North Bay Report: State Park Closures, Bay Area Population Boom, Analysis of Tasers

State Park Closures

If there's no money available to keep state parks in Sonoma County open, what else can be done? County Regional Parks director Caryl Hart is working on some options.

Both state and county parks would be much healthier financially, if more park users paid for those opportunities, says Sonoma County Regional Parks Director Caryl Hart. So she's looking for ways to make it easier for park visitors to pay as they go.

Posting parks as closed and barricading entry points won't keep everyone out, acknowledges Hart. Especially those whose presence may prove harmful to the preserved.

Interested in this story? Listen to the full report at KRCB here.

Deep Blue Home

As an environmental writer, Julia Whitty reports on the oceans of the world and the life they support, from beneath the surface--in more ways than one.

A scientist before she became an ecological jounralist, Julia Whitty says she tries to offer readers a literary link to the natural world, not just in Deep Blue Home, but in most of her work.

Whitty recognizes that her journalism, both in film and print, has given her many rare and remarkable experiences in the natural world. In order to fully express them to readers, she explains, she has to introduce some of her own response to those sights and events in her writing, both in her blog, and her book.

In the past month, Whitty revisited Rasa Island in the Sea of Cortez, an important nesting site for endangered Elegant Terns and Heerman's Gulls. Following a successful effort to erdicate rodent invaders there, she reports that the rookery is thriving once again.

Listen to the full story at KRCB here.

Analysis of Taser Studies

Numerous studies have concluded that tasers do not pose risks to the people they shock. A closer looks finds this conclusion is far more likely when the study was funded by the Taser maker, or conducted by someone with links to the company.

UCSF cardiologist Dr. Byron Lee, a specialist in electrophysiology, says he has been curious about tasers ever since they have come into prominence as a widely used tool of law enforcement. This study was his first opportunity to look more closely at their use--and consequences.

In northern California, tasers have been used with some frequency to subdue individuals who are high on methamphetamine, as they can be more strenuously resisant toward police officers. But Dr. Lee says their altered state also places those individuals at greater risk from the electrical shocks.

Listen to the full story on KRCB by clicking here.

Regional Growth Planning

The Bay Area's population is forecast to grow by a third over the next 25 years. Working together under the banner, One Bay  Area, four regional agencies are already at work on plans to concentrate the new housing these new residents will need close to mass transit opportunities, even in the North Bay. And they want your input, too.

Along with the anticipated 2 million new residents, our region is also forecast to grow 1.2 mllion new jobs. The Metropolitian Transportation Commission is concerned with how those people will travel between work and home, explains spokesman John Goodwin, while the state is simultaneously working on curbin greenhouse gas emissions. The blueprint for that will be a new regional planning document now being called "Plan Bay Area."

In their series of local workshops, the MTC includes an exercise that asks participants to rank a series of 14 priorities, some of which, Goodwin notes, are to at least some degree  mutually exclusive.

Get the whole story here.

Editor's note: This story was reported and produced by KRCB, and written for Rohnert Park Patch with the permission of KRCB News Director Bruce Robinson.