It should be a bit of a warm weekend but cool in the mountains. Tonight, you can join the local Sierra Club chapter for a hike by moonlight that will traverse four to five miles in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. And in that same neck of the woods, the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont is having its annual wildflower show Saturday and Sunday.

For those wanting to be a little crafty this weekend, you can try dying your Easter eggs using natural coloring techniques. For instance, you can use raspberries or cranberry juice for pink or red; saffron for yellow; red wine for purple; spinach for green, and blueberries for, you guessed it, blue.

And if you're into catching an IMAX film this weekend, the Orange County-based producers of the new "Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk 3D" will be celebrating World Water Day on Saturday by donating $1 from each ticket to build water wells in northern Uganda. They say more than one million children die each year in Africa from a lack of safe drinking water. They'll do the same for Earth Day on April 22. Funds raised for this program will be matched by Ryan's Well Foundation so contributions will have twice the impact. The film is narrated by Robert Redford and features songs by the Dave Matthews Band.

And later in the week, on Wednesday night there are two events in Redlands: a talk at the San Bernardino County Museum by a UC Riverside evolutionary biologist on sexual dimorphism in the animal kingdom and the Banff Mountain Film Festival I mentioned earlier this week.

In case you missed the story in the newspaper this week on wildlife corridors and how important many of them in the Inland region are to Southern California, this photo shows a key part of the San Gorgonio Pass habitat linkage.

Wetlands at the San Jacinto Wildlife Area and nearby private property dedicated to wildlife will expand and improve with a $1 million grant issued to the California Waterfowl Association. The grant will also help with wetlands restoration at Sweetwater Marsh in the San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

The grant was issued last week to the waterfowl association by the American Wetlands Conservation Act and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. While members of the nonprofit hunter-supported conservation organization hunt ducks and other waterfowl at the San Jacinto Wildlife Area, Mike Eberhard recently told me that they spend a lot time improving the wetlands that benefit a wide array of species.

Indeed, the San Jacinto Wildlife Area and surrounding valley, along with the Salton Sea, are some of the best birding spots in the Inland region. Chadd Santerre, a senior biologist with the waterfowl association, said the project will include creation of an 80-acre sanctuary where hunting won't be allowed. The hunting season generally runs from the third week of October to the end of January, he said. Work should get underway by June 1, he said.

You may have seen a comment posted recently to the blog from attorney Sue Nash. She reminded folks that a lawsuit filed by the Friends of the Northern San Jacinto Valley against the California Department of Fish and Game and others will be heard next Friday in Riverside. The lawsuit stems from what the group alleges was destruction of burrowing owl nests during construction of hunting ponds at the wildlife area.

Although the lawsuit exists, it's interesting to note that both environmentalists and hunters are concerned about proposals that would bring more 11,000 homes and apartments next to the wildlife area's southern boundary and relocate a chicken farm to the southeast boundary.

I will start getting inundated with emails about Earth Day events, as they are just about a month away. So to get you thinking about what you might do that April weekend ...

Even though it's not directly tied to Earth Day, a two-day concert will benefit one of the most contested patches of earth in the Inland region. Proceeds from the Rockin for Joshua Tree concert will benefit the legal battle against the proposed Eagle Mountain landfill that would be built into former iron ore mine pits less than two miles from Joshua Tree National Park.

To help raise additional funds, raffle tickets are being offered for stays at the Joshua Tree Rock House and the 29 Palms Inn, which is a personal favorite and has a fantastic restaurant.

The concert at the renowned Pappy & Harriets in Pioneertown will feature about eight bands. Details to follow on which bands in a later post.

Donna Charpied, an organic jojoba farmer who has led the fight against the landfill for some 20 years, said legal battles have amounted to close to $250,000 since she and others filed a federal suit in 1999. This despite a discounted rate from the legal team. Charpied said that doesn't include the $125,000 for a previous state lawsuit.

Both sides of the Eagle Mountain landfill issue are awaiting a decision by a federal appellate panel that heard arguments in December. A decision will most likely signal whether the landfill will go ahead or not.

For as long as I can remember, I've always put a few bucks into the Rare and Endangered Species Preservation Program on my state tax form. And I'll probably do it again this year, along with spreading out what is usually a measly return among the other programs to help military families, firefighters and certain diseases.

But I've always wondered — just how much money does the species program actually receive at tax time?

Turns out that since 1983, the fund has raised more than $17 million to support projects that help the more than 300 species in the state that are considered endangered, threatened or at risk, according to the California Department of Fish and Game.

But come to think about it, that's less than $1 million per year, but maybe not too bad considering most folks that contribute just put in a few bucks.

And last year, a new tax check-off fund was created to specifically benefit the sea otter. The marine animal is considered threatened with extinction by both state and federal governments. And it was once thought to be extinct in California mainly from hunting, but a small population was rediscovered near Bixby Creek along the Big Sur coastline in the early 20th Century. These days, researchers are concerned with the slow growth rate of the sea otter population.

"This tax check-off program is the only fund-raiser dedicated to researching the reasons behind prime-age adult sea otters deaths," said Dave Jessup, a senior wildlife veterinarian with the fish and game department.

"We've already been able to determine it's not a simple problem of one disease, one pesticide or issue," he said. "Now we're looking at which contributing factors can be better controlled, reduced or regulated."

You don't have to go to Alberta to see the Banff Mountain Film Festival. The festival's world tour is coming to us here in the Inland region. And it's the first time it will grace the I.E. so it will be a great chance to check it out.

The festival, up in my home country of Canada, is an annual event that features independent films dealing with mountain culture and the environment. The festival is held in early November in Banff, then a smattering of the films go on the road as part of a world tour.

The showing here will be March 26 at the University of Redlands Memorial Chapel at 7:30 p.m. The $10 tickets will benefit the San Gorgonio Wilderness Association to raise awareness of the recreation opportunities available in our local mountains and the association's efforts to preserve the wilderness surrounding our tallest mountain for future generations.

Tickets are available online, at the farmer's market in Redlands this Thursday or at REI in Rancho Cucamonga.

Click here to see a list of films showing next Wednesday. "Searching for the Coast Wolves" is the main feature. It's the story of a former world champion cross-country skier and long-distance runner who has a passion for wolves in the wilds of British Columbia. There will be several short films as well.

And there will be some cool door prizes, like outdoor gear donated by REI, ski tickets to Snow Summit and others.

Ted Scoffield, a board member of the 120-member strong wilderness association, hopes the event will convince more to sign up as volunteers.

"We're right in the middle of Southern California, 100 miles from LA, and you can go back there and you're Daniel Boone," Scoffield said. "You get out there, you camp over there, and you realize the Milky Way is still there."

Our warm weather is expected to turn a little cooler this weekend, with possible showers on Sunday. But hey, it's always a good time to get out and about.

And with the time change last weekend it sure has made it feel a little like summer and time to look west to the coast. REI will be having its free paddling demonstration in Long Beach on Saturday. You can sample the latest ocean kayaks (one of my favorite things), canoes, paddling gear and accessories for free. And the REI Outdoor School will be on hand with instructional clinics, tips, tricks and opportunities to get out on the water.

And here in the I.E., you can join the local chapter of the California Native Plant Society on a field trip Saturday at Diamond Valley Lake near Hemet. The two-mile walk along the Loop Trail will be led by Arlee Montalvo, a plant restoration ecologist and botanist Arlee Montalvo, who will point out the native plant life. Meet at 9 a.m. at the Lake View Trial Head located in the Diamond Valley Marina parking lot. Parking is $7 per vehicle.

The photo shown here is from Shauli Rosen-Rager of Hemet. He took the photo at Joshua Tree National Park along Highway 62, about eight miles east of the Mara Oasis Visitor Center. He reported that the flowers were "spectacular, lots of verbena and primrose, and the sand lilies are just starting to bloom." Thanks for the report Shauli!

And don't forget, if you're a tennis fan like me that the tournament in Indian Wells is this weekend and next weekend.

And for your calendar, next weekend is an all-day field class in Joshua Tree National Park to see the wildflowers. Park Ranger, Dar Spearing will lead this all day field class on a tour through the colorful flowers of a desert spring. Spearing will describe the flora, their bottanical characteristics, and how to identify the unique blossoms of the park. Class costs $60.

March is caffeine awareness month, who knew?

They say that more than 50 percent of Americans drink coffee everyday — three to four cups each, more than 330 million cups a day and counting. Now, that's a lot of coffee grounds for all those cups.

In honor of caffeine awareness month, one Web site is offering ways to recycle all those used grounds. And it offers 10 different ways.

And who knew that you can use it to boost your hair, especially if you are a brunette, clean a fireplace and prevent cats from using your garden as a litter box.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., standing before the nation's top environmental groups this morning, said they represent more than 11 million Americans and speak for millions more. She was making the point that many in the country want a federal law to address global warming.

Of course, here in California, a landmark global warming bill was passed back in 2006. With members of the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and others, Boxer used perhaps the strongest words yet to convince lawmakers that the time is now for federal action.

"We can't duck, we can't hide, we can't evade unless we want our children and grandchildren to blame us and disparage us for walking away from this --- our sacred responsibility. We can no longer fiddle while the planet gets ready to burn."

Boxer said that Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., told her he plans to take up the Environment Committee's global warming bill after the May recess. She said that anyone who plans to weaken the bill will be held accountable in November. I'm guessing she's talking about election time.

She went as far as to say it would be a crime to do nothing.

"So far as we yet know, Earth is the only planet in the entire universe that has summoned forth life in all its brilliance and variety. To knowingly cut this flowering short is undoubtedly a crime. I can see no excuse for collaborating in such a crime. To me, the moral path lies not in passively accepting our destructive role but in actively resisting such a horrendous fate."

And she closed her initial remarks with a quote from the poet, Dylan Thomas:

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

"Let me say that I have no intention of going gently into the night until we have addressed global warming," Boxer said.

I guess we'll see what happens next. Stay tuned.

You've heard of the silver screen, well, this is the green screen.

Today, the 16th annual Environmental Film Festival gets underway in Washington, D.C. Obviously, that's a couple thousand miles away from us here in the Inland region, but I thought you might want to know the kind of subjects that filmmakers are tackling in the environmental world. And hey, you just might want to go in person next year.

E.O. Wilson, naturalist, biologist and writer, will attend the premiere of "Darwin's Natural Heir," a film that happens to profile Wilson's life and work. And director George Butler will screen his latest film "The Lord God Bird," about the search for the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker.

And a timely issue — "Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives: The Environmental Footprint of War" examines the effects of battle on natural resources and biodiversity in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Also debuting will be the IMAX film, "Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk," which highlights the scarcity of fresh water and the need for conservation on a trip down the Colorado River. That river, by the way, is a key water supply for the Inland region.

The festival, in a tribute to the United Nations World Water Day on March 22, will focus on films about water around the world, including "Flow: For Love of Water." That film just premiered at the 2008 Sundance Festival.

Other topics examined in the festival's films include Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel prize-winner Wangari Maathai, the impact of China's Three Gorges Dam and the battle to save India's tigers.

View PDF: Melting Arctic

An attorney from Joshua Tree is in San Francisco today where she filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration alleging it is failing to protect polar bears against the impacts of climate change. Kassie Siegel, climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity filed the case this morning, representing a few other environmental groups as well.

Brendan Cummings, an attorney who also worked on the case, said this morning that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service missed a 60-day deadline stemming from a legal notice from the Center to address the issue. The federal agency also missed its own deadline in January to come up with a response as to whether to list the polar bear as a threatened species. The agency said it needed more time to analyze scientific comments.

Valerie Fellows, an agency spokeswoman, said this morning the wildlife service is still working on the issue, but doesn't have a date as to when that decision is going to be made.

So if the agency is working on the issue, why a lawsuit?

“It’s an administration of broken promises," he said. "And it's symptomatic of the administration's response to climate change. Action is always off in the future and the polar bear can't wait."

The Arctic, Cummings said, "is warming just about faster than anywhere on Earth."

With that warming, comes the loss of summer sea ice, needed by the polar bears to hunt seals, and rest from long swims in the ocean.

"Already we're seeing starving polar bears," Cummings said. "They end up being stuck on ice over deep water or stuck on land hundreds of miles from ice and they become very food-stressed."

Also the bears can drown if storms kick up and they're swimming over a large stretch of water because with less ice, the ocean becomes more wavy and harder to swim in.

It's looking like another good weekend all around the Inland region for getting out and about.

And some folks are going way out. The local chapter of the Audubon Society is heading to the coast Saturday morning to check out the birds at the Bolsa Chica wetlands by Huntington Beach. They're expecting to see ducks, shorebirds, grebes, herons, egrets, terns, cormorants, and more.

And it's blooming time. Here are a few Web sites you can check out if you for information on wild flowers. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Web site and this one from the folks who did a documentary on wild flowers. And remember you don't have to go to the desert to see wild flowers as you can see in the photo to the right.

Also check out a recent Wall Street Journal story that says it could be the best spring in years for seeing wildflowers.

And if you went the first flyfishing class, the advanced fly class is this Saturday at Fairmount Park in Riverside.

And speaking of flies, it's that time again to look at insects at the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands. Insectival is mostly a family affair with bug displays and activities that include learning to “pin” a bug with a forensic entomologist. But for mature audiences only, San Bernardino County Deputy County Coroner David Van Norma will present "CSI: San Bernardino – Insects at the Scene of the Crime” at 2:30 p.m.

And you can help replant the burned forest around Cedar Glen this Saturday and a few more coming up.

As a reminder the Santa Margarita group of the Inland chapter of the Sierra Club known as the San Gorgonio Chapter will meet Monday night at 7 p.m. at Rancho California Water District in Temecula.

Jumbo Rocks campground at Joshua Tree National Park is seen in this May 30, 2006, photo. (The Press-Enterprise/Rodrigo Pena)

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has said the ban is under review and new regulations will be released April 30 that will update firearms policies in national parks and wildlife refuges. Under current rules, loaded weapons are banned in those places, and only unloaded weapons can be carried if they are locked up, such as in a car trunk.

The National Rifle Association says the regulations are outdated, should be revised to be more consistent with state laws and that law-abiding citizens should be able to carry a firearm in those parks and refuges for self-defense.

It's definitely a loaded issue, no pun intended.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein recently weighed in, saying she was appalled. "Changing these regulations would invite poaching, be very difficult to understand and enforce, and put the public at serious risk," she said in a statement.

The Democratic senator said the issue would create unique problems, particularly at those national parks that sit in more than one state. She specifically pointed to Death Valley National Park, which sits in California and Nevada. California prohibits loaded and accessible firearms in its state parks, but Nevada does not, she said. It is unclear which state law would apply at this park if the current regulations are changed, Feinstein said.

The NPCA's newest representative in the California desert, Mike Cipra, said he found an exception under the California penal code that allows a person to have a loaded weapon, if it is otherwise lawful, at his or her place of residence, including any temporary residence or campsite.

"As a former National Park Service ranger myself, I strongly believe that if we transformed our campgrounds into places where anyone could be locked and loaded, we would jeopardize the health and safety of families visiting our national parks," he wrote in an e-mail.

How would you feel about your neighbor in the next tent over having a loaded weapon?

As we speak this morning, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is opening the jet tubes at Glen Canyon Dam to flood the Grand Canyon. The experiment, which will continue for 60 hours, is aimed at understanding how higher flows in the Colorado River can be used to rebuild eroded beaches on the floor of Grand Canyon National Park by moving sand accumulated in the riverbed onto sandbars.

Sandbars in the river within the Grand Canyon provide habitat for wildlife, serve as camping beaches for recreationists and supply sand needed to protect archaeological sites. High flows also create areas of low-velocity flow, or backwaters, used by young native fishes, particularly the endangered humpback chub.

Kempthorne, who went to high school here in the Inland region, said the water is being released at a rate that would fill the Empire State Building within twenty minutes.

But Nikolai Lash with the Grand Canyon Trust said doing it once won't be enough. Annual floods, he said, would be the best way to go.

"The problem with this experiment is that it's being done in such a manner, such an expensive manner, that they're essentially foreclosing the option of doing another one for at least 5 years," Lash said.

According to the Interior Department, the results of the release will be part of an effort to fashion a long-term, science-based adaptive management process

But replicated nature's flooding is not just being done at the Grand Canyon. At some point, it will be done here in the Inland region. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and local water agencies are developing a plan to mimic flooding below the Seven Oaks Dam near Highland. That's being done because the habitat of three endangered species -- the San Bernardino kangaroo rat and two plants -- requires flooding to maintain itself.

Here's a new one, or at least as far as I can tell. Most Christians sacrifice a personal pleasure such as sweets, cigarettes or liquor to mark Lent, the 40-day period of penance and prayer before Easter.

This year, Nina Scott gave up carbon. The retired professor from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is hanging wet laundry on a clothesline, carpooling as much as possible and turning off lights more often, all in the name of cutting the kind of emissions from energy and vehicles that lead to climate change. She figures it will reduce her "carbon footprint" by 1 or 2 percent during Lent. Not much, she says, but it's a start.

In an interesting Boston Globe article, you can read about Scott who is among a small but growing number of Christians who are pledging to reduce energy usage as part of the 40 days of sacrifice and charitable deeds leading up to Easter.

As the story says, these Lenten environmentalists have come to realize they are morally bound to help protect God's creation from the threat of human-made global warming, and Lent's season of reflection is an ideal time to start making changes.

In fact, the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts is circulating green Lent ideas to its churches. Some of the suggestions are that worshippers use candles instead of lights on Sundays and eat only locally grown foods to avoid the energy used to transport food long distances.

"If we do our share, there is hope for the Earth," said Massachusetts Episcopal Bishop Roy F. "Bud" Cederholm Jr.

Are there any similar I.E. Lent stories out there? Let us know.

Ever want to get rid of that old couch or bike sitting in the garage? Well, you can post it on a Web site and in a matter of hours, someone may come and pick it up. The only catch is that you have to give it away free.

If you haven't heard of Freecycle, it's a grassroots and nonprofit movement across the country and the globe where people are giving things for free and preventing them from piling up in a landfill. I checked it out and there are several Inland locales -- from Temecula, Menifee, Hemet, Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs, Redlands, San Bernardino, Lake Elsinore, and more. You can even note that you want your item to go to a nonprofit cause. And you can pick something from the site for free, too.

David Danelski, a reporter at the Press-Enterprise who covers air pollution and other subjects, brought the Web site to my attention the other day. He said he signed up for the Riverside locale and posted a filing cabinet on the site. Within an hour, he said, he received an e-mail from a guy and he showed up in his truck to pick it up.

According to the Web site, each local group is moderated by a local volunteer, and membership is free. The Freecycle Network began in May 2003 to promote waste reduction in Tucson, Ariz.'s downtown and help save desert landscape from being taken over by landfills.