The federal workforce costs taxpayers $350 billion per year. That’s about 5% of the $6.5 trillion budget. The US Department of Interior employs about 63,000 people nationwide. The bulk of the federal budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Department of Defense.
Category: National Forests
Firefighter Shortage Threatens the West
According to the Forest Service, 45% of their permanent firefighting workforce has quit in the last three years.
John Wesley Powell Wanted to Denude the Rocky Mountains
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.
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 …
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. …
Will Gray Wolves Come Into New Mexico Soon?
Gray wolves could disperse throughout the mountains of Colorado and move into the mountains of northern New Mexico in the near future given the Draft Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management Plan now being finalized in Colorado.
Time to Shut Down the Public Lands Livestock Industry
(photo of trespass cattle in the Valles Caldera National Preserve. Photo by Tom Ribe) We aren’t going to solve the climate crisis by doing a few easy things on the …
Trespass Cattle Damaging the Valles Caldera – Out of Control
But for the last few years, cattle from the Coyote District of the Santa Fe National Forest have spilled into the Valles Caldera through broken and cut fences. They have trampled the streams in the Valle Toledo and Valle San Antonio that volunteers and land managers spent years restoring from past livestock damage.
The Politics of Big Fire in the West
Climate change, on top of the abuse of forests through fire suppression, grazing and intensive logging have created the fire storms of today.
