In line with his singular focus on water for farms and towns, Powell opposed the creation of the forest reserves, the precursors to the national forests. He worried that a Forest Service would compete for money with his US Geologic Survey and didn’t want the Forest Reserve designation to prevent dams from being built to feed farms water.
Category: land management
Failed National Park Proposal Could Have Displaced the Manhattan Project
How many people know that there was a big movement to create a new national park in the Los Alamos area before the Manhattan Project
Killing Eagles in the Jemez Mountains
In an unusual chain of events, the Pueblo of Jemez, a Native American community in Sandoval County, New Mexico, was granted a permit to kill one eagle on the Valles …
Time for More Prescribed Fire
Despite recent prescribed fire escapes, we need to ramp up prescribed burning in northern New Mexico and treat many more acres before another dry windy spring causes problems.
Is Wildland Firefighting a Waste of Tax Dollars?
In 2023 when megafires erupt across North America, and our national forests seem trapped in an escalating yet faltering war on wildfire, it might be good to look back …
Why Are Boreal Forests Burning
Americans in the eastern half of the country have been breathing thick smoke from fires in Canada this summer. And if June, the hottest month on record weren’t enough …
Downtown Santa Fe Could Flood Soon
Post-fire flooding can and will happen to Santa Fe if we get a large, high-severity fire burning the Santa Fe Watershed. It is not a question of if but when.
Biden Focuses on Western Fire Issues
The United States has a vast area of public forest that needs to burn. Wildfires chip away at these hundreds of millions of acres of decadent forest every year. …
Should We Prescribe Fire in Wilderness Areas?
New Mexico and southern Colorado have beautiful wilderness areas, designated, and protected under the federal Wilderness Act of 1964. We have the Pecos, the Weminuchi, the San Pedro Parks, the …
Fixing the Valles Caldera National Preserve
Today we have a guest editorial from a former National Park Service employee who talks about the management problems at the Valles Caldera. This matters because the VCNP is one …
