BRT Insights - WW Kayaking & Hiking

River conservation protects water quality, wildlife habitat and recreational opportunities.

A. Amargosa River (Inyo and San Bernardino Counties, Bureau of Land Management)
B. Bautista Creek (Riverside County, San Bernardino National Forest)
C. Cottonwood Creek (Inyo County, Inyo National Forest)
D. Owens River, Upper (Mono County, Inyo National Forest)
E. Palm Canyon Creek (Riverside County, San Bernardino National Forest)
F. Piru Creek (Los Angeles County, Angeles and Los Padres National Forests) (Santa Clara River tributary)
G. San Jacinto River North Fork and Fuller Mill Creek (Riverside County, San Bernardino National Forest)

Map of Wild and Scenic River locations.

• Instructions for online interactive topographic river maps & road maps.
• See below for full screen road maps & topographic maps.

Full-Screen River Map - Wild and Scenic Rivers.
Names & coordinates of landmarks displayed above (A, B, etc.) - DoubleClick or point on the red markers.

More information:
• Wild & Scenic Piru Creek! - Gary Valle's Photography on the Run 30march2009.
• Fuller Mill Creek video - desertmountains 14may2008. This video shows the beauty of the creek.
• Historic Wild and Scenic River Bill Heads to President's Desk - CommonDreams 25mar2009.
• Act protecting Riverside County public land on way to president - Press-Enterprise 25mar2009‎.
• California Rivers Protected in the National Wild & Scenic Rivers Program - 04oct2008.
• River Conservation in California - BRT Insights.

Tags: California, river, river conservation, Wild and Scenic Rivers.

Labels: conservation

Eagles and the fish that they feed upon both require good flows of clean water in the California Delta and Sacramento River.

This Caltrans webcam overlooks an eagle nest with three eggs/eaglets located adjacent to the Sacramento River, enabling us to see a part of nature that is normally out of sight for ground-based observers. "Bald Eagles mainly eat fish. About 90% of their diet consists of live or dead fish." (Information about eagles - Caltrans) Survival of these eaglets will depend upon the ability of the adult birds to find enough food.

River conservation is needed to restore fish populations in the Sacramento River and California Delta.

Fish populations in the Sacramento River and California Delta have collapsed to dangerously low levels in recent years. Eagles and humans both like to eat the salmon that spend part of their lives in the Sacramento River. The west coast fishing economy has been devastated by the recent ban on commercial and sport fishing for salmon, but this is necessary in hopes of preventing the fish from going completely extinct. (Mendocino coast rocked by closure of salmon fishing - Sacramento Bee 20april2008)

"Although last year officials with the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations claimed that “ocean conditions” spurred the collapse, a coalition of recreational, commercial fishermen, Indian Tribes, conservationists and independent scientists pointed to increased water exports from the California Delta, declining water quality and other freshwater habitat problems as the key factors in the collapse." (Another Year of No Salmon Fishing off California Coast - Indybay 13mar2009)

River Conservation Directory.

• Sacramento River Conservation & Recreation.
• California Delta Conservation, Recreation & Water Policy.
(Sort alphabetically. Section 1=whitewater, 2=rafting, 3=conservation, 4=fishing, 5=camping-hiking, 6=local-info)

Additional information:
• Eagle nest webcam on Sacramento River - Friends of the Lower Calaveras River.
• California River Conservation & Water Policy - BRT Insights.

Tags: river conservation, environment, water policy, Sacramento River, California Delta, salmon.

Labels: conservation

(updated 02aug2011)

Publicize your blog or website via outgoing hyperlinks.

Linking out to webpages that rank highly for important keywords helps your site to earn high search engine ranks for those keywords. The old dogma that only incoming hyperlinks help your website's search engine ranks and all outgoing hyperlinks hurt your ranks is no longer true. Many webmasters and site owners who are stuck in the past remain unwilling or afraid to make outgoing links from their sites. This is a self-defeating strategy because modern search engines reward websites that make outgoing hyperlinks to high-quality, relevant resources on other websites. If you want your webpage to rank highly for some keywords it helps you if you make keyword-rich outgoing hyperlinks to other websites that rank highly for your favorite keywords.

SEOptimise blog 01aug2011.
"Outgoing links. Linking out is crucial for blogs and even static websites. Many webmasters stopped linking out in order to hoard PageRank. Google engineers have discouraged this and suggested linking out instead."

Benefits of Good Quality Outgoing Links - High Page Rank Sites.
"Telling Search Engines what your page is all about - importance of outgoing (outbound) links"

SEO Basics - Part 7 - Outgoing Links - directory.sootle.com 12june2008.
"High quality outbound links are thought to help rankings"
"Positive SEO benefits of outgoing links
1. Outgoing links with optimized anchor text can help your on-page optimization.
2. Outgoing links to high quality websites may help your overall “Trust” ranking, by placing your website in the correct neighborhood
3. Outgoing links to decent resources indicate you care about your user and you do your research"

The effect of outgoing links on your web site - free-seo-news.com.
"The web sites to which you link help your web site visitors to put your web site into a larger context. If you link to high quality sites with useful content, web surfers will associate your web site with these high quality sites."

Outgoing Links - Website Development for Small Businesses - blog.pelland.com 24nov2008.
"One of the most effective ways to improve your website’s organic search engine position is to increase the quantity and quality of both inbound and outbound links to established, highly rated sites."

Link Strategy - The Benefits of Linking - linkstrategy.com.
"Search engine results tend to improve dramatically for sites that implement good linking practices, both in and out."

Link Popularity Building Campaign Services - Subia Creative, Phoenix Arizona.
"Outbound links “drain link popularity” of the linking page, but should not be a meaningful concern because relevant outgoing links creates a greater offsetting advantage."

Effective Outgoing Links on your Blog - Top Blogger 12jan2009.
"Outgoing links are important .... Using these properly on your blog can give you many benefits."

The Power of Outgoing Links in SEO - ezine articles 27oct2008.
"It's no secret Google use the number and quality of incoming links to help rank web pages in its search algorithm. .... What is less well known though is that Google also uses the quality and quantity of outgoing links to learn even more about each website it visits."

Nailing the Coffin Shut on the "Don't Link to External Sites" Philosophy - SEOmoz 05aug2008.
Provides 9 arguments for linking out to other sites and just 2 arguments against linking out to other sites.

Although outgoing links may take some readers away from your website this is compensated by the increase in reader traffic that your site will get due to higher search engine ranks. Keep in mind that all readers will leave your site sooner or later. People may be more likely to read your site thoroughly and come back to your site later if your site provides a good quality information resource including outgoing links to the relevant, high-quality sites of your friends and supporters. In fact, websites that refuse to make outgoing hyperlinks to the websites of their friends and supporters probably will have fewer friends and supporters as a result.

Strategic use of your blog or website to publicize your organization and advertize your topics of interest.

Websites are publicity tools to advertise your information to an audience. Just posting some stuff on some website is not the final goal. We need help from the search engines to bring the audience to read our websites. Strategic use of hyperlinks is critical to the success of all blogs and other websites. Making keyword-rich outgoing hyperlinks to other relevant websites is an important factor that helps your website to earn high ranks at the search engines. Only then will the search engines send the audience traffic that you need to read your website.

There is no such thing as "free publicity" on the Internet. Throwing up your stuff on your website is meaningless if nobody ever comes to read it. Search engine optimization (SEO) skills are needed if you want your website to succeed. Reader traffic only comes to website owners who invest the time, SEO skill and energy necessary to get good ranks at the search engines. Your website needs a good strategy for building incoming and outgoing hyperlinks if you want high ranks and a good traffic of readers visiting your site.

Previous Posts in this Series: Tips for Bloggers.

Tags: hyperlink, SEO, weblog, blog, blogosphere, blogging.

Labels: blog

Kayak paddling on white water rivers - California adventures!

• C to G Run, SF American River, whitewater kayaking California class II+, 18oct2008.
• C to G Run, SF American River, whitewater kayaking California class II+, 13sept2008.
• Auburn Confluence Run, NF American River class III, 30aug2008.
• Auburn Confluence Run, NF American River class II, 30aug2008.
• C to G Run, SF American River class II+, 10aug2008.
• C to G Run, SF American River class II+, 26july2008.
• Gorge Run, American River SF class III, 28june2008.
• C to G Run, SF American River, California whitewater kayaking class II+, 19july2008.
• Auburn Run, American River NF/MF, California whitewater kayaking class III, winter2008.
• C to G Run, SF American River, California kayaking class II+, 12july2008.
• Rumsey Run, Cache Creek, kayaking class II+, 05july2008.
• Gorge Run, American River SF, kayaking class III, 28june2008.
• Electra Run, Mokelumne River, kayaking class II, 21june2008.
• Gorge Run, American River SF, kayaking class III, 07june2008.
• Chili Bar Run, American River SF, kayaking class III, 19april2008.
• Shirttail Run, NF American River, kayaking class II+, 06april2008.
• Chili Bar Run, American River SF, kayaking class III, 29mar2008.
• Gorge Run, American River SF, kayaking class III, 22mar2008.
• Gorge Run, American River SF, kayaking class III, 16mar2008.
• Shirttail Run, NF American River, kayaking class II+ 22feb2008.
• Gorge Run, American River SF, kayaking class III 26jan2008.
• Mountain View Run, Rancheria Creek, kayaking classII+ 13jan2008.
• Rumsey Run, Cache Creek, kayaking class II+ 06jan2008.

Kayaking trips: Recent trips, 2008 trips, 2007 trips, 2006 trips.

More information: Trip Reports - California Whitewater River Kayaking.

Labels: trip