History and Purpose
The Research Natural Area (RNA) program is a nationwide system created to protect a network of federally administered public lands for the primary purposes of maintaining biological diversity, providing baseline ecological information, and encouraging research and university natural history education. In California, the RNA program is administered jointly by the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station and Pacific Southwest Region
The Hall Natural Area was one of the first established in California (in 1933). The Carnegie Institute of Washington’s studies on genotype-environment interactions made much use of the transplant gardens at the south end of the Natural Area. Since then, other researchers have used the area, studying social organization of Belding ground squirrels, dynamics of wind-blown detritus in snow banks, and community structuring of subalpine forest birds.
Read more about this topic: Hall Natural Area
Famous quotes containing the words history and/or purpose:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The purpose of punishment is to improve those who do the punishing—that is the final recourse of those who support punishment.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)