Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

On Thursday, the House approved a bill that would create the Black River State Park. The bill will now go to the Senate. The area that would become the park is home to some of the oldest trees in the world, cypress trees that are more than 1,600 years old. “'It’s got the oldest trees east of the Rockies,' said Debbie Crane, spokeswoman for The Nature Conservancy. 'It’s considered the 10th oldest group of trees in the world’” (para. 7). Scientists think the trees survived because the area wasn’t reachable by logging equipment until modern times. Most of the land is already owned or protected from development, and the future park would require $200,000 a year to run. The area "has opportunities for bird conservation, bird watching, photography, wildlife observation and scientific research” (para. 17).