Twelve thousand non-native lizards – some up to 2 to 3 feet ong – are treating the town of Boca Grande like their personal paradise. Fed-up residents may have to pay an “iguana tax” to banish the reptiles.
[Read](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060524-iguanas.html?source=rss) (National Geographic)
Virginia’s Wildlife Management Areas are diamonds in the rough. These large tracts of land, set aside for hunting, fishing and wildlife observation, are also great places to hike, ride bicycles or go horseback riding.
The article has a good description of the 10,300 acre Rapidan Wildlife Management Area, which is located on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Madison and Greene counties.
Wildlife Management area hides treasures
The News Leader – Staunton, Va.
Author: Nancy Sorrells
Date: May 25, 2006
Virginia’s Wildlife Management Areas are diamonds in the rough. These large tracts of land, set aside for hunting, fishing and wildlife observation, are also great places to hike, ride bicycles or go horseback riding.
The Rapidan WMA is one of those jewels. Just over 10,300 acres of land in Madison and Greene counties are located along the eastern flank of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The area is divided into eight parcels, several of which border the Shenandoah National Park.
To find the Middle River entrance to the Rapidan WMA, which is the entrance I visited recently, take I-81 to U.S. 33 East. You will cross over Swift Run Gap and continue east through the village of Stanardsville. Make sure you take the old U.S. 33 (business) downtown into the village. In the middle of Stanardsville, turn left on Va. 230. Continue for eight or nine miles until you see a gas station and country store (and also a Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries sign) and make a left turn onto Graves Mill Road. Continue on Graves Mill for just over 6 miles. Graves Mill turns to the right just before a little 19th century chapel. Continue straight for another mile and a half on Bluff Mountain Road until you reach the wildlife management area parking lot.
Immediately upon entering the area the road narrows and becomes gravel. Follow that winding path upward and you will soon find yourself in a lush deciduous forest. The bright, late-spring green comes on in a rush. Ferns sparkle a light green under the filtering sunlight along the slopes on either side of the road. As you travel deeper into the forest, a mountain stream follows the road, sometimes crossing over it and at other times spooning next to it, matching the road’s curves meander for meander.
The most amazing plant that I saw while traveling into the heart of the forest was the umbrella magnolia. I have never seen so many of these trees in one space before, all drooping their fans of leaves and big flowers over the road. This magnolia (Magnolia tripetala), unlike many of its better known relatives, is deciduous, which means it loses its leaves in the winter. It is a Virginia native, but I have always thought that this tree, with its wide leaves that reach 2 feet in length and its giant, showy flowers, would seem more at home in a tropical rain forest.
The roads and the rougher trails in the Rapidan are open to cyclists and horseback riders unless otherwise posted. Planted areas (for wildlife food) and eroded areas are also off limits. Caution should be used during hunting season.
A visitor could spend a few hours or a few days exploring this area. If you have a lot of time and are really into some cycling, I would suggest you park back at the gas station/country store and cycle in from there. Graves Mill Road is generally flat and passes through some amazing beef cattle country. If you watch closely you might even see a few buffalo in one field their eartags a sure giveaway of their domesticity.
At the intersection of Graves Mill and Bluff Mountain Road, sits Grace Episcopal Chapel built in 1855. The small white frame church has two picnic tables in front for a welcome rest stop before tackling the climb up into the wildlife management area.
One more suggestion if you have several days for playing is to stay at the Old Mill House Bed and Breakfast, located just behind the chapel. The B&B offers sumptuous breakfasts and massages for tired cyclists. If you choose to stay there, you could bring your mountain bike for the WMA and your road bike for touring the countryside.
To learn more about the WMA, go to http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/hunting/wma/rapidan.html. For the B&B, visit http://www.virginiaoldmillhouse.com/.
Read (Staunton News Leader)
Unruly gangs of baboons are raiding the expensive homes that line the coast of South Africa’s Cape Peninsula, clearing out pantries, emptying fridges, and defecating over the designer furnishings.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12936096/from/RSS/) (MSNBC)
While walking the kids to the bus stop this morning, I noticed that the yards appeared to be very dry. The yards that were cut short look like they’re withering in July heat, but it’s only May and the weather has been cool. Today’s Roanoke Times has an [article](http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/66409) about the lack of precipitation this spring and last winter. The article states that rainfall in Roanoke is 7.3 inches below normal.
A stand of American chestnut trees that somehow escaped the blight that killed off nearly all of the American chestnut trees in the early 1900s has been discovered in Georgia.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12861536/from/RSS/) (MSNBC)
Oil spilled 17 years ago by the tanker Exxon Valdez still threatens wildlife around Alaska’s Prince William Sound, scientists reported on Tuesday, a finding that could add $100 million to cleanup costs for ExxonMobil Corp.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12820658/from/RSS/) (MSNBC)
Of course Exxon disagrees with the findings.
Researchers worry that another year of record-breaking heat could turn large expanses of the southern Chesapeake Bay into desert-like zones devoid of plants. The record heat last summer just cooked the eelgrass. Eelgrass is the dominant aquatic plant in the salty southern bay closest to the Atlantic Ocean, and it’s the only underwater plant that lives year-round in the bay. An aerial survey this spring showed a widespread loss of eelgrass.
“If we have another hot summer like last summer, the change in the Chesapeake Bay could be catastrophic,” said Robert J. Orth, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
[Read](http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/outdoors/bal-te.md.eelgrass13may13,0,4048640.story?track=rss) (Baltimore Sun)
Already hurt by habitat loss and climate change, the number of butterflies migrating through California has fallen to a nearly 40-year low as populations encountered a cold, wet spring, researchers said.
The change was particularly dramatic for the red and black painted ladies, which last year enjoyed a possibly record-breaking migration after feeding on the vegetation nurtured by abundant rain in Southern California’s deserts.
Last spring, millions of them migrated through the state and into Oregon, passing Shapiro’s Sacramento site at a rate of four per second. This spring, he had reports of four painted ladies a month in the same area.
[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12720318/from/RSS/) (MSNBC)
Last month, a Texas-Illinois pipeline built to bring oil north reversed direction to take Alberta oil south. More expensive to process than the light crude oil of the Middle East, Alberta’s [oil sands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oilsands “Wikipedia: Tar sands, also referred to as oil sands or bituminous sands, are a combination of clay, sand, water, and bitumen.”) have long remained a largely untapped resource, but with oil at $70 a barrel, it has become economically feasible to extract the thick, sticky [bitumen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitumen “Wikipedia: Bitumen is a category of organic liquids that are highly viscous, black, sticky and wholly soluble in carbon disulfide. Asphalt and tar are the most common forms of bitumen.”) that in former years was used to seal native people’s canoes. Only Saudi Arabia, with 259 billion barrels, has larger oil reserves than the Florida-sized patch that surrounds this Canadian outpost.
[Read](http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0512/p04s01-woam.html) (Christian Science Monitor)
A DNA test has confirmed that a strange-looking bear shot last month by an American sports hunter is a hybrid half polar bear, half grizzly. It might be the first hybrid polar/grizzly bear documented in the wild. The bear’s white fur was scattered with brown patches and that it had the long claws and humped back of a grizzly.
[Read](http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12738644/) (MSNBC)
Hybrid. When I hear the word hybrid now, I immediately think of the television show [Invasion](http://abc.go.com/primetime/invasion/).
A new species of monkey identified in Tanzania’s highlands last year is an even more remarkable find than thought — it is a new genus of animal, scientists said on Thursday.
[Read](http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/501003/new_monkey_species_is_more_unique_than_thought/index.html “Read the Story”) (Reuters via RedOrbit)
The migratory behavior of dragonflies is being studied with the use of tiny radio transmitters. Researchers have found that the dragonflies can fly up to 85 miles in one day, and their migration patterns are similar to song birds’.
[Read](http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4759615.stm) (BBC)
Virginia regulators have given the go-ahead to three major Chesapeake Bay oyster projects that could raise millions of genetically engineered “native” oysters for harvest each year. Officials hope the projects will help restore water quality and failing oyster stocks.
[Read](http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1137835948490&path=!news&s=1045855934842) (Richmond Times Dispatch)
North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia asked the federal government yesterday to protect hundreds of thousands of acres in national forests from road construction. They are the first states to ask the Agriculture Department to use a new federal rule that governs whether roads can be built in pristine areas of national forests.
[Read](http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1137835952168&path=!localnews&s=1037645509099) (Winston-Salem Journal)
The Southeast usually receives most of its rainfall during the fall and winter months, when its lakes, rivers and groundwater supplies are recharged, but that didn’t occur this year, and dry conditions have continued into the spring. A section of central North Carolina already is classified as being in a severe drought, while Virginia and most of North Carolina are in a moderate drought. Virginia had the driest March since record-keeping began in 1895, and some shallow wells were reportedly running dry in eastern North Carolina.
[Read](http://southeastfarmpress.com/news/050806-Southeast-drought/) (Southeast Farm Press)