The Western US is having a water crisis that will directly affect millions of people as drought and climate change lower rivers and water tables and raise the price of …
Category: Watersheds
The Falling Rio Grande
Climate change is fast reducing the flow of the Rio Grande. State and federal regulations do not keep up with alarming changes in the river.
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.
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, …
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 …
Ranching is Driving the West’s Water Crisis
At some point, Americans need to come to grips with the fact that the cattle ranching industry is using far too much water in the American West. Ranching damages almost …
