In Our Backyard No. 6: Life in the desert demands resilience, especially when lightning strikes Listen 36 min MORE America s most powerful wind farm 1.5 gigawatts in size, enough to generate electricity for a city of millions is on the edge of the Mojave at the foot of the Tehachapi Pass, site of one of the earliest and still largest collections of windmills in the world. Altogether, there are more than 5,000 turbines in the area, and the newest and largest are nearly 500 feet to the tip of the blade. Photo by Steve Boland/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The California desert is a precious asset, famous for soaring mountains and majestic valleys. But it’s hardly a wasteland. “There’s been human activity for thousands of years,” says Mike Gauthier, Superintendent of the Mojave National Preserve.
Beyer s Byways: Cima is pretty in pink vvdailypress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from vvdailypress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
They re among the oldest living things in the world. The climate crisis is killing them
21 minutes to read
By: John Branch
California s redwoods, sequoias and Joshua trees define the American West and nature s resilience through the ages. Wildfires this year were their deadliest test. They are what scientists call charismatic megaflora, and there are few trees anywhere more charismatic than the three most famous species in California. People travel from around the world simply to walk among them in wonderment.
The giant sequoia. The Joshua tree. The coast redwood.
They are the three plant species in California with national parks set aside in their name, for their honour and protection.
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No Great Mystery
Re “Fallujah’s Children” by Laura Gottesdiener [November 16/23]: Iraq has been in a state of never-ending war since 1990 (or 1980, if one includes the Iran-Iraq War), suffering from all the attending, well-documented dire consequences, including a seriously degraded, toxic environment. There are books and articles too numerous to mention on this topic, including Barry Sanders’s