Creatures Great and Small

What an amazing story on NPR today about tortoises in the Galapagos Islands!

http://www.radiolab.org/story/galapagos/

There's beauty in the amazing biodiversity and adaptation of creatures to changes in their environment... from finches to tortoises.

In the show there's also humor and sadness--how a few goats brought by pirates grew into hundreds of thousands that ate the food supply of other animals in the islands.

Much food for thought... hallelujah!

Thank you to Radio Lab for this hour-long show.

Snowmelt & Danger on the Pacific Crest, 2017

Amazing snowpack has created record snow melt and flooding in the Sierra Nevada...  I took this photo on July 8, 2017, with these trees at about 10,000 ft. still surrounded by snow.  The scene is about two miles from the Pacific Crest Trail.

For more photos, see:

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-flooding-sierra-nevada-20170714-htmlstory.html



People hiking the Pacific Crest Trail were endangered by higher-than-normal streams to cross.  Two drowned, one slipped to his death on ice, and one probably died from heat or dehydration.

https://www.pcta.org/2017/sadness-deaths-pacific-crest-trail-50680/