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I was organizing my files this weekend because they fell over and became all jumbled.  In the process, a headline on the cover of the winter-spring 2013 magazine from the National Forest Foundation caught my eye: “Do you know where your water comes from?” Flipping to page 21, I read some familiar facts:

·      National Forests supply approximately 20% of Americans with a reliable supply of cold, clean drinking water.

Over the weekend, the Oregon Dunes was featured in two articles.  The first focuses on the on-going attempts by the Forest Service to implement its 1994 Management Plan for the Dunes.  The second highlights the need for the Forest Service to also be focusing on restoration. 

A haunting photographic essay by Emma Kisiel depicts animals killed by motor vehicles.  The roadkill is surrounded by simple, beautiful memorials made of flowers and rocks in the places that they died. 

Viewers not only witness the power of the hulking tools we wield, but also the variety of lives impacted by our transportation choices (for more, read here). 

Check out this newcast about Helena Montana's Ten Mile watershed, which is used as their primary water source. While the newscast talks more about the effects of fire than roads, I heard a number of implicit references to the effects of roads nonetheless.

For example, Helena’s Water Treatment Superintendent Don Clark described one of the streams in the watershed, Beaver Creek, as lined by the green leaves of bushes and healthy trees.

Check out this fun (yes, it really is fun) video about a roadkill science experiment. The narrator wanted to see if earlier data about drivers intentionally swerving to hit snakes and turtles was true or not, so he put together a little experiment to find out. And in case turtles and snakes weren't enough, he amped up the experiment by also testing reactions to tarantulas.