{"id":1616,"date":"2011-08-11T14:48:32","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T21:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.russbishop.com\/blog\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2015-11-06T09:07:11","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T17:07:11","slug":"mono-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/mono-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"Mono Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/russbishop.photoshelter.com\/img-show\/I0000MYe5CxxkiaA\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"911960hx\" src=\"http:\/\/www.photoshelter.com\/img-get\/I0000MYe5CxxkiaA\/s\/600\/402\/.jpg\" alt=\"Tufa formations at sunset on the south shore of Mono Lake, Mono Basin National Scenic Area, California USA (\u00a9 Russ Bishop\/www.russbishop.com)\" width=\"600\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Evening light on tufa towers at the south shore, Mono Lake, California<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve, which was established in 1982, is one of 70 parks, historic buildings and monuments that California State Park officials plan to close by the end of June 2012 due to budget restraints. The famous south shore tufa will still be accessible (as will the rest of the lake), but the visitor center and information kiosks will likely close and with them\u00a0a\u00a0valuable educational resource that has helped keep Mono Lake alive.<\/p>\n<p>Since\u00a0the early part of the 20th century, the water rights along the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains\u00a0have been hotly contested\u00a0with the construction of the Los Angeles aqueduct. The classic story of how Mulholland bought up the ranch lands of the Owen&#8217;s Valley to build his dream and bring\u00a0water to the desert of Southern California\u00a0is well-documented in the movie <em>Chinatown<\/em>, and the subsequent LA Department of Water and Power has been in court many times over the years as a result.<\/p>\n<p>Mono Lake has no\u00a0outlet and its proximity near the start of the LA aqueduct makes it critically dependent on the naturally flowing streams that feed into it\u00a0from the nearby Sierra.\u00a0It&#8217;s highly saline waters are a perfect breeding ground for brine shrimp, which in turn are the staple diet\u00a0for\u00a0over 2,000,000\u00a0migratory birds that visit the lake each year (including the second largest\u00a0nesting population\u00a0of California\u00a0gulls in the US).<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately we&#8217;ve had a couple of very wet winters and Mono Lake is receiving the water it needs for now. But with the growing demand of\u00a0a rapidly expanding and thirsty west, its future remains uncertain.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9Russ Bishop\/All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Evening light on tufa towers at the south shore, Mono Lake, California The Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve, which was established in 1982, is one of 70 parks, historic buildings and monuments that California State Park officials plan to close by the end of June 2012 due to budget restraints. The famous south shore &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/mono-lake\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mono Lake&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,61,173,8,80],"tags":[15,179,38,57,9,14,302],"class_list":["post-1616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-history","category-landscape-photography","category-nature-photography","category-wildlife","tag-california","tag-conservation","tag-environment","tag-geology","tag-mono-lake","tag-sierra-nevada","tag-tufa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russbishop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}