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.
Category: The Great Outdoors
Ancient Tulare Lake Reappears
When John Muir walked from San Francisco to Yosemite Valley in the spring of 1868, he recalled a sea of wildflowers as far as the eye could see in all …
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.
Exploring the Nambe Badlands Wasteland
Thousands of people per year drive to Chimayo through the brown desert between the Nambe Creek Valley and the Santa Cruz River Valley. Tourists love this stretch for its strange …
Harsh Lessons from an Ancient People
Bandelier National Monument offers the perfect blend of strange wilderness beauty and human interest with the mysterious cliff dwellings of long-gone Pueblo people. Early Pueblo people lived across this landscape …
The Forest Advocate, or Forest Fantasy
Most Santa Fe residents recently got a mailing from a group called “The Forest Advocate” which discusses forest management around Santa Fe. While I appreciate the spirit of the publication, …
A Life of Caring about Bandelier National Monument
I found myself clearing out old files from my activist work in the 1980s about Bandelier National Monument. It struck me how I have been focused on this area and …
The Future and the Past of the South San Juan Wilderness
The main mass of the San Juan Mountains dominates Southwest Colorado with its fourteen-thousand-foot peaks and steep gorges. These mountains feed their snowmelt into the Colorado River basin, a vast …
When Will Wolves Roam Northern New Mexico?
Wolves will soon be ranging into northern New Mexico because of pending wolf reintroduction in Colorado. Wolves may move on their own into the Pecos and other New Mexico wilderness areas.
Planning the Valles Caldera National Preserve
The Valles Caldera in northern New Mexico is a vast collapsed volcano now coated with forests and grasslands. People have been coming to the Caldera seasonally for centuries, making paths …