All of this is noteworthy mostly because our Center has been in the midst of many of the most successful accomplishments we’ve had in all 23 years of CSERC’s existence. We’ve won lawsuits, won appeals of decisions, won key actions by county decision-makers, and won negotiated settlements of major legal challenges. We’ve set new records for the number of water quality samples taken in local forest streams and for the number of hands-on volunteer restoration workdays accomplished last year on public lands of our region.
We’ve been busy giving quotes and background information to reporters, answering questions for concerned citizens, and supporting grassroots volunteer groups with technical information and years of experience.
I attended an important state and federal agency meeting in Davis today and will be in Sacramento tomorrow to attend a completely separate state meeting concerning wildlife connectivity across the Sierra Nevada foothills. Our CSERC staff currently has wildlife photo-detection stations set up in four locations in Yosemite National Park, searching for rare wildlife, and another station focusing exclusively on the Pacific fisher in the Mokelumne watershed. In private forest matters, CSERC just finished engaging with State forestry officials over a pivotal regulation that will hopefully now result in thousands of large oaks being protected in clearcut logging projects across our region.
On top of all of our regular work, our staff has literally poured hundreds of hours of staff time into intensive scrutiny of three major management plans for Yosemite National Park that will shape the future for Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite Valley, and the Mariposa Grove. We are negotiating with the U.S. Forest Service over a legal resolution to our successful lawsuit against what we believe is an environmentally harmful plan that favors off-road-vehicle use instead of protecting water and soil resources in the national forest.
All the above is just a portion of the broad range of work that our CSERC staff takes on across 2,000,000 acres of the Northern Yosemite region. And what is amazing when our Center is compared to organizations many times larger is that we do all the above and much more, PLUS we reach over 8,000 kids each year with free environmental slide show presentations at schools in urban communities down in the Central Valley.
Even if we don’t even begin to discuss our meadow and stream surveys, our collaborative watershed planning efforts, our forest restoration collaborative involvement, and CSERC’s careful reviews of every proposed development project in Tuolumne County and Calaveras County… and even if we don’t go into any detail about our engagement in every proposed logging, fuel treatment, road management, and recreation project within the local national forest… just the rest of the work described above reflects how much CSERC accomplishes on so many important environmental issues. We honestly make a truly significant difference -- week after week, year after year -- for water, wildlife, and wild places of our precious region.
But what we HAVEN”T been successful at doing is finding ways to advertise CSERC’s breadth of achievements and to reach out to find hundreds of new members who will donate some amount, whether large or small, to help CSERC stay afloat.
In 2012 CSERC ended the year with a budget shortfall of more than $60,000. We had to dig deep into our emergency reserve funds to keep our staff functioning. We cannot have a repeat of last year. We need our existing members and those who come across us online to donate as generously as they can. And we also need our members and those who are inspired by our achievements to reach out to others and SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT CSERC!
This Director’s Report is openly self-serving. Our CSERC staff takes great pride in all the pivotal work that we do with dedication and with a persistent goal of excellence. But we humbly admit that we are stumped at how to significantly boost our base of donating supporters so that we can keep our intensive efforts going.
PLEASE DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO GET FRIENDS, FAMILY, OR FELLOW WORKERS TO JOIN CSERC AND DONATE TO OUR WORK.
SEND CSERC's VIDEO LINK TO THOSE WHO MAY HAVE 2 MINUTES TO SPARE.
E-MAIL US YOUR IDEAS! DONATE A SINGLE CONTRIBUTION OR SEND US $5 OR $10 A MONTH BY GOING TO OUR WEBSITE DONATION PAGE. INVEST IN CSERC IN THE SAME WAY THAT OUR STAFF INVESTS OUR TIME AND ENERGY INTO PROTECTING THIS INCREDIBLE REGION.
Thank you for caring enough to read this far.
Now please help us to grow our membership so we can do even more key work. |
