NEW FELONY LAW AGAINST BIKERS LEAVING SCENE OF ACCIDENT GOES INTO EFFECT JANUARY 1.
Bicyclists could face felony hit-and-run charges if they leave the scene of an accident where someone was injured or died. The Legislature proposed this bill that subjects a person operating a bicycle on a Class I bikeway* to all of the accident-related Vehicle Code provisions that apply to the driver of a vehicle on a highway. When the final bill was ordered to the Assembly, this law passed unanimously with Ayes 37, Noes 0. 

OVERVIEW  - Bicycle hit-and-run on bike path (AB 1755) 
The provisions of the felony hit-and-run law are extended to cyclists riding on paths and bikeways. Currently, in the California Vehicle Code, a driver involved in a collision resulting in death or injury to another party is required to stop at the scene. This law clarifies that the same vehicle code also applies on Class I bikeways and allows law enforcement to hold individuals accountable for reckless behavior.

BACKGROUND from the SENATE
In June of 2017, a Sacramento runner was hospitalized with serious injuries after being hit by a bicyclist on a local bike trail. The bicyclist fled the scene, leaving the injured runner on the trail. The bicyclist did not report the accident or render assistance to the runner. Under current law, if this accident had occurred on a public roadway, the offender would have been subject to prosecution for a hit-and-run offense. However, since this accident occurred on a Class I bikeway (a trail with a completely separated right of way that is exclusively reserved for bicyclists and pedestrians), it was theorized that the bicyclist - had he or she been identified - could not been charged with hit-and-run. The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office noted at the time of the incident that their investigation was hindered because the California Vehicle Code is not clear on whether the case would qualify as a hit-and-run. While current law generally subjects bicyclists to all of the “rules of the road” and treats them in the same manner as vehicular drivers, those rules do not clearly apply to bicyclists operating on Class I bikeways. This bill removes any ambiguity about the responsibilities of bicyclists on these Class I bikeways. 

*CLARIFICATION OF CLASS I BIKEWAY AND PATH
Paths are not "paved" in the cited Code section:"California Code, Streets and Highways Code - SHC § 890.4
(a) Bike paths or shared use paths, also referred to as “Class I bikeways,” which provide a completely separated right-of-way designated for the exclusive use of bicycles and pedestrians with crossflows by motorists minimized."

"AB 1755, Steinorth. Bicycle operation.
Existing law regulates the operation of bicycles and pedicabs. Existing law defines a Class I bikeway as a bike path or shared use path that provides a completely separated right-of-way designated for the exclusive use of bicycles and pedestrians. Under existing law, a person riding a bicycle or operating a pedicab on a highway has all the rights prescribed in, and is subject to the requirements in, the Vehicle Code that are applicable to the driver of a vehicle.

This bill would subject a person riding a bicycle on a Class I bikeway to those rights and requirements of the Vehicle Code that apply if that person is involved in an accident resulting in injury or death of a person other than himself or herself, as specified. Because a violation of those provisions of the Vehicle Code by that person would be a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

NEW LAW
"The people of the state of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1. Section 21200 of the Vehicle Code is amended to read:
21200. (a) (1) A person riding a bicycle or operating a pedicab upon a highway has all the rights and is subject to all the provisions applicable to the driver of a vehicle by this division, including, but not limited to, provisions concerning driving under the influence of alcoholic beverages or drugs, and by Division 10 (commencing with Section 20000), Section 27400, Division 16.7 (commencing with Section 39000), Division 17 (commencing with Section 40000.1), and Division 18 (commencing with Section 42000), except those provisions which by their very nature can have no application.

(2) A person operating a bicycle on a Class I bikeway, as defined in subdivision (a) of Section 890.4 of the Streets and Highways Code, has all the rights and is subject to all the provisions applicable to the driver of a vehicle pursuant to Section 20001, except those provisions which by their very nature can have no application."

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL TEXT OF THE LAW.

Audubon's 119th Christmas Bird Count will be conducted between the dates of Friday, December 14, 2018 through Saturday, January 5, 2019. 
A map view of the circles expected to be included in the 119th CBC can be found here. (GRASS VALLEY, AUBURN AND OTHER AREAS CLOSE BY ARE OPEN)
If you're interested in participating next season, check out the map to find a count near you; more circles will be added as they are approved. Green and yellow circles are open for new participants, and red circles are full.

Since the Christmas Bird Count began over a century ago, it has relied on the dedication and commitment of volunteers like you. 
Each count takes place in an established 15-mile wide diameter circle, and is organized by a count compiler. Count volunteers follow specified routes through a designated 15-mile (24-km) diameter circle, counting every bird they see or hear all day. It's not just a species tally—all birds are counted all day, giving an indication of the total number of birds in the circle that day.

If you are a beginning birder, you will be able to join a group that includes at least one experienced birdwatcher.
If your home is within the boundaries of a CBC circle, then you can stay at home and report the birds that visit your feeder on count day as long as you have made prior arrangement with the count compiler. 

Can I just do my own CBC and send you my data? No. Since each CBC is a real census, and since the 15-mile diameter circle contains a lot of area to be covered, single-observer counts (except in unusual circumstances) cannot be allowed. To participate in the CBC, you will need to join an existing CBC circle by contacting the compiler in advance of the count day.

It is being reported that the roads in Spenceville Wildlife Area are being graded and smoothed.  As of December 18, the road crew said they had done from Camp Far West to the campsite, and had worked back to the bridge and about half way to the shooting range.
After fighting these washboard roads all year, their hard work is like a Christmas present to the trail users!

Photo of Bill Newsom and son, governor-elect, Gavin Newsom.
Placer County Judge William Newsom, Dutch Flat resident with roots in Placer, Nevada counties - Obituary from Auburn Journal newspaper
Placer County judge in the 1970s, a legal counsel to the Getty family and the father of California's governor-elect, Dutch Flat resident William Newsom is dead at 84.
Newsom, whose family roots include gold mines in Nevada County and leasing the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics site, was a resident of Dutch Flat from the late 1970s.
He was appointed to the Placer County Superior Court bench in 1975 by Gov. Jerry Brown, having served as co-chairman of his Placer County election campaign the year before.
Newsom and Brown's links stretched back to San Francisco in the 1940s, when Newsom's father, also named William, ran Jerry Brown's father's first two district attorney campaigns in San Francisco. Pat Brown would go on to become governor, with the elder William Newsom serving as treasurer of the California Democratic Party Central committee.
After the Winter Olympics in Placer County, the senior Newsom secured the lease on the site and the family operated the Squaw Valley Improvement Corp. until 1974. At the same time, Bill Newsom Jr. established a law practice in Tahoe City in 1968.
Serving as attorney for the two sons of oil billionaire J. Paul Getty, he successfully sued on their behalf for a share of $385 million they felt they were entitled to.
And Newsom was the trusted advisor the Gettys turned to when J. Paul Getty III was kidnapped in 1973 in Rome. Fluent in Italian, Newsom delivered the ransom in person to Italy.
Newsom was 41 when he was appointed Placer County judge. His son, Gavin was 7 and lived in San Francisco with his mother and sister. In 2016, Gavin Newsom would name a son "Dutch" in honor of the community he recalled spending summers at, enjoying the mountain and swimming at the community pool.
The Newsom home in Dutch Flat wasn't just a home away from home for the future governor, it was also played host in 2005 to actor Ed Asner, who would return to the area the next year to film a Christmas movie.
Newsom strongly supported and generously donated to the community of 300 full-time residents’ Golden Drift Historical Society, North Fork American River Alliance and Dutch Flat Community Center.
“He was a supporter of anybody who needed help,” Dutch Flat Community newspaper editor Marybeth Blackinton said.
Dutch Flat resident Jim Ricker, of the North Fork American River Alliance, said that while Newsom was considered a V.I.P., he was a humble caring person - who had his own table always reserved at the local Monte Vista Inn.
“That was Bill’s,” Ricker said. “But he wasn’t just a V.I.P, he was a wonderful guy.”
In ill health and under hospice care, Newsom died Wednesday in San Francisco, where he had an apartment. He is to be buried at the family plot in the Historic Dutch Flat Cemetery.
Memorial donations may be made to the Dutch Flat Community Center, P.O. Box 14, Dutch Flat.
During the three years with the Superior Court in Placer County, Newsom would lock horns with Squaw Valley Ski Corp. founder Alex Cushing and win a battle over whether he was unbiased in cases concerning the resort. Cushing maintained in court documents that Newsom was as an "avowed and practicing ecologist."
Newsom would also order the Placer County Board of Supervisors to upgrade its substandard jail or face having it shut down.
In 1978, Newsom would be elevated to the 1st District court of Appeal in San Francisco. But he would never leave the county and an area that his father had first found riches in mining for gold in the first half of the 20th century.

One mile of the Pioneer Express Trail in Folsom Lake SRA will be closed for maintenance for five days from December 17 to 21, 2018. The segment affected is between the Granite Bay Horsemen's Assembly area to the gravel road near the corner of Twin Rocks and Boulder Roads.

This 5-day closure does not apply to the entire Pioneer Express Trail, only this one-mile trail segment. 

The Center Trail and the Middle Trail will remain open for all non-motorized trail users.

The post noted the “curious but destructive practice” of building small stone towers, and said, “stacking up stones is simply vandalism.”

The photograph in the Facebook post is pretty: piles of red rocks balanced at the edge of a cliff, suggesting a miniature mirror of the jagged rock face opposite. The stacks look like small shrines to mountain solitude, carefully balanced at the edge of a precipice. But when Zion National Park posted the photo, in September, the social-media coördinators for the park included a plea: “Please, enjoy the park but leave rocks and all natural objects in place.” The post noted the “curious but destructive practice” of building small stone towers, and said, “stacking up stones is simply vandalism.”

The balancing of stones is an elementary kind of creation, not unlike the building of sand castles. Stone stacks, or cairns, have prehistoric origins. They marked Neolithic burial grounds in what is now Scotland, guided nautical travels in Scandinavia, and served as shrines to the Inca goddess Pachamama in Peru. Contemporary stone stackers, then, are taking up the mantle of an ancient and artistic tradition. In the past decade or so, though, there has been an explosion of cairns around the world—in national parks, in the Scottish Highlands, on the beaches of Aruba. Park rangers, environmentalists, and hikers have all become alarmed, to varying degrees. The movement of so many stones can cause erosion, damage animal ecosystems, disrupt river flow, and confuse hikers, who depend on sanctioned cairns for navigation in places without clear trails.

The calamity of the stone stack, in our anxious times, seems admittedly minor. But it’s a prominent example of how social media can generate scale, transforming an activity that would be mostly harmless in isolation into something with planetary impact. Aesthetic fads can go global now, with strange consequences. “Social media has kind of popularized rock stacking as a meditative activity, and you used to have a handful of people doing it, but it has really escalated over the past few years on public lands,” Wesley Trimble, the program-outreach and communications manager for the American Hiking Society, said.

On the Isle of Skye, a group of about twenty local volunteers brought wheelbarrows to a popular rock-stacking spot and spent a Saturday dismantling the stacks and transporting the stones back to where they belong. It’s human vs. human at this point. 

CLICK HERE to see the original article in The New Yorker