Lava Beds Wilderness
The Lava Beds National Wilderness is a 28,460-acre (11,520 ha) wilderness area within the Lava Beds National Monument. It was designated by the US Congress on October 13, 1972 with passage of Public Law 92-493. The wilderness protects more than half of the national monument in two separate eastern and western units. The larger eastern unit contains the extensive Schonchin lava flow on the east side of the monument. The western unit covers the monument's area within the transition zone of the Cascade Range's montaine southern end and the arid Modoc Plateau ecosystems.
The different soil types creates plant community diversity in the Wilderness Area, providing various habitats for a wide range of wildlife. The numerous coyotes and foxes, as well as raptors feed on rodents such as the jackrabbit and kangaroo rat. The kangaroo rat here is especially adapted to dry, waterless environments because it can go 'a lifetime' without water. A metabolic process occurs where water is synthesized from chemical components in the dry seeds that the rat eats.
Many of the birds seen the Wilderness Area are raptors, with 24 species of hawks identified. The monument is located on the Pacific Flyway and the Bald eagle winters here in the northern portion of the Wilderness Area. The National Park Service manages the Lava Beds Wilderness Area and has several restrictions in place, such as camping prohibited near cave entrances or trails. Open campfires may be prohibited during very hot and dry weather.
Read more about this topic: Lava Beds National Monument
Famous quotes containing the words lava, beds and/or wilderness:
“We walk on molten lava on which the claw of a fly or the fall of a hair makes its impression, which being received, the mass hardens to flint and retains every impression forevermore.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the lovliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“These were such houses as the lumberers of Maine spend the winter in, in the wilderness ... the camps and the hovels for the cattle, hardly distinguishable, except that the latter had no chimney.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)