This is not something you will learn about at Drudge or any of the usual political web sites, but I got an email from a friend pointing out that the Newt Lobby (consisting of an environmental army of one) has stopped a train!

Alas, the steam train that you rode in Tilden Park last month may be going out of business soon - not because of low ridership, but because newts cross the road leading to the parking lot. The park district will be closing this road for 6 months every year from now on so newts can cross the road in winter without worrying about cars running them over. Newts are not an endangered species, but have been deemed to be "too cute" to be squashed under auto tires.

"There's billions of newts in the park -- they are not endangered, and nothing eats them because they are toxic," Thomsen said. "This is nutty. It's like political correctness on steroids. We've been trying to get the Park District off that silly road closure for a long time, but every time you bring it up with them, it's like 'no, no, we can't even discuss it.'"

Kelley, interpretive services manager for the Park District, was the supervising naturalist at Tilden who did the research starting in 1984 to justify the closure. She still stands behind it.

"As a naturalist, I would (speak against opening the road)," Kelley said. "The overarching aspect of this is we have a worldwide decline of amphibians, and we have a locally threatened population of newts. A California newt has to be 8 years old to be able to breed. They can live until they are 25 or until they are killed by a car."

Kelley said she's afraid if the road were left open the entire year, this group of newts might be wiped out. "And if we lose a species, we're losing one of the intricate pieces of nature, and then the fabric that holds it all together starts to unravel," Kelley said.

Kelley said she's not sure how many newts are in the south part of Tilden park, but she does know that plenty still get run over by cars when the road is open. She recalls one day in 1984 before the road was closed, "As I was scraping dead newt bodies off the road, we got 283 newts that were killed in the morning alone."

The owner of the steam train says unless her customers can access the Tilden Park steam train, she'll have to go out of business:

Thomsen has put up with declining attendance figures she pegs to the road closure for years, but now she has had enough. Her family has owned the business for 55 years.

South Park Road connects Wildcat Canyon Road with Grizzly Peak Boulevard. When the road is closed, visitors traveling south on Wildcat Canyon Road must exit the park and take Shasta Road back to Grizzly Peak. The steam train is located at the intersection of Grizzly Peak and Lomas Cantadas Road.

She said she believes the newt population has adjusted to being run over on the road, and that dying under a car tire "is just part of their world."

Thomsen said her railroad hauls about 160,000 people a year and brings in about $250,000 a year in ticket sales. Although attendance drops off in the winter anyway, she estimates the road closure still takes away 30,000 to 50,000 customers.

"The park is basically disenfranchising thousands and thousands of people who want to drive from the south end to the north end (and from the north to the south)," Thomsen said.

Thomsen said she began circulating the petition a couple of weeks ago and already has "pages and pages and pages" filled with names of people who want to keep the road open.

"These are people who object to rampant political correctness," Thomsen said.

People in Berkeley are objecting to political correctness.

(But then, it isn't as if they haven't stood up to the Newt Lobby before.)