split cockpit model Chris-Craft Racer built from 1947 to 1954. These boats were designed for speed. This Marque Class will be one of the largest collections of pristine Chris-Craft Racing Runabouts ever assembled in one location.

In addition, the show will host a wide range of other wooden boats with a variety of style and history. All of the events are open to the public.

For more information, go online.

By David Porter, AP

NEWARK, N.J. — A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt another defeat to New Jersey’s yearslong attempt to legalize sports betting, setting aside the state’s challenge to a federal betting ban.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling invalidated a law passed by New Jersey in 2014 that would have allowed sports betting at casinos and racetracks. The court found New Jersey’s law repealing prohibitions against sports gambling violated the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which forbids state-authorized sports gambling.

“Because PASPA, by its terms, prohibits states from authorizing by law sports gambling, and because the 2014 law does exactly that, the 2014 law violates federal law,” the court wrote.

Currently, only Nevada offers legal sports betting on individual games. Delaware offers multigame parlay betting in which players must pick several games correctly to win. Both were given exemptions when PASPA was passed.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and supporters in the state Legislature have sought to legalize sports gambling to help prop up the struggling casino and horse racing industries. It’s estimated up to hundreds of billions of dollars are bet illegally on sports annually in the U.S.

The dispute has a lengthy legal history. The four major professional sports leagues and the NCAA sued the state in 2012, after New Jersey voters approved sports gambling the previous year. The leagues claimed the expansion of legal sports betting to New Jersey would damage the integrity of their games and lead to more game-fixing.

After the 3rd Circuit rejected the state’s constitutional challenge to PASPA, Christie signed a bill into law in the fall of 2014 that repealed prohibitions against sports gambling at casinos and racetracks. That tactic — repealing prohibitions instead of approving gambling — was seen as a way to get around the federal law.

Though each court ruling has gone against the state, there have been dissents in two previous three-judge rulings at the 3rd Circuit.

One of the judges who dissented in an earlier ruling also wrote a dissent Tuesday. Judge Julio Fuentes wrote that New Jersey’s repeal meant it wasn’t actually authorizing sports gambling.

“I do not see how a partial repeal of prohibitions is tantamount to authorizing by law a sports wagering scheme in violation of PASPA,” Fuentes wrote.

The Aug. 9 ruling came after a hearing by the full 3rd Circuit, called an en banc hearing. In an earlier iteration of the case, the 3rd Circuit declined New Jersey’s request in 2013 for the full circuit to rehear the case.

The state can appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which has already declined to hear the case once before. Messages left with Christie’s office and the state attorney general’s office weren’t immediately returned Tuesday.

Through a spokesman, the NFL declined comment.

Sports betting supporters have called the leagues’ stance hypocritical, saying the leagues condone and profit from sports fantasy leagues in which participants assemble rosters of players from different teams and compete against others.

By Associated Press

With all their modern scientific equipment and state-of-the-art computer models, researchers trying to better understand the effect of algae growth in Lake Tahoe are searching for new tools to aid in their mission — old photo albums.

Experts at the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center want to better understand the trend in long-term algae growth.

“Everyone wants to know if there’s more of this stuff, but we don’t know,” said Geoff Schladow, a professor of water resources and environmental engineering at UC Davis.

Researchers study algae growth because it is linked to high levels of nutrients, which enter the lake atmospherically and through stormwater runoff. Fertilizer, for example, contains nutrients and can find its way into the lake when it rains, thus contributing to algae growth.

Despite a reduction in the amount of sediment entering the lake last year because of the ongoing drought in the West, the concentration of nitrate is actually higher.

The problem is scientists don’t have much historical data about algae.

“What we’re left to use is anecdotal data,” Schladow said. “We also ask for old photos, so if anyone has some they’d like to share, unfortunately that is the only older data we have.”

Scott Hackley, a staff research associate at UC Davis, said he’s worked with archivists at UNR to find old photos, but he and his team are hopeful that the community can help as well.

“It’d be nice to get some old photos with the year, time of year and the location to fill in some of the historical gaps,” he said.

By Jane Braxton Little, High Country News

Looking north from Blue Canyon near Shaver Lake, copper-colored forests blanket mountain slopes that stretch ridge after ridge to the horizon. The patches of fading green that dappled these hillsides last fall have merged into an unbroken cover of rust-needled pines.  At dusk, when the winds die down, an eerie stillness gives way to the muffled sound of munching as beetles chomp through one tree after another, thousands after thousands.

This is the look — and the sound — of drought.

Four consecutive winters with little to no snowpack, followed by four dry summers, have devastated California’s southern Sierra Nevada. At least 66 million trees are already dead statewide, and millions more are expected to die as the drought persists into a fifth summer.

On the Sierra National Forest, up to 90 percent of the mid-elevation ponderosa pines are dead.  Weakened by drought, oaks are succumbing to sudden oak death along the central and northern coast, and the disease has moved into the

And the bark beetles that caused this desolation? They’re reproducing at triple the normal rate. Forest ecologists used to consider them a natural part of the forest dynamic — and they are. Stressed by drought and decades of air pollution in overcrowded stands, however, the natural chemicals trees pitch out in self-defense can’t keep up with the onslaught of bugs.  No one is calling what’s happening here natural anymore.

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The North Shore boat launches, with the South Shore boat already in the water. Photo/Provided

Lake Tahoe outrigger teams dominated the boats from the Bay Area during the annual Round the Rock Alcatraz Challenge.

Boats of six rowers raced about 10 miles from the beach near Crissy Field in San Francisco, into the bay, around the prison and back to shore.

Kawai’ulu O’Tahoe placed first and second in the coed masters division on Aug. 6. Coed teams are usually made up of three women and three men; the South Shore team had four women, two men.

On the first place North Shore crew were: John Vanon, Angela Stevens, Monica Berger, Brian Minkin, Donna Rockwood and Paul Laudenschlager.

The second place South Shore boat had: Farah Richmond, Deb Lewis, Tom Gandt, Alex Bebout, Megan Gandt and Ahna Yap.

Emma could become Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care’s first animal it keeps because with one wing it cannot be released into the wild. Photo/LTWC

By Kathryn Reed

Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care is in the process of getting its first permit to permanently care for an animal that cannot be released into the wild.

Emma – the bald eagle from Emerald Bay – came to the South Shore rehab facility last Halloween. She had a broken wrist and damage to her wing. Eventually the wing had to be amputated.

The center on the edge of South Lake Tahoe has been caring for animals since 1978. The goal is always to nurse the injured animal back to health so it can return to its natural environment. For the few that have not been able to fully mend they’ve been sent to wildlife facilities that could care for them for the long term.

LTWC when it moves into its new headquarters off Al Tahoe Boulevard intends to have an area where animals that can’t make it on their own will be housed. This will then become an educational component to the facility.

Emma is the beginning of that evolution of LTWC. For now she is still under veterinary care as she heals from surgery.

Ultimately it will be up the federal and state wildlife agencies to grant a permit to the nonprofit to care for animals beyond the rehabilitation and release stages.

LTWC founders Tom and Cheryl Millham hope to move to their new headquarters – and out of their backyard – in the near future. Money is the stumbling block. About $4 million is needed to be able to open the new site.

Incrementally they are building what is hoped to be a state-of-the-art rehabilitation and education facility.

Work on the 27-acre site started last year. At the end of June the entire underground infrastructure was completed. Foundation work should be done by Oct. 15, with framing of the 12 cages and main building starting next building season.

LTWC volunteer Alexi Haven explains to visitors what is going on inside the bear cage. Photo/LTWC

To keep the animals wild the public is kept away from them – except for the one-day annual open house.

Last weekend at the open house it was Emma who was the star – not the four bear cubs.

“Emma was the hit of the show,” Tom Millham told Lake Tahoe News.

“We started socializing her. People could take pictures of her,” Millham said of the eagle. “She will be our new ambassador for Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care.”

A team of six volunteers is working to get Emma acclimated to people. There is a set schedule for feeding, which only consists of fish. She can be fussy at times, but is coming around to her new life.

More than 900 people attended the open house. The record attendance was 1,200 in 2008 when Li’l Smokey was at LTWC.

LTWC will be adding to its bear cub collection today when another arrives from Southern California. This will be the 86th bear to come to LTWC in the time that it has existed.

To donate or for more info about LTWC, go online.