According to the Forest Service, 45% of their permanent firefighting workforce has quit in the last three years.
Category: public agencies
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.
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 …
Federal Firefighting Agencies Face Serious Challenges
We have a National Strategy for updating our response to ever-hotter wildfires. With years of learning, careful consultation, and consideration, the Cohesive Wildfire Strategy offers a chance to respond to …
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.
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. …
Public Radio Still Beaming After So Many Years
Standing in my skis on top of Pajarito Mountain the other day I pointed to a radio tower perched nearby and told my friend that it belongs to the …
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.
