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Steep river canyons lined with cottonwood trees are the signature landscape in Utah's Zion National Park. But a new report issued jointly by the park and the Grand Canyon Trust finds that without intervention, the giant trees will likely vanish in the next few decades.
That's because the trees in the lush forests that border the park's Virgin River are all over 70 years old. "There're no youngsters," says Jim McMahon, a former Grand Canyon Trust staffer, who oversaw the study. "This is a retirement community; it's not a healthy, reproducing community."
The reason, according to McMahon, is a century of human manipulation. In the 1930s, the federal government constructed two miles of stone levees to protect roads and park facilities from floods. But the levees have also kept the river from its historic floodplain, where it once deposited sediments vital to cottonwood seed germination.
The report recommends that the Park Service remove the levees - at an estimated cost of $5 million. Park officials say they won't make a decision about restoration for at least another year. First, they'll talk with downstream water users about the effect of dike removal on erosion and increased sedimentation in the river.
"There's a lot of other people potentially impacted by our decision," says Zion resource manager Jeff Bradybaugh. But any water-quality impacts can be mitigated, he says, and in the long run, the proposed project will benefit water users because a free-flowing river will put more water in the floodplain and replenish the water table.
At a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Thursday, Congress members shed light on egregious sexual harassment and gender discrimination in two of America's most cherished parks: Yellowstone and Yosemite. They join the growing list of national parks plagued by a culture of sexual harassment, retaliation and intimidation.
It's not the first time Congress has put the National Park Service on the spot: in June, Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, Elijah Cummings, D- Maryland and other committee members spent hours interrogating NPS director Jon Jarvis about a multi-decade pattern of sexual harassment in Grand Canyon National Park's River District and a Department of Interior investigation of sexual harassment in Florida's Canaveral National Seashore.
This week, the committee grilled Mike Reynolds, the new deputy director of the Park Service, about why the agency hasn't taken more action since these problems were revealed earlier this year. They also interviewed Kelly Martin, chief of fire and aviation management at Yosemite and one of the more prominent female officials in the agency, about her own issues with sexual harassment in the agency, and Brian Healy, fisheries program manager at Grand Canyon, about how the park has changed its ways since a Department of Interior investigation revealed nearly two decades of sexual harassment and retaliation, and inaction on the part of the park administration.
If you are a federal public land employee and would like to report your own experience with sexual harassment, please fill out our confidential tip form. We'd also like to hear from Yosemite and Yellowstone employees who have experienced some of the harassment described in this article.
According to the committee, 18 Yosemite employees have come forward saying Superintendent Don Neubacher, who has been in charge of the park since 2010, bullied, intimidated, and humiliated them. Neubacher's wife, Patricia, is the deputy director of the Pacific West Region, which oversees Yosemite, which legislators say makes the problem worse. During the opening statements, Chaffetz quoted the Yosemite investigator, also a Park Service employee: "The number of employees interviewed about the horrific working conditions lead us to believe that the environment is toxic, hostile, repressive, and harassing."
Martin spoke about the sexual harassment she's experienced throughout her 32-year career. She told of one incident early in her career, when a park ranger watched her shower through a bathroom window. When she reported it, he apologized to her but the park took no action, and he was promoted through the ranks until he retired as a deputy superintendent, she said. She also said that Yosemite still has problems, and male and female employees are "publicly humiliated by the superintendent, intimidated in front of colleagues, and are having their professional credibility and integrity minimized or questioned."
Montana Pioneer reported allegations of sexual misconduct in Yellowstone in early September. The accusations include sexual exploitation, intimidation, retaliation and sexual harassment. One employee, Robert Hester, told the publication that female employees were being coerced by supervisors to perform sexual acts, and alleged that a department chief knew about it. The superintendent, Dan Wenk, told the publication that he was unaware of any misconduct.
Reynolds said in the testimony Thursday that he was made aware of the problems in Yellowstone the first week of September, and a third-party investigator will arrive at the park by the end of the month.
It was also revealed this week that the chief ranger accused of harassment in Canaveral National Seashore is still employed by the park and allowed to work from home. The park's superintendent was promoted to the Southeast Regional office in Atlanta and is also working from home.
NPS officials have stuck to the same message they've given since the Grand Canyon report was released in January: they have implemented mandatory sexual harassment training, a hotline for victims to call immediately when they experience harassment (though employees say the hotline is not set up yet, it is expected in October) and will run a survey this year to determine how widespread the problem is. On Thursday, committee members told them that didn't go far enough.
"We see this time and time again. It's not good enough to just say we're going to ask the Inspector General to do it," Chaffetz said. "The Park Service and other agencies need to do their job and provide immediate relief, not punt it to someone else to start doing it. It's not good enough to just say we're going to do a survey. I'm tired of hearing about surveys. There's a problem."
This story has been corrected to reflect that there have been official allegations of gender discrimination in Yosemite, not sexual harassment.]]>
When Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Mike Finley started to feel the budget pinch this summer, he made sure everyone knew about it.
Finley closed a popular campground and two museums in Yellowstone, and threatened to shorten the park season by as much as two months. "We can no longer do more with less," he said flatly.
It didn't take long for local businesses and Wyoming's congressional delegation to accuse the superintendent of poor planning and grandstanding. "This dramatic move is designed only to evoke public discontent," wrote Sens. Al Simpson and Craig Thomas and Rep. Barbara Cubin, all Republicans, in a letter to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.
Mike Morey, a researcher for the Wyoming Chamber of Commerce, said the campground closing alone cost the region about $1 million in lost business.
In July, Cubin prompted the House Resources Committee to review the park's books. While the results of the review are not yet public, it was enough to prompt both Cubin and Thomas to schedule visits of their own to Yellowstone later this summer.
Finley insists that he tried to minimize impacts on visitors by cutting long-term projects and siphoning money into campgrounds and visitors' centers. He says he resorted to closures only after cutting all road maintenance, slashing science, reducing seasonal staff, and leaving some permanent positions vacant.
Simpson and Thomas have introduced legislation that would increase Yellowstone's funding by $4 million, but Finley says it's not enough. Don Striker, Yellowstone's budget officer, says they would need roughly $8 million to $13 million more each year to run the park properly.
"People in Washington think, "Yellowstone's got $19 million, how could they be having problems?" " says Striker. He hopes that the review will offer Congress a look at the complexities and shortfalls of parks funding. "We're not out here whining just to make a political statement."
To read this article, download this HCN issue in PDF format.]]>
See all the images submitted to this year's contest.]]>
William Henry Jackson Photos, Exhibit of rare, original photochromes and cabinet cards at FAD (Furniture, Art & Design) Gallery, 107 Grand Ave., Mancos, CO
The LWCF does a lot more than buy inholdings. Roughly half of it goes to providing conservation easements on private land, conserving privately owned timberlands, developing urban parks and ball fields, and funding endangered species projects on non-federal lands.
Since its inception in 1964, the LWCF has protected more than 7 million acres. The fund draws no taxpayer dollars; most of it comes from royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling. "There's poetry in the idea that we can use revenue generated from the depletion of one resource to enhance another," says John Gale, conservation director of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. Since 1978, the fund has been authorized to receive up to $900 million annually, though in recent years Congress has appropriated less than a third of that.
But even as Congress cut LWCF's funding, members on both sides of the aisle were trying to use it for projects in their own districts. According to a 2014 investigation by Greenwire, 16 Republicans, 48 Democrats and three independents had pushed for land acquisition, conservation easements, and grants for local parks and trails over the previous five years.
LWCF's primary foe is Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, R, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, who has refused to even allow hearings on the bipartisan reauthorization bill that's been sitting in his committee since April. He's vowed to continue blocking LWCF until it's been reformed, citing his opposition to an increase in federal lands for any reason. (Just over two years ago, though, Bishop had proposed that Utah counties negotiate- to get more congressionally designated wilderness, as a bargaining chip for increased energy development.) "We are not going to blindly reauthorize a fund with inherent flaws," says Bishop spokeswoman Julia Slingsby. "This law needs to be updated to reflect the 21st century."
The fund that Bishop wants to update has provided $48 million to his state for local projects like soccer parks and swimming pools. It's also paid for acquiring more than 7,000 acres of private inholdings within Zion National Park, plus nearly 5,500 acres in Dinosaur National Monument. Bishop's reforms would put an end to such purchases. He has yet to offer a specific plan, but has suggested that the program's money could instead cover shortfalls in PILT, "payments in lieu of taxes" to counties with large amounts of federal land, or pay for the education of future energy-industry workers. He and other critics also say the fund should be used to cover the $12 billion maintenance backlog at national parks.
The LWCF has accumulated a $20 billion IOU thanks to the gap in appropriations, giving Bishop another excuse to stop funding it. But it's disingenuous to claim that this money is available to be spent, says Lynn Scarlett, managing director of public policy for The Nature Conservancy- and deputy Interior secretary under George W. Bush. "There is no magic $20 billion waiting around, or even one dollar," she says. "It's a paperwork credit for funds long ago used for other purposes."
Now that the program has been allowed to sunset, the royalty money meant for it is going to the general treasury. Under the continuing budget resolution that expires Dec. 11, the House and Senate could pass an extension of the LWCF and maintain that funding link. If they don't, though, re-establishing it will take an act of Congress.
Fund supporters are now scrambling to find a must-pass piece of legislation they can attach reauthorization to. The most promising is a compromise by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., that would make the program permanent and balance state and federal spending, giving each 40 percent of the annual appropriation, and allowing the remaining 20 percent to be spent flexibly. It would also create a separate fund to address the national park maintenance backlog. Other Western representatives have sponsored similar legislation, including Montana Sens. Steve Daines, R., and Jon Tester, D, as well as Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz.
Meanwhile, environmental and sportsmen's groups are lobbying mightily for the fund's resurrection. "It's hard for us to see something like LWCF that has broad support become a political chip," Gale says. "Congress should be able to function and move things that are good for the American people and absolutely a clear winner."]]>
Near the northern tip of South Dakota's Stronghold Table, where wind-whipped buffalo grass gives way to the Badlands' chasms and pinnacles, stands a hogan hammered from plywood and chipboard. Ten summers ago, Keith Janis, a rowdy, long-haired Oglala Lakota Sioux, roared out here in his truck, hooting and gesturing at the gray-shirted park rangers. This is Lakota land, he thought. The National Park Service has no business here. He pounded two cedar posts into the high prairie and defiantly strung a hammock beneath the stars. A Colorado couple helped him finish the hogan before winter.
Janis, now in his 50s, sought to reclaim 133,000 acres of tribal land that the National Park Service had controlled since 1968. Earlier, the U.S. Air Force had used it for bombing exercises. But to the Lakota, the Stronghold, at the southern end of Badlands National Park and the northwest corner of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, has long been a place of both protest and prayer. In 1890, Ghost Dancers gathered here to escape U.S. Army troops, which had recently arrived on the reservation after being alerted about "wild and crazy" dancing Indians. It's believed that the last Ghost Dance of the 1800s was performed here, just weeks before the Army slaughtered more than 200 men, women and children at Wounded Knee Creek, 30 miles south, in one of the darkest chapters in American history.
Soon, Janis' encampment held around 30 people, who quickly became as involved in tribal conflicts as in righting a historic wrong. Janis wanted his family's plot of land back. His blood cousin, George Tall, who declared himself the occupation's spokesman, wanted the land to be conserved and managed by the tribe. The Two Bulls family wanted to ensure that nobody, Park Service or not, confiscated the fossils they collected and sold on the black market.
A decade later, none had achieved their goals. Nevertheless, the protest had an unintended consequence: It catalyzed the creation of what could become the country's first Tribal National Park. Last June, John Yellow Bird Steele, then Oglala Lakota president, and the National Park Service agreed on a management plan that would return control of this region, known as the South Unit, to the tribe. Essentially, it will remain in the park system and comply with all the federal laws that apply to national parks, yet be managed entirely by the tribe. The Park Service and the tribe are already laying the groundwork for the management transfer, though an act of Congress will be required to formalize it, a process that could take several years. At least one Lakota has suggested renaming it "Wankankil Makoce Ki: The Awesome Land."
For all the symbolic heft of the pact, tribal members remain torn about the details and confused about what effect it will actually have on their daily lives. So last summer, I spent a week at the South Unit, trying to find out if the new park had a chance of succeeding amid the infighting, corruption, crime and desperation that have long plagued Pine Ridge. Park boosters expect it to bring in tourism dollars, and say it represents one of the best economic development opportunities the tribe has seen in years. Plus, it would create a nationally known landmark that the entire tribe could rally around. "I don't mean to be melodramatic, but it could change lives," says Steve Thede, deputy superintendent of Badlands National Park, adding, "I don't think for a minute it's going to be easy."
If you look at the official map, you'll see that Badlands is really two parks linked by an umbilical cord of land. About a million visitors a year visit the North Unit, which has paved roads, a year-round visitor's center, hiking trails, a café and two campgrounds. Bison, bighorn sheep and antelope are abundant, along with prairie dog metropolises and endangered black-footed ferrets.
Although fewer than 2 percent of tourists make it to the South Unit, it survives on a small infusion of cash from the north. The largest hunk of land is the Stronghold Unit. Another part, Palmer Creek, is completely separate -- an island surrounded by private ranches and three strands of barbed wire. Although the geology of the South Unit rivals anything in the north, much of it is remote and accessible only by four-wheel-drive. It serves mostly as a place for locals to poach fossils and graze cattle. There are no bison or marked trails, and the land harbors unexploded ordnance left over from its Air Force days. Visitors are warned not to pick up suspicious objects; they might explode.
Driving through the Pine Ridge Reservation (population 28,787), I was struck by its beauty: the low, chalky buttes and fissures in the rolling prairie packed with gnarled trees. The landscape was easy to romanticize. But then the next charmless town would appear, with its potholed roads, lopsided mobile homes, and gas stations with bars over their windows. One of the first things many locals told me was whether or not they had diabetes. They usually did.
The best jobs on the reservation are with the tribe or the Bureau of Indian Affairs, followed by Prairie Winds Casino, Taco John's and Subway. The poor soil means that ranchers need vast grazing allotments, such as those inside the South Unit. Only a fraction of the reservation is suitable for farming, and the tribe's flagship agricultural experiment -- industrial hemp cultivation -- was quashed by the Drug Enforcement Agency in the early 2000s. Some members earn an income from the South Unit and other tourist sites, leading hunts or horseback trips, running guest houses, or selling dreamcatchers by the side of the road. But the county's average per capita income is only $7,772, and the tribe's unemployment rate usually hovers around 80 percent, making this one of the country's poorest regions.
Although alcohol is banned, just south of the reservation is Whiteclay, Neb., a town of 10 that sells 4.9 million cans of beer each year. Fetal alcohol syndrome and drunk driving accidents are rampant on the reservation. In 2011, tribal police reported 2,011 cases of child abuse or domestic violence, 2,561 fights or assaults, and one homicide. Just 49 police officers patrol Pine Ridge's 3,159 square miles. Rapid City, by comparison, has twice the officers and gets fewer calls.
The Oglala Lakota trace their decline to the breaking of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which gave them and other Sioux tribes land stretching east from the Black Hills through most of South Dakota and into neighboring states. Peace lasted six years. Then, Lt. Col. George Custer came to the Black Hills to establish a fort, and civilians struck gold. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull took up arms and killed Custer in the Battle of Little Bighorn. One year later, Crazy Horse was stabbed in the back after he surrendered in Nebraska. The Great Sioux Reservation was splintered into five smaller reservations, and further whittled away through shady land deals. The Sioux tribes won a 1980 Supreme Court case over the broken treaty, but have refused settlement money. They're holding out for the return of the Black Hills.----
The modern saga of the South Unit began during World War II, when the military took control of 341,726 acres in the northern part of Pine Ridge. The government bought or leased the land from the tribe and individual owners, forcing 125 families to relocate. After the War, the South Dakota National Guard ran exercises here until 1968.
Around that time, Keith Janis' family lobbied for the return of their land. But tribal leaders were busy negotiating with the Park Service over the southward expansion of Badlands, which would justify its upgrade from national monument status. In 1976, Tribal President Dick Wilson signed a memorandum of agreement, turning one-third of the former bombing range into the South Unit and giving the Park Service management authority.
"He gave that land away," says Andrea Two Bulls, an artist and fossil collector. Though uprooted families received compensation, resentment lingers, in part because many had voted to impeach Wilson three years earlier. The reservation was locked in a violent conflict. On one side were the full-blooded traditionalists of the American Indian Movement (AIM), bent on righting historic wrongs and giving Native nations full sovereignty. The other, mixed-race assimilationists including Wilson and the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs), saw advantages to allying with the federal government and reaching a financial settlement over the Black Hills.
In exchange for taking over administration of the land, the Park Service promised the Oglala Lakota infrastructure, roads, trails and cash, most of which were never delivered. They survive only in the 1982 master plan, which includes a drawing of the White River Visitor Center that the agency was supposed to ask Congress for money to build. It was an ambitious project, complete with an open-air bazaar, curio shop, Indian heritage center, 100-seat restaurant, 100-pillow motel, a campground and employee housing. Badlands National Park now spends $166,000 of its $4.6 million budget on operations in the South, employing just three staff members, two of them seasonal. Meanwhile, the North Unit has 45 full-time employees.
The tribe, in turn, failed to fulfill its own promises, by not submitting, for instance, a yearly audit indicating how its $650,000 annual share of the North Unit's gate receipts was being spent for recreational facility development.
Some tribal members prospered, however. In June 1999, a park ranger drove out to a remote area north of the Stronghold Table, which is loaded with the remains of Titanotheres, elephant-sized mammals with bony horns. The ranger was shocked to see bones jutting out of the dirt and weathering away in the wind and rain. He counted 19 "poach pits," where collectors had illegally extracted prized fossils, and likely sold them.
Park paleontologist Rachel Benton won a grant to survey and protect the Titanotheres with the help of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. In April 2002, then-Badlands Superintendent William Supernaugh sent the tribe a letter informing it of the planned excavation. Tribal President Steele replied sternly: "NPS does not have unilateral authority to authorize museums and other entities to go on Tribal lands."
Supernaugh replied by warning Steele that the federal government was not bound by tribal ordinances. "This comment, made by a United States government official, does not demonstrate respect to the Oglala Sioux Tribe," Steele wrote, declaring a moratorium on excavation until the two sides could reach an agreement. By then, rumors had spread that the "graveyard" contained human bones, and a tribal elder claimed on KILI radio that a ranger had accosted her while she prayed on the Stronghold. Keith Janis packed his truck.
Resolution was achieved not through consensus and compromise, but by the passing of time and weakening of resolve. Janis was the last holdout. At one point, he tied a 6-foot climbing rope around his ankle and staked himself to the earth, telling a tribal police officer that he was willing to die for his cause. George Tall even came out to urge Janis to compromise. Then, Janis' mother got cancer, and he left the Stronghold for good in 2004. In 2011, Janis says, Tall was run down in his driveway by his own drunken grandson. Janis cleaned him, dressed him, and gave him a traditional funeral service.----
Ultimately, the pathway to peace began with two brothers. In 2005, Paige Baker, a Mandan-Hidatsa from North Dakota, became Badlands National Park's superintendent. On his watch, the rodent-infested trailer that served as the White River Visitor Center was replaced with a hand-me-down building from the North Unit. Baker brought tribal biologists from the south to train with park employees on tasks such as tracking and monitoring swift fox populations.
And Baker worked closely with the Lakota to sketch out the South Unit's future. From the beginning, opinions varied. At a meeting in the town of Allen in April 2008, locals demanded everything from oil exploration to a new casino to the return of the land to its original owners. "Can we stop the spread of prairie dogs?" someone asked. "They are wrecking the land." Some still wanted to expel the Park Service; others trusted the tribal government even less.
Less than two years after Baker retired from the Park Service in 2010, his younger brother, Gerard, became involved on the tribal side, filling in as director of the Oglala Sioux Parks and Recreation Authority (OSPRA). He faced a huge task: to finalize the management plan and environmental impact statement for the future South Unit. Even Janis eventually joined the planning team. The South Unit options included maintaining the status quo, returning the land to the tribe and de-authorizing the park, sharing park management, or turning management over to the tribe while keeping the land in the park system. OSPRA and the Park Service officially agreed last summer that the last option was the best: establishing a tribal national park.
OSPRA is guiding the South Unit through this first-of-its-kind transition. It's already taken over day-to-day duties there, although it still operates under the auspices of the northern headquarters. In summer, OSPRA staffs the White River Visitor's Center, but the bulk of its operations take place about 25 miles east in a trailer complex in Kyle. As a charter organization that handles fishing and hunting licenses along with managing the 600-head tribal bison herd, OSPRA is semi-autonomous and has a separate budget from the tribe. Its funding comes from a cut of national park entrance fees and from the sale of bison, which are used for funerals and celebrations. If the South Unit broke off from the North Unit as a tribal national park, OSPRA would get some cash directly from the federal government. But it might also lose its cut of the North Unit's gate fees, and have to compete with it to convince tourists to pay a second fee. Those decisions will be up to Congress, but members of South Dakota's congressional delegation did not respond to requests for comment on their views concerning the park's future.
One person who is not averse to talking about the future of the park is Gerard Baker, an imposing figure who sports two long white braids. He has diabetes, but still looks strong enough to track a wounded buffalo on foot. In fact, he has given up hunting, but still skins and stretches the hides of road-killed animals. Baker served as superintendent of Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, where he ticked off Custer aficionados by hiring Indian interpreters. He says his last field posting at Mount Rushmore irked Park Service staff who didn't think an Indian belonged at a monument to four white men.
"I spent 35 years with the National Park Service," Baker told me. "My first job was cleaning toilets, and I worked my way down to management from there."
Inside a restaurant in Kyle, Baker sketched out the romantic vision laid out in the new management plan. Restoring bison seemed like a natural project, and the plan includes options for removing cattle from the South Unit to make room for them. Park supporters also want to seek federal money to install a museum of Lakota culture to educate tourists and tribal children, create a bazaar for handicrafts, and hire Lakota park interpreters to recount the history of the Badlands, as suggested in the 1982 plan. The tribe would receive an annual budget from Congress, two-dozen jobs for tribal members and eligibility to apply for special National Park Service funds for the new infrastructure. And the park could be a boon to Pine Ridge's modest tourist industry and roadside vendors. Between bites of his gravy-soaked sandwich, Gerard added that tourists could also learn about the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee and the 1973 standoff at the same site between the American Indian Movement and Wilson and his followers.
If the Badlands become the first tribal national park, Baker sees it as a model for other Indians to follow. Though many parks sit on land once occupied by tribes, the South Unit is one of only two national parks on land that's still tribally owned. The other is Arizona's Canyon de Chelly National Monument, which lies inside the Navajo Nation but is managed by the Park Service. "If you look at a National Park Service map and a tribal map, there's all kinds of potential," he said. Maybe the Miwoks will never roam Yosemite again, nor the Crow and the Cheyenne regain Yellowstone, but perhaps they can manage or co-manage the parks. "I'm not sure if parks like the Statue of Liberty will be changing, but there were Indians there, too!"
About 30 miles southwest of Kyle is the town of Manderson, known locally as "Murderville." When I met John Rondeau outside Pinky's General Store, he had a white, triangular bandage stretching from his cheek down to his jaw to conceal his scars. "I just got drunk one night, and got in a real bad car wreck," he told me. As he spoke, he had to periodically suck in the saliva that came dripping out of his mangled lower lip. His right arm was a cobweb of toughened connective tissue, seared from the truck's exhaust. Not long after the accident, his younger brother, Leonard, went to prison for murder. "It's tough living here," Rondeau told me. "It really is."
When I asked him if he thought a tribal national park could help turn his fortunes around, he shook his head slowly. "If this goes through, there's going to be a lot of rich folks on this reservation," he said. "But I guarantee you it's not going to be any full-blooded Indian."
Despite Gerard Baker's optimism, this sort of deep ambivalence is common on Pine Ridge, raising questions about the park's potential to provide real economic benefits and become a beacon of cultural pride. Before I visited, I saw a video posted online by some tribal members, with a survey concluding that a majority supported the park. But during my week on the ground, it was difficult to find anyone who whole-heartedly endorsed it.
Residents were welcome to submit comments on the management plan as it was developed, but they had little power over the outcome of the process, and many remained cynical about their own elected leaders and bureaucrats. Ultimately, the decision to move forward, working with the federal government to form a tribal national park, was made by the 19 tribal council members. Some locals, including Andrea Two Bulls, believe that such a contentious and important issue should have been decided by tribal referendum. "There's a lot of us who love these Badlands," she told me, adding that the National Park Service should not have a hand in managing them. "Let's just do a tribal park."----
There are also doubts over whether existing tribal institutions are up to managing a national park and its finances. OSPRA, despite its earnest staff, is plagued with problems. One evening, I sat in on a board of directors' meeting in Manderson. A dozen people sat around two folding tables as a crockpot of bison stew simmered in the kitchen.
The front of the blue wooden building, which is owned by OSPRA, was a warren of cubicles -- relics from a failed call center that has since been rented out intermittently. OSPRA had also recently lost the concession to the Cedar Pass Lodge in the North Unit, and a vacant property in the town of Interior was eating into its budget. It was forced to up its general line of credit to $375,000. Now, it was struggling with its core mission: bison management. A hundred or so head had vanished, and the FBI was investigating.
"How did we get so bad?" asked a woman named Donna Lamont. "We are so far in debt, but we don't know why we are in debt."
"Look at the big picture," said Virgil Bush, the board president. "We have that South Unit here. The governing body is going to be responsible for millions of dollars. How are we going to manage that, if we can't manage what little we have here?" He sighed. "This is a big ol' black eye financially. We're not making nothing out of it."
A few days later, I opened my tent and looked out across an expanse of desiccated bison poop. I had arrived after midnight to sleep at the North Unit's Sage Creek campground. I saw a pair of bison lazily shifting in the morning sun. Their shaggy winter coats seemed to be peeling off like old carpet. Nearby, a chubby white guy stood in the grass with a brown felt hat, a sage green shirt, and khaki pants, his hand in a Costco-sized box of Cheerios. He was from New Jersey, and his name was Jonathan.
I asked if he knew much about the South Unit. Last year, he had visited the reservation. He spent the whole day driving around on bad roads and was so paranoid he handed out $20 bills whenever he parked his car. He didn't see much. "I was intimidated," he said. "I can hike around here, no problem, or I can go down there and there's a slight chance I'll come across a bomb."
I thought Jonathan's concerns seemed overblown. Still, it's not uncommon for outsiders to find Pine Ridge intimidating -- a formidable challenge to increasing visitation to the park and the flow of tourism dollars to the reservation. Even the spectacular North Unit has always been a second-tier park -- a pit stop on the interstate to Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone. The prospect of sustainable tourism in the South Unit seemed even more remote given its serious image problems, not to mention its distance from a major highway. "We're not going to see a million visitors," said Ivan Sorbel, executive director of the Pine Ridge Area Chamber of Commerce. "You can't expect to throw a bunch of buffalo out there and expect (people) to come and look at them."
Indeed, a successful, mission-defining program like bison restoration seemed impossible in light of the tribe's financial problems, land disputes and the weight of history. The World Wildlife Fund is paying a consultant to help the tribe weigh the profitability of bison under various management schemes. But getting cattle ranchers in the South Unit on the same page as conservationists and other park supporters would be a challenge in itself.
To better understand these complications, one afternoon I met Merle Temple in Rockyford. Temple is a local legend: He won the Indian National Rodeo Finals in bareback in 1985 and qualified for the National Rodeo Finals in Las Vegas five times. Today, he leases range unit 508 in the South Unit from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and also grazes cattle on a patchwork of private land outside the park. In the management plan, the tribe has proposed building the Lakota Heritage and Education Center on a bluff overlooking his allotment, potentially removing his cattle and re-stocking the area with bison, so they could be next to the highway and easily visible to visitors.
In his home, Temple sat in a brown La-Z-Boy with a plate of noodles and beef. His face was sun-reddened and his hair matted from his wide-brimmed hat. "Ranching is hard enough to pay your bills," Temple said, explaining his opposition to the park. With gas costs so high, he'd resent being pushed to a distant pasture somewhere else. "That's just a little part of it for me," he added. "This is my home. I don't know why people can't understand that." His family, he noted, had been kicked off the bombing range in the '40s, and he wasn't keen to see history repeat itself. He suggested we drive out to the 508. The cattle wouldn't be there for another week, but he could show me the land before sunset.
Bison were reintroduced to the North Unit in 1963. Things have been more complicated in the South Unit, and the biggest obstacle today may be the Prairie Winds Casino. Expanded in 2005 with a loan from Minnesota's prosperous Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux, the casino employs 200 tribal members. But it loses money every year, and Temple said that grazing leases in the 508 and other parts of the South Unit are collateral on the casino debt, something I was unable to confirm with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. "We might all be speaking Shakopee before long," Temple said, as we inched along the grassy lip of Stirk Table.
We dropped into a wide canyon, the ground lush with new grass, the dry riverbed pale and chalky. Once, Temple and his brother got lost here after dark. They finally saw their father's headlights up on the bluff and started galloping toward them. Temple doesn't have anything personal against bison. "A lot of times I'm just riding around thinking about the time before fences, when the buffalo was still roaming," he mused. "That must have been quite a sight."
Most of us like our stories to end neatly, with a clear conclusion. This one doesn't. It's still a work in progress, and no one can say how things will turn out for the first proposed tribal national park and the tribe that stands to benefit from it.
Still, the conflict on Pine Ridge at times seems irresolvable; the burden of history too heavy. The many arguing voices may seem like a major obstacle to the park's ambitious goals. And yet, I began to view those voices as part of the tribe's great strength. There is not one Lakota, but thousands. They are enduring and opinionated. The fight is part of their bones, blood and spirit. Were it not for that, they would have never endured for so long in the face of so many tragedies and injustices. And, yet, together, they are on course to make history by regaining control of national park land. That alone is something to celebrate.
Late one afternoon, I joined Jill Majerus, a tourism expert with the WWF, on a few errands around Pine Ridge. We were headed to the OSPRA trailers in Kyle, and when we got there, tribal biologist Trudy Ecoffey met us at the door. "It smells pretty bad," she warned us as we walked to the back of the building and opened a chest freezer. There, a gangly male wolf was contorted in the confines of this temporary coffin. His paws were as large as our own hands, and Majerus stroked his thick white fur. "He looks so much bigger than in the picture," she said. The stench of rot permeated the room. Ecoffey said that the wolf's collar traced to the Yellowstone pack, about 450 miles away. It had been hit by a car near Pine Ridge town. "This is our first one," she said.
As sad as the sight of its dead body was, the wolf seemed like a promising sign: a hint that the primeval spirit of this land had not yet been exterminated. Gerard Baker told me that bringing back wolves in the Badlands was too much to ask for. Sometimes, I guess, it doesn't hurt to hope.]]>
Until that moment, the only surprising sight had been the occasional homeless person. "It was like finding Bigfoot," Cooper says. "The difference being that Bigfoot doesn't exist, so you couldn't really hope for it."
Griffith Park is, technically, part of the Santa Monica Mountains, which begin in slide-prone bluffs along the Southern California coast, rise to 3,000 feet and then taper off until they disappear at the Los Angeles River, 45 miles inland. The mountains, state parks, open space preserves and a recreation area managed by the National Park Service form a patchwork ecosystem that functions, albeit in a strangled way, as it has for thousands of years, and not least because the cougar has persisted here as a native predator. Only eight to 10 lions remain in the mountain range, all in the western reaches. But they still play a key role managing deer and coyote. Cooper, who monitors the park on behalf of local neighborhood groups, was gratified to have documented the first evidence of a mountain lion so far east, on this "very constricted peninsula of habitat" in the city.
Cooper called National Park Service biologist Jeff Sikich, who leads a research team studying the Santa Monica lions. Sikich managed to capture the lion, take blood samples and fit it with a GPS collar. A genetics lab at the University of California at Los Angeles determined that it had indeed been born in the Santa Monicas. The biologists named it P-22 -- the 22nd puma Park Service researchers had collared since their study began in 2002.
Puma concolor, alternately called the mountain lion, puma or cougar, is not an urban predator; it has not adapted, like the coyote or the raven, to the perilous bounty of cohabitation with humans. That P-22 made it to the Hollywood Hills is close to a miracle. A 3-year-old, 110-pound male, the lion was probably looking for his own home territory to avoid a turf battle with another male lion, the most common cause of death among his kind here. Cooper surmises that he followed a deer into the park, first crossing one freeway screaming with traffic and negotiating his way through golf courses, swimming pools and clusters of six-bedroom homes with ocean views.
Once he arrived east, he stayed. "We've learned that the whole park is its territory," Cooper says. But it's a tiny, lonely one. P-22 may find enough meals in the park's other wildlife. What he won't do is find a mate. "Where the lion can go from here," Cooper says, "that's really an open question."
It's not just a question that applies to P-22. The Santa Monica Mountains' big cats die in all kinds of ways: on freeways, ingesting rat poison, shot by poachers. But there is no greater threat to their survival than the simple fact that they are imprisoned where they're born. Any route out can be deadly for an individual lion. No way out will ultimately be deadly for them all.
When I meet Jeff Sikich one August morning on a Malibu road in the heart of the mountains, I think they've sent the wrong guy. The 37-year-old looks too young to be the world-renowned expert I've read about. Only when he takes off his park-ranger cadet cap do I notice a few convincing flecks of gray in his close-cut hair. He is tall, thin, taciturn and focused. When I ask him whether it's a bother having journalists tag along during his work, he answers promptly: "Yes."
Sikich travels frequently to Peru to study the pumas of the Andes; he recently taught South African biologists his darting techniques. But most of his work is more mundane: trudging up hills, radio in hand, waving a duct-taped antenna in the air and listening for beeps from a box. Sometimes he walks dirt trails or bushwhacks through the sage and poison oak to get at his target. Other times he drives up steep roads in suburban neighborhoods, startling their elderly residents. ("Is he a police officer?" one freshly coiffed octogenarian in smart green sandals asks me. "No," I assure her. "He's a biologist.")
The beeps come in different frequencies to distinguish individual lions. Listening is exacting work: Even on Sandstone Peak -- at 3,111 feet, the mountains' highest point -- lawn mowers, weed whackers and boats at sea all interfere with the pings Sikich is looking for, which emanate from a collared mother and her two four-month-old kittens. When Sikich hears them, he pencils in the time and GPS coordinates on a ledger.
It's early still; fog from the ocean settles in the gaps between the green-and-dun mountains. "Mom's been here the past two nights," Sikich says, pointing inland to a small granite escarpment. "She probably made a deer kill, buried it, then went back and grabbed the kittens who were over on the other side of that ridge."
Mom is P-19, the lone survivor of four born in May 2010; her kittens arrived last April. Biologists thought it a hopeful sign that P-19 would whelp so young, right on schedule; it meant she had food. But the kittens' blood tests were less encouraging; they showed P-19 had mated with P-12, an itinerant male from a larger habitat to the north. P-12 had fathered two litters of kittens before. Among them was P-19.
The father-daughter tryst was the second instance of first-order inbreeding documented among the Santa Monica Mountains' puma population. The lions are now at risk for what biologists call "inbreeding depression" -- the same fate that befell a puma subspecies, the Florida panther, 20 years ago.
"They were going extinct," says Robert Wayne, the evolutionary biologist who oversees the DNA-testing lab at UCLA. "They had undescended testes, holes in their hearts, defective sperm." The Florida population only survived because they were, as Wayne puts it, "genetically rescued" in 1995 with the release of eight female panthers imported from Texas. Only the offspring of the imports have thrived.
The isolated cougars of the Santa Monicas don't need such a dramatic solution; other genetic strains roam not far away. Just 15 miles north of where P-19 is raising her kittens, space yawns open in the Santa Susana Mountains, which link to hundreds of square miles of contiguous habitat in the Los Padres National Forest. But to move that direction, animals have to cross all eight lanes of the 101 Freeway, which connects the cities of Los Angeles and Ventura.
Sikich takes me to a place on the 101 where there's natural habitat on both sides, the aptly named Liberty Canyon. From the north, the canyon funnels wildlife onto a lightly used road under the freeway; P-12 crossed here. But an animal making its way down the slope south of the freeway, a narrow channel of green through the housing tracts, would have to brave a vacant three-story office building to find that route. "We've had animals turn around here," Sikich says. "The ones that risk the freeway usually end up dead."
Biologists, wildlife advocates and the California Department of Transportation have long lobbied for an underpass here whose entrance would make sense to wildlife. It would cost $10 million, but it would offer a safe option for animals compelled to migrate north. It might have lured P-22 toward more promising lands than Griffith Park. And it might have opened up a route for the unnamed young lion that, on May 22, tested his boundaries and found himself stranded in a city.
That Tuesday morning, janitor Rogelio Rodriguez showed up for his pre-dawn shift at a downtown Santa Monica office building and heard a strange scratching sound. When he went to investigate, he saw a fawn-colored feline, six feet long and half again as tall, pawing on a wall just a few feet away. The animal turned around and saw Rodriguez, then ran past him into a courtyard. Rodriguez called the police.
Later blood tests revealed the lion came from the Santa Monicas. A young male, not quite 2 years old, he had likely wandered down during the night, crossing three miles of backyards or following the beach. He was now more trapped than when he started.
Wildlife agents first tried darting the lion, but the drug didn't take. Instead, the animal ran. Glass walls eight-feet high surround that courtyard, "but the thinking was that if he could get in, he could get out into the street," says assistant chief of California Fish and Wildlife Dan Sforza; pumas can spring to the top of 15-foot cliffs. Local police officers tried to hold the animal back with pepper spray, but when "he came toward the glass, the police shot him."
Bystanders were horrified. Blogs and comments overflowed with protests. But Seth Riley, the principal investigator on the Park Service study, says that the saddest part of the story came later, with the lion's DNA tests. "He had some unique genetic markers not seen in our other Santa Monica lions," he laments. "And he never got to pass them on."
Last year, the California Department of Transportation was turned down for a federal grant to fund the Liberty Canyon underpass. Riley insists the cost is justified. "These mountain lions are the ultimate challenge for conservation," he says. "If the system is able to sustain large carnivores, it says something good about the way we're able to conserve it." If it's not, the fragment of wilderness known as the Santa Monica Mountains will devolve into another large urban park.]]>
Park staffers began with a two-year public "scoping" process involving thousands of people. Meetings were hosted in a handful of major Western cities, and five "work groups' formed around themes like private access and outfitter services. The groups met regularly to struggle through sticky issues, such as the unequal allocation of river permits among private boaters and outfitters, and the continued use of motorboats and helicopters in the backcountry (HCN, 12/21/98: Grand Canyon Gridlock).
"These meetings were not for making agreements or reaching consensus," says Willie Odem, president of the Grand Canyon Private Boaters Association, "but for information gathering by the park."
"There was nothing particularly unique or unprecedented about the process," says Linda Jalbert, outdoor recreation planner at Grand Canyon National Park, "nor do I think we have unique issues."
The process didn't always hum along. A draft proposal missed its deadline; Park Superintendent Robert Arnberger was heard to say that he wished the whole business would just go away. Intense differences of opinion, particularly between river outfitters and private boaters, resisted easy solutions. But it was a process; it was under way.
Then, in February 2000, Superintendent Arnberger abruptly announced that the wilderness planning effort was over - halted. A "stunning turnaround" is what Mark Grisham, president of the Grand Canyon River Outfitters' Association, called Arnberger's pullout, and Grisham represents a contingent that appears to benefit most from maintaining the status quo at Grand Canyon.
Arnberger's decision even surprised some Park Service staffers. "I was shocked," says Jim Walters, deputy wilderness program director for the National Park Service Intermountain Region. "He just pulled the rug out."
In the deflated silence that followed his announcement, Superintendent Arnberger sent a letter addressed to "Grand Canyon Constituents," in which he detailed the official rationale for his decision.
First, he said, the management discussion was too contentious. Second, the process would require too much in the way of park resources. Third, he didn't feel he had sufficient direction from Congress with respect to wilderness designation.
Randall Rasmussen, program manager with the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association, a citizens' watchdog group, calls Arnberger's argument "a straw man."
"Since when is controversy a reason to stop discussion?" he asks. "If contention is such a boogeyman, why did the NPS recently announce a proposal to exclude snowmobiles from 42 park units? Controversy should be a reason to include the public, not to exclude us!'
Rasmussen also bristles at Arnberger's citing lack of resources, since $400,000 was the projected spending on the planning process. They had already spent a good portion of that, he said, "which now appears to be wasted money."
Congressional direction is a moot point, Rasmussen says. NPS Director Robert Stanton issued Director's Order #41, specifically requiring all agency superintendents to complete wilderness management plans for all backcountry areas by 2002 - regardless of congressional designation.
In August 1999, the Park Service directive explicitly ordered phasing out nonconforming wilderness uses, such as motors on the Colorado River and snowmobiles in other parks, he says.
Agency staffer Walters adds that "our direct charge is to provide thorough assessment of backcountry and to manage it as wilderness until told otherwise. It is a clear and fundamental mandate."
To private boaters, it was hard not to conclude that the Park Service got cold feet. On one side of the debate sit commercial river outfitters, with 70 percent of the river-permit pie, motor and helicopter-supported trips and hefty political allies. On the other side sits an increasingly vocal group of private boaters who are fed up with a waiting-list system that can take two decades to work through, and angry at receiving only 30 percent of river permits. But while private boaters can protest, they lack political clout.
"We think," concludes Rasmussen, "that the Park Service saw some heavy rapids ahead in the management discussion and decided to simply jump out of the boat."
Odem says he met with Arnberger just hours after the superintendent's announcement. Arnberger told him, he says, that "he didn't want to be dragged in front of Congress again and ripped apart."
The previous fall, Utah Republican Rep. James Hansen had grilled Arnberger about possible wilderness designations in Grand Canyon.
"After that confrontation with Congress, the process stalled for six months or more. Then (came) the announcement to quit," Odem says.
Within days of Arnberger's announcement, Odem's private boaters' group decided unanimously to sue.
"What other option did we have?" asks Odem. "People had reached an extreme level of anger and frustration ... We understood that some of the consequences of the legal process might not be ideal, but that's what we were left with. We felt like we'd been kicked in the stomach."
On July 6, the Grand Canyon Private Boaters Association and its legal supporters held a news conference to announce their lawsuit against the Department of Interior and Arnberger. Plaintiffs in the case include the boaters' association, the National Parks Conservation Association, American Whitewater, and four private individuals.
"I don't think Arnberger expected us to get this kind of support," says Odem. "Instead of being confronted by our 650-member outfit, they are being challenged by groups with a combined membership of more than half a million."
Rasmussen says the lawsuit aims to get the Park Service back into the public-planning process, to challenge motors in wilderness backcountry, and to force an environmental review of contracts with river outfitters.
Kim Crumbo, one of the four citizen plaintiffs in the case, has a unique perspective on the situation. Crumbo left the Grand Canyon park staff, where he had spent 20 years as wilderness coordinator and river ranger, in September 1999. He'd been deeply involved with the backcountry planning process.
"I was looking at being fired for my views," says Crumbo, "so I retired instead. Besides, I felt I could do more good from the outside.
"I am an aggrieved party," Crumbo says, describing his part in the lawsuit. "First of all, I have signed up for a permit to float the Grand Canyon that I might have to wait 20 years for. It is an intolerable and patently unfair system. Second, as a citizen, I am suing the park to live up to its mandate to protect wilderness."
Crumbo isn't alone. Two other staff members directly involved with the planning process have either taken early retirement or requested a transfer. Superintendent Arnberger is also leaving Grand Canyon. After his announcement, Arnberger was promoted to regional director status, and will move to Alaska this fall.
Arnberger's February letter concludes with the words, "The end is not in sight, our work is not done, and progress will be made with the many opportunities yet available."
Since his surprise statement in February, however, the process has been essentially frozen. "No one is talking now," reports Grisham. "It's really frustrating to have made some discernible progress, and then have the whole thing come to a halt."
"This business could have been hammered out," agrees Crumbo. "There are ways to deal with these issues and come to compromises everyone could live with. My guess is that the Park Service saw this as a means to delay the confrontation."
Park Service employees refuse to comment on the issues or the lawsuit. Linda Jalbert reiterated Arnberger's statement that "the park was not successful in its strategy to proceed with planning in a manner that would avoid costly and unproductive debate." Public Affairs Officer Maureen Oltrogge reported that the Park Service is "working with their attorneys and studying the issues."
Meantime, the legal case will likely take years to grind through the courts. A new administration will move into the White House. Private boaters will inch up the waiting list, motors will drone down the sublime depths of the canyon, helicopters will whop overhead.
"If this goes to trial," predicts Odem, "whatever the verdict is will almost certainly be appealed."
Alan Kesselheim writes in Bozeman, Montana.
Copyright © 2000 HCN and Alan S. Kesselheim]]>
It all started in 1971, when Jim and his wife, Sandy, both elementary school teachers, took a two-week vacation in Yellowstone and Grand Teton parks. They were captivated by the experience, enough to return each summer for the next five years, while also deciding that they wanted to learn more about the region.
In 1977, they took their first class – geology -- at the Teton Science School at the foot of the Tetons. Then, for the next two years, they increased the time they spent in the West to four weeks each year, so they could take yet more classes and expand their explorations to Glacier and Rocky Mountain national parks.
They took classes in everything from meteorology to the lives of mountain men, from astronomy to storytelling. They studied bears and birds, coyotes and wolves, deer and pronghorn, insects and amphibians. They learned about the history of the parks and the ecosystems that support them. And then, once they were back home in their classrooms, Jim and Sandy shared what they knew with their young students.
In the 1980s, the Ungers spent three weeks getting to know other national parks in the West, including Rocky Mountain, Mesa Verde and Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado, and Utah's Bryce and Zion national parks. They went to Crater Lake and Mount Rainier, and to Kenai and Denali National Park in Alaska, soaking up stories and lore that they could then pass on to the children in their classes.
When I met them in the early '90s, they were attending a conference in western Wyoming at the college where I taught. They wanted to know what made my corner of the High Plains desert a microcosm of the West's history, so they hiked along the Oregon Trail's ruts, floated the Green River where John Wesley Powell began his historic journey, and were introduced to contentious modern-day land-use issues like natural gas drilling. The next year, they returned to spend a few days with a ranching family near the Wind River Mountains.
The Ungers made friends they'd correspond with and visit on return, and they became avid readers of both fiction and nonfiction about the West. All winter, as they planned their next trip West, Jim and Sandy immersed themselves in reading about it. By spring, they were ready to make their reservations.
Their trips got longer after they retired, stretching to two months in the West. Sandy's last trip, however, was in 2004: Her diabetes had finally made her too ill to travel. After her death, Jim made the hard journey back to Yellowstone to revisit all their favorite places. As he resumed their pattern of Western immersion, Jim told me he began to find purpose in his life again.
Since his first solo trip in 2008, Jim has spent more and more time in the West. His longest trip? Four months exploring the Canadian Rockies, Glacier, Yellowstone, the Tetons and the Black Hills. Sometimes, his sister or son comes along on his travels, which is how they've come to know why these places keep calling Jim back.
Recently, Jim's own health problems have prevented him from hiking the way he did with Sandy. But he has – and cherishes – his memories. "I'll stop at a trail head and spend hours just watching and listening ... to the wind in the grass, the trees, birds, whatever wildlife shows up. And I'll reminisce about when I came before and hiked the trail." Asked if he keeps a journal, Jim said, "No, but I remember every twist and turn of the trail, how it looked, what we saw." He explains that the beauty of nature calms him, gives him a feeling of tranquility, even euphoria, and transports him back to his youth. "Spending time in the West is like a miracle drug," he says.
Jim's words remind me of what Wallace Stegner said in his Wilderness Letter:
"We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."
Perhaps that's why the national parks and campgrounds of the West overflow all summer, every year. People from all over the world are not only curious to see our public lands, they also are searching for some kind of refuge in what is left of our country's wild places, each person seeking a personal geography of hope.
Marcia Hensley is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a column service of High Country News. She lives in the Denver area.]]>


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Enterasys Broadens Security Portfolio
Enterasys is branching out into security areas such as network access control and the detection of behavior anomalies.Enterasys Networks will jump into the network access control fray early in May at Interop when it launches what officials claim is the first federated NAC offering. Enterasys, a networking hardware and network-based security provider, will introduce its new Sentinel family of agentless NAC products on May 1 in Las Vegas.
The line is unique in its ability to assess and verify an end system without having to rely on an agent.
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Get an insight of expats' daily life in Zurich and read their blogAdd your blog
An American expat living in Zurich! We just moved here and I will continue writing my blog but with a new twist- my expat life!
The mishaps and musings of a Boston Girl in Zürich, Switzerland.
A librarian and a physicist from the USA pack up and move to Baden, Switzerland.
I'm a English Woman living in Switzerland, via Asia and the USA. I'm an avid traveller, Champagne drinker, restaurant connoisseur (not just posh ones), Gordon Ramsey minion, amateur photographer, people watcher/get-to-know-er and occasional golfer. I write about general everyday things, my travels and my love of both eating and cooking good food.
A blog about expat life and travel adventures written by an American woman living in Zurich, Switzerland.
I'm currently working as a Primary School Dance/Drama Teacher in Switzerland. Having previous been a second grade teacher in Poland, this is going back to my roots (as I grew up in theatre). This blog is about teaching, traveling and experiencing the theatre/arts scene in Zurich.
I am Dutch, but have been living abroad for the past eight years. I have lived in England, Italy and am currently based in Switzerland. I write about expat life in general and about the adjustments that we make as a family in particular
Switzerland and Zürich, images of nature and city, what I see...
Life as an expat.
Whether you're new to Zurich or not, NewInZurich is full of useful information about what's new in town and where you can find it. Also, lots of practical advice.
After years of dreaming of living abroad, we have finally arrived in Zurich, Switzerland. Join as we leave the Big Apple, adapt to Swiss life, and explore all that Europe has to offer. Jen: Former military brat. Manhattan L&D nurse turned Hausfrau. Kevin: Trini boy. The husband. Consultant on international rotation. Mya puppy: The sweetest lil' Shiba Inu there ever was.
I think everyone deserves the chance to live a happy life, full of love and loving, success, gratefulness, and fun! It's what I call living The Honeymoon Life... because you feel that giddy happy-floating-above-the-clouds feeling all your life. It doesn't go away. My blog documents my life as I try to live every day being happily in love, relaxed, excited about the future, confident to take on new adventures, grateful for those around me and the positive attitude that comes along with all of it.
a blog about my drawings, my paintings, ecc...
Trying to keep a sense of humor in a land that sometimes seems humorless.
In my blog about life in Switzerland I write a about Swiss food, Places to visit, traditions, language, nature, holidays and basically everything Swiss. I live in greater Zurich area and most of my post relate to the German speaking part of Switzerland but visits and stories from the French and Italian speaking parts (as well as some visits to the neighboring countries) will find their way into my blog as well. Enjoy!
This blog is about: a couple, their dog. moving to Zurich, day to day life, where they travel, how they handle culture shock, and of course -photos of everything along the way.
Hubby, me, and 4 year old son soaking up the culture, loving life, and trying to learn the language.
Architect moves from New Haven, CT to Zurich, Switzerland. This blog is a catalogue of architecture/ design interests, travel and cooking. We are enjoying settling into our new home and I hope you enjoy reading and following my new blog.
Travelling, day trips and other fun stuff I get up to with my son!
Half British, half Japanese girl learning to comfortably straddle more than one culture. Hoping to provide some advice as well as share her experiences as a constant foreigner, even in her own countries. Wants to learn German so she goes by the German-ified version of her Japanese name that her boyfriend chose for her. It's a start, no?
Willkommen: The best expat blogs from Germany
Germany with its thriving economy, robust democracy, and liberal outlook is one of Central Europe's most inviting expat destinations. Whether you are a student, professional, or entrepreneur, you will have no difficulty adjusting to the well-organised and efficient lifestyle — maybe with the help of a few words in German for a start. But wouldn't it be great to have an ally while living in Germany? We have selected five expat bloggers in Germany, whom we think you will appreciate for their experience and eagerness to share.
Expatriate health insurance in ZurichFree advice and quotation service to choose an expat health insurance in Zurich


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counting the days till my trip
5-21-09 30days till the trip :pickle::lol::ibtl::thumbup:
What trip????? I'm assuming that you are pretty excited.
Ok I forget, what trip is that?
Must be a guessing game, fishing trip?????
its a fishing trip to canada 5-26-09 25days
5-28-09 23days
do I get a prize for winning the guessing game? Have a great trip. I leave around July 30th for my Canadian fishing trip. I've already cleaned/greased/oiled 7 reels. Why 7 cause I can't justify an 8th:whistling:. Every rod/reel has a specific job to do, heavy weeds, light smallmouth bass, medium walleye, trolling deep for big northerns ect. One year my famous son broke 3 rod tips pushing them into the rod locker at about $100.00 each:boxing:
where's everyone goin?
NE of Lake of the Woods, Perrault Lake.
in going to lake of the woods to. im staying on lake of the woods island lodge and resort
18 days 6-2-09
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Kettler Kiddi-o Racer Trike
The Kettler Kiddi-o Racer Trike KETTLER big fun comes on three wheels equipped with many unique and patented features. All Kettrikes are perfectly designed according to the children's anatomic roadmap of motor skills. Invigorating solutions are typical for KETTLER. The patented Quik-Adjust™ frame, patented Auto-Freewheel™ mechanism, and Parental Control System™ all guarantee the highest level of safety. Kid proof engineering demonstrates that a low center of gravity combined with the KETTLER exclusive patented features and exceptional manufacturing, give our Kettrikes utmost safety, quality and innovation. Each Kettrike® is cleverly designed with a patented limited turn radius of 90 degrees which offers freedom in play, but at the same time reduces the danger against tipping over. When measuring seat to pedal, sit child on the floor with knees slightly bent and measure from hip to heel
- Brand
- Kettler
- Features
- 4 position Quik-Adjust™ straight tunnel tube frame position adjustable ergonomic high back seat with hand hold Synthetic rubberized wheels Patented limited turn radius steering device and low center of gravity helps prevent tipping Oversized slip resistant pedals High carbon steel frame with fade resistant powder coat finish Pushbar included Recommended ages are 1-5 years Measurements seat to Pedal: 17" to 20" Seat to Floor: 11" Frame adjusts from: 28"to 30" in length When measuring seat to pedal, sit child on the floor with knees slightly bent and measure from hip to heel
- Tech Specs
- Country of Origin:China Setup Length/Width/Height: 28 x 20 x 21 inches Setup Weight:17 lbs Package Length/Width/Height:21 x 20 x 9 inches Package Weight:18 lbs Residential Warranty:1 YEAR RESIDENTIAL WARRANTY Age Recommendation:1 - 5 years Weight Limit:100 lbs Assembly Required: Yes
- Gender
- Female Male
- Age
- Child Youth


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Pho 96
Vietnamese noodle bowls and soups abound at this South Federal restaurant. Top off your authentic meal with a boba smoothie.
Vietnamese noodle bowls and soups abound at this South Federal restaurant. Top off your authentic meal with a boba smoothie.
Don't miss the steaming bowls of traditional Vietnamese pho at this restaurant. The noodle soup can be ordered in 21 different ways. Enjoy other regional favorites, including pan-fried noodles and spring rolls. Also try the Centennial location.
Authentic Vietnamese cuisine is served up every day at this noodle house. Try your pho in any of the 21 different ways that are offered. Also try the Lakewood location.
Pho lovers rejoice—"the real thing" has made it to the 'burbs. Choose from a variety of fresh meats and add-ins (like bean sprouts and basil) to decorate your slurpable, large serving of noodles. Take-out works too: Order a mango smoothie to go for a delectable stroll down Littleton's Main Street.
House-made Vietnamese cuisine with an extensive menu that easily accomodates vegetarians. Try the jasmine iced tea and a combination rice noodle bowl, known as the Hu Tieu Thap Cam.
Enjoy house-made pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup, with a wide variety of offerings including pork, shrimp, chicken, and vegetable.


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Amazon nabs the top spot for online cosmetics sales
One of every five beauty purchases online is made via the Amazon marketplace, according to a new report.
Amazon nabs the top spot for online cosmetics sales
One of every five beauty purchases online is made via the Amazon marketplace, according to a new report.
Wal-Mart gives Jet shoppers a taste of its house brands
Sam's Choice and Great Value are among the Wal-Mart brands now available on Jet.com.
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The key to the success of kiosks that sell items a store doesn't usually carry is marketing support, says a provider of such kiosks. But retailers are constrained by how much promotional space they can provide any one program or product, retailers say.
Retail store kiosks can generate substantial incremental revenue as well as provide a higher level of customer service for ordering unstocked products, says Lisa Kent, CEO of Nexpansion, a provider of kiosks and complementary web-based systems to retailers like Lowes Foods and Clemmons Family Market. But realizing those revenues requires a commitment to marketing support on the part of the retailer, she adds.
Kent figures that a good kiosk program can net a 200-store supermarket chain as much as $11 million and that's just in the first year of the chain's implementation of the program. Based on an actual average kiosk purchase Nexpansion has recorded of $32, Kent estimates that a 200-store retailer can expect to reap first-year sales of $2 million to $6 million. But that's only if the retailer provides effective marketing support, such as prominent mentions in weekly printed fliers and well-placed signs in stores.
Kent adds that if the program is marketed successfully enough to elicit a 10% increase in loyalty among its base kiosk customers, the retailer should realize another $5 million. She also figures that kiosks enable retailers to save up to $500,000 a year in operating costs related to handling special orders for products not normally offered in stores. In addition, the loyalty points shoppers earn on kiosk-based purchases are automatically applied to the regular store loyalty program.
Some retailers, however, say that promoting kiosks with in-store displays can be difficult, because they need to dedicate as much floor space as possible to promoting in-store products. "We have to offer values in every in-store category every week and communicate that to customers," says a spokesman for P&C; Foods parent Penn Traffic Co., Syracuse, NY.
Moreover, they must also factor in the cost of installing and maintaining the kiosks. Mukul Krishna, an analyst with San Antonio, TX-based Frost & Sullivan, says it would cost $1.2 million to deploy 200 kiosks, figuring an average per-kiosk cost of $6,000. In addition, he says, retailers may have to take on other costs for content creation, kiosk systems management, Internet access fees and network costs. "It is, therefore, more of an uphill battle for kiosk vendors to convince potential clients of the return on investment in the present economic climate," he says. "I'm not saying that this is how it will remain, but as of now this is something that potential customers are going to pay a lot of attention to in making their decision."
Kent says that retailers should be able to recoup these costs by selling advertising on the kiosks to manufacturers who offer products through the kiosks. She adds that kiosks can also be used for more than one type of service, such as providing bank account access as well shopping portals.
Every piece of data you collect can help you serve your audience exactly what they ...
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Smaller companies have more constraints, but once they set priorities can still benefit greatly from ...
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The Supreme Court is surely going to find this question right back on their doorstep next year."


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Diagnosing thyroid disease is a process that can incorporate numerous factors, including clinical evaluation, blood tests, imaging tests, biopsies and other tests. In this article, you'll learn more about the blood tests that are used as part of thyroid disease diagnosis and management.

TSH Test

The most common thyroid test is the blood test that measures the amount of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) in your bloodstream. The test is sometimes called the thyrotropin-stimulating hormone test.

TSH that is elevated, or above normal, is considered indicative of hypothyroidism. TSH that is "suppressed" or below normal, is considered evidence of hyperthyroidism.

As of 2003, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists is recommending that the normal range run from 0.3 to 3.0, versus the older range of 0.5 to 5.5. So, according to the new standards, levels above 3.0 are evidence of possible hypothyroidism, and levels below 0.3 are evidence of possible hyperthyroidism. Keep in mind that there is disagreement among practitioners, and some follow the older range, others use the newer range.

Find out more about the TSH test.

Free T4 / Free Thyroxine

Free T4 measures the free, unbound thyroxine levels in your bloodstream. Free T4 is typically elevated in hyperthyroidism, and lowered in hypothyroidism.

Free or unbound T4 levels represent the level of hormone available for uptake and use by cells. Bound levels represent a circulating hormone that may not all be immediately available, because it is affected by other drugs, illness, and physical changes such as pregnancy. Because the free levels of T4 represent immediately available hormone, free T4 is thought to better reflect the patient's hormonal status than total T4 (below).

Total T4/Total Thyroxine/Serum Thyroxine

This test measures the total amount of circulating thyroxine in your blood. Thyroxine, a hormone produced by the thyroid, is also known as T4. A high value can indicate hyperthyroidism, a low value can indicate hypothyroidism. Total T4 levels can be elevated due to pregnancy, and other high estrogen states, including use of estrogen replacement or birth control pills.

Total T3/Total Triiodothyronine

Triiodothyronine is the active thyroid hormone, and is also known as T3. Total T3 is typically elevated in hyperthyroidism, and lowered in hypothyroidism.

Free T3 / Free Triiodothyronine

Free T3 measures the free, unbound levels of triiodothyronine in your bloodstream. Free T3 is considered more accurate than Total T3. Free T3 is typically elevated in hyperthyroidism, and lowered in hypothyroidism.

T3 Resin Uptake (T3RU)

When a blood test is done with a T3 and T4, the T3 resin uptake (T3RU) test is sometimes referred to as the T7 test. This test measures the amount of unsaturated binding sites on the transport (binding) hormones. Elevated T3RU is more commonly seen with hyperthyroidism.

Thyroglobulin/Tg

Thyroglobulin (Tg) levels are low or undetectable with normal thyroid function but can by elevated in thyroiditis, Graves' disease, or thyroid cancer. Monitoring of Tg levels is frequently used to evaluate the effectiveness of treatment for thyroid cancer and to monitor for thyroid cancer recurrence.

Reverse T3

When the body is under stress, instead of converting T4 into T3 - the active form of thyroid hormone - the body conserves energy by making what is known as Reverse T3 (RT3), an inactive form of the T3 hormone. The value of RT3 tests in diagnosis is controversial, as some practitioners believe that the body continues to manufacture RT3 instead of active T3, causing various symptoms that are identified as the so-called "Wilson's syndrome."

Thyroid Peroxidase (TPO) Antibodies (TPOAb) / Antithyroid Peroxidase Antibodies

Thyroid Peroxidase (TPO) antibodies, are also known as Antithyroid Peroxidase Antibodies. (In the past, these antibodies were referred to as Antithyroid Microsomal Antibodies or Antimicrosomal Antibodies). These antibodies work against thyroid peroxidase, an enzyme that plays a part in the T4-to-T3 conversion and synthesis process. TPO antibodies can be evidence of tissue destruction, such as Hashimoto's disease, less commonly, in other forms of thyroiditis such as post-partum thyroiditis.

It is estimated that TPO antibodies are detectable in approximately 95 percent of patients with Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and 50 to 85 percent of Graves' disease patients. The concentrations of antibodies found in patients with Graves' disease are usually lower than in patients with Hashimoto's disease.

Thyroglobulin Antibodies / Antithyroglobulin Antibodies

Testing for thyroglobulin antibodies (also called antithyroglobulin antibodies) is common. If you have already been diagnosed with Graves' disease, having high levels of thyroglobulin antibodies means that you are more likely to eventually become hypothyroid. Thyroglobulin antibodies are positive in about 60 percent of Hashimoto's patients and 30 percent of Graves' patients.

Thyroid-Stimulating Immunoglobulins (TSI) / TSH Stimulating Antibodies (TSAb)

TSH receptor antibodies (TRAb) are seen in most patients with a history of, or who currently have, Graves' disease. Testing is usually done for a specific type of stimulating TRAb that goes by several different names, including:

Thyroid-Stimulating Immunoglobulins (TSI)

TSH stimulating antibodies (TSAb)

Thyroid-stimulating immunoglobulins (TSI) can be detected in the majority - some estimates say as many as 75 to 90 percent - of Graves' disease patients. The higher the levels, the more active the Graves' disease is thought to be. (The absence of these antibodies does not, however, rule out Graves' disease.) Less commonly, some people with Hashimoto's disease also have these antibodies, and this can cause periodic short-term episodes of hyperthyroidism.

When monitoring TSI, elevated levels may help predict relapse of Graves' disease, and lowered TSI levels may indicate that Graves' disease treatment is working.

TSI monitoring is especially important during pregnancy, because elevated levels, particularly in early pregnancy and during the third trimester, are a risk factor for fetal or neonatal thyroid dysfunction. The mother's TSI antibodies can transfer to the unborn baby via the placenta, making a baby hyperthyroid in utero, or at birth. Research has shown that as many as 10 percent of pregnant women with elevated TSI deliver hyperthyroid babies.

Blocking Thyroid Receptor Antibodies

Blocking TSH receptor antibodies, sometimes abbreviated TBAb or TSBAb, are antibodies that prevent TSH from binding to the cell receptor, and cause hypothyroidism. Patients with Hashimoto's disease tend to test positive for these antibodies.

Sources:

Braverman, MD, Lewis E., and Robert D. Utiger, MD. Werner and Ingbar's The Thyroid: A Fundamental and Clinical Text. 9th ed., Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), 2005.

Roti, Elio, et. al. "TSH Receptor Antibody Measurement in the Diagnosis and Management of Graves' Disease Is Rarely Necessary," The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Vol. 83, No. 11 3781-3784 http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/83/11/3781

Spencer, Carol. "Assay of Thyroid Hormones and Related Substances," Thyroid Manager. February 6, 2004. http://www.thyroidmanager.org/chapter/assay-of-thyroid-hormones-and-related-substances/


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Russ Diesel Inc, Engines - Diesel (Wholesale), listed under "Engines - Diesel (Wholesale)" category, is located at 1100 Se 24th St Fort Lauderdale FL, 33316 and can be reached by 9545252267 phone number. Russ Diesel Inc has currently 0 reviews.This business profile is not yet claimed, and if you are the owner, claim your business profile for free. If you are not the owner you can invite this business to join by email or by phone.Browse all Engines - Diesel (Wholesale) in Fort Lauderdale FL. Discover census data for Fort Lauderdale, FL.
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4 Food Trends We're Sick Of
Service with a Dollop of Air
Why are restaurant menus enumerating the pedigree of every ingredient in a dish, as well as its preparation method, infused with a few ultra-foodie terms just in case you weren't confused enough? You won't see Broiled Pork Chops on a menu. Instead, it's Organic Heritage Pennsylvania Center-Cut Pork Loin Chop Broiled a la Plancha with a Soubise of Toy Box Tomatoes, Hydroponic Watercress, Micro Arugula, accompanied by a Nougatine of Spring Onions, garnished with a Daikon Escabèche, topped with Prune Essence and Juniper Foam. Want fries with that?
Katie Workman, editor in chief of cookstr.com
It's Not Your Grandfather's Sidecar
Complicated cocktails are all the rage now, and mixologists are happy to oblige. They delicately stir drinks to aerate them, spritz the rims of glasses with preparations that add floral notes, take the time to carefully muddle and grind spices, and artfully carve exotic fruit into masterful garnishes.
Once this masterpiece of modern design is handed to the patron, the bartender sits back and awaits a nod of approval. And he is soon rewarded with a simple response: "Can you add more booze to this thing?"
Joe Bruno, director, American Bartenders School, New York City
The continued proliferation of flatbread is a source of concern and mystery for me. Had regular bread gotten too puffy for everyone? I must have missed the anti-puff movement. Now I feel sorry for the word loaf. Loaf is so much more than simply sitting around in your underpants. Oh, and another thing, just because you touched the bread before handing it to me does not make it "artisanal."
Henry Alford, author of How to Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth)
It's Bacon!
Don't you think bacon is a little too pleased with itself these days? This breakfast food, which began life humbly on the belly of a pig, has lately made its uppity way into all sorts of products. There's bacon air freshener, bacon mints, bacon beer, gummy bacon, bacon lip balm, bacon-flavored envelopes, bacon soap, bacon lollipops, bacon gum balls, bacon mayonnaise, bacon popcorn, bacon chocolate, maple bacon coffee. And should any of the above get stuck in your teeth, you can clean it out with bacon-flavored floss. Actually, it's not bacon I hate. I hate the people who tell me, bursting with naughty pride, how they gobble up their favorite source of saturated fat by the pound. Big deal—so you're not a health foodie. Want to truly impress me with your reckless daring? How about trying a headcheese smoothie?
Patricia Marx, author of Him Her Him Again: The End of Him and librettist of the comic opera Review, which was performed by the Center for Contemporary Opera
11 Technology and Media Trends That Have Got to Go
3 Health Trends That Make No Sense
13 Fads That Have Got to Go!
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And your life's about to get more interesting.
Some people like to travel by train because it combines the slowness of a car with the cramped public exposure of an airplane.
Dennis Miller
I think my pilot was a little inexperienced. We were sitting on the runway, and he said, "OK, folks, we're gonna be taking off in a just few—whoa! Here we go."
Kevin Nealon
"I can't wait until your vacation is over." —Everyone following you on Instagram
A man knocked on my door and asked for a donation toward the local swimming pool. So I gave him a glass of water.
Comedian Greg Davies
Just found the worst page in the entire dictionary. What I saw was disgraceful, disgusting, dishonest, and disingenuous.
Client: We need you to log in to the YouTube and make all our company videos viral.
From clientsfromhell.net
My cat just walked up to the paper shredder and said, "Teach me everything you know."
"Just because you can't dance doesn't mean you shouldn't dance." —Alcohol
@yoyoha (Josh Hara)
My parents didn't want to move to Florida, but they turned 60 and that's the law.
—Jerry Seinfeld
Q: What do you call an Amish guy with his hand in a horse's mouth?
A: A mechanic.


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When you go after it every day, you need solid protection. The RED Trace II snow helmet is your choice. With durable terrain park protection, extra ventilation and easy customization, the RED Trace II snowboard and ski helmet delivers. RED's FineTuning technology makes it easy to adjust the level of warmth, padding, protection for true personalization.
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Ethan Morgan rides the apocalypse in Whistler, BC. Shot by Andy Wright.
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Mr & Mrs Herd, Greater Manchester
After two years of other agents failing to sell our home, we had at last found the right team. You certainly put all other agents in the shade.
Chain Free Promotion
You're viewing properties which are in our Chain Free promotion.
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Sale 81-83, School Road, Sale, Greater Manchester, M33


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Framed Art Print
Geometric Burstby Theartistmakena
Free Worldwide Shipping Today!
Choose from a variety of frame styles, colors and sizes to complement your favorite Society6 gallery, or fine art print - made ready to hang. Fine-crafted from solid woods, premium shatterproof acrylic protects the face of the art print, while an acid free dust cover on the back provides a custom finish. All framed art prints include wall hanging hardware.
I had so much fun making this! I think it too would have a lot of fun on a wall in your home or on a phone in your hand, etc. : ]


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Published: July 30, 2013 - 08:40 AM
COLUMBUS: Authorities say the person found dead in a burning van last week in a Columbus park was a 94-year-old man.
The Franklin County coroner identified the man Monday as James Buford. He was identified through DNA tests, but a cause of death and how the fire started haven't been determined.
Police said Buford left home for a doctor's appointment on Thursday morning. A short time later, police found the van in flames in a parking lot of a park.
The Rev. Victor M. Davis, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, tells the Columbus Dispatch that Buford was a deacon at the church and retired from the U.S. Navy. Davis said he was active for his age and believed in helping people.


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Our Services
DePelchin Children's Center believes that every child deserves to be safe and healthy. An accredited foster care and adoption agency with an expertise in trauma, DePelchin serves its community's most vulnerable children and families and works to break the cycles of abuse and neglect. Our approach to caring for kids integrates at-risk prevention, foster care, adoption and post-adoption programs to improve the mental health and physical well-being of children at-risk or within the State's child welfare system.
DePelchin's services include:
Mental Health
DePelchin's offers counseling to children and families through its grant-funded prevention programs in addition to supporting the mental health needs of its foster care and adoption homes.
Foster Care
DePelchin partners with couples and individuals wanting to provide foster care for children removed from their birth families because of abuse, neglect or abandonment.
DePelchin supports couples and individuals wanting to adopt children who are in the custody of Child Protective Services and need a permanent, loving home.
Post Adoption
DePelchin offers post-adoption support to adoptees, birth parents and adoptive families.
Parent Education
DePelchin offers parent education to help parents build and maintain healthy relationships with their children and work through family challenges.
DePelchin's prevention and early intervention services work to strengthen and support children and families while decreasing the future need for more intensive services.
Residential Treatment
DePelchin's residential treatment program treats children and adolescents in the foster care system who are suffering from severe mental, emotional or behavioral problems.
Contact Us
DePelchin's services are available at our main campus on Memorial Drive and at other convenient locations throughout the Greater Houston area. Families may contact us directly at 713-730-2335.


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Lizette Bos came to Coco Beach Island Resort last December for 5 nights and 6 days holiday. They stayed in classic deluxe 2B and 3B facing the sea. When asked what they like most about Coco Beach, they said the ever friendly waiters namely, Tristan, Kerwyn, Arvin and Charisma plus the very refreshing Buco Juice. Besides diving they also tried the relaxing massage at Behiya Spa.
Danish nationals, Nuomi and Karsten Pedersen occupied one of the Hilltop Suites during their visit last February of this year at Coco Beach Island Resort. On their stay the couple savored the delicious taste of meals served at different restaurants of the resort such as Dona Lina Revolving Restaurant, Trattoria Restaurant, Coco Grill and at Carabao Restaurant. To Karsten and Nuomi, thank you so much for choosing to spend your vacation with us.
Dan Nielsen and his family stayed at Coco Beach Island Resort in one of the Heritage rooms under the service of Ana and Rolly. They enjoyed the feeling of being pampered at Behiya Salon. A relaxing dip at the pool consumed most of their time during their stay at the resort.
Malene, Daniel, Sarah and Rebekka Nielsen had their vacation at Coco Beach Island Resort last month of this year. They have booked their travel to C&C Travel in Denmark. The family stayed in the family deluxe room where they can enjoy a good view from their balcony. While at the resort they joined in the free boat tour and in one of the excursions offered at the resort.
Suyin Serigstad and husband Poul had been to Coco Beach Island Resort several times already. They really love the place and the staff who always make their stay a memorable one. They embarked on a different activities which includes diving, the thrilling water ski ride, and enjoying the sight of under water creatures via glassbotto boat ride and playing tennis at the back of the resort.
They really had so much fun and comfortable in the company of the staff whom them treated them like a family.
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© 1986 - 2017 Coco Beach Island Resort - Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro Philippines - By: gofrancis


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Learn how to find the best audience for your business online and build your search rankings while your at it. This presentation is the 3rd of 3 classes for the Placer School for Adults in Auburn CA. Taught by Coryon Redd, an experienced Internet marketer and entrepreneur, this class presentation is designed for beginners, experts and everyone in between.


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This Lent, take a 40-day devotional journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Click here to sign up.
Spiritual warfare has its origin in a rebellion of many angels against God. Satan is seen as the prince of this world, leading an array of forces opposed to God. Although disarmed by Jesus Christ on the cross, they remain a powerful threat to the church and to individual believers.
2Pe 2:4 See also Isa 14:12-15; Eze 28:12-19 Some believe the kings of Babylon and Tyre to be types of Satan; 1Ti 3:6; Jude 6
Eph 6:12 See also Col 1:13
Col 2:15; Rev 12:7-9 See also Mk 3:27 pp Mt 12:29; Lk 10:18; Jn 12:31; Heb 2:14; 1Jn 3:8
Rev 12:13 The woman is here thought to be symbolic of the church. See also Rev 2:10; Rev 13:7 The dragon is here thought to be symbolic of the world's persecution (empowered by Satan) of the church.
2Co 4:4 See also Mt 13:19 pp Mk 4:15 pp Lk 8:12; Mt 13:38-39; 1Th 2:2,18
Examples of opposition to the first Christians Ac 6:8-14; Ac 7:54-58 Stephen stoned to death; Ac 8:1-3 Saul causes havoc in Jerusalem. Opposition to Paul and his companions: Ac 13:6-12,44-45; Ac 17:13; Ac 18:6,12 Violent hostility to Paul and his companions: Ac 9:23; Ac 14:5,19; Ac 16:16-24; Ac 17:5-6; Ac 19:23-29; Ac 20:3; Ac 21:27-36 Jewish plots against Paul in Jerusalem: Ac 23:12-15; Ac 25:3
Rev 12:17 See also Job 2:7; Lk 22:31-32; 2Ti 3:12; 1Pe 5:8
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