“When you think of a fire, you can’t think just in terms of when you put it out,” Ralph Lucas, an operations section chief for an incident management team deployed to fight the fire, told the Santa Fe New Mexican.“Sometimes that’s just the beginning. The post-fire effects are tremendous.”
“A large portion of their drinking water is served from surface sources that are directly downstream from these burned areas,” Phoebe Suina, a hydrologist whose environmental consulting company studies wildfire-impacted watersheds, told the Albuquerque Journal.
Quick hits
Calf Canyon Fire started by smoldering burn pile ignited in January by Forest Service
I know my generation and even past generations haven’t entirely lived up to our end of the deal, otherwise you would be inheriting a country where every individual and every ecosystem is thriving. I know you all have the intelligence and foresight to move our world in a loving direction of progress, and for that, I thank you.”
—Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to the Bard College class of 2022, Bard College
Seeing a bear in the wild is a treat for any visitor to a park. While it’s exciting, it’s important to remember that bears in national parks are wild. Check out bear safety tips at: https://nps.gov/subjects/bears/safety.htm…
(featured image: The Las Conchas Fire burned 154,349 acres in New Mexico in 2011. Flooding after the fire damaged trails and buildings in Bandelier National Monument. Credit: John Fowler via Wikimedia Commons)
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On Tuesday, Representative Pete Stauber of Minnesota introduced a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act that would overturn a public land order that protects the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from the impacts of mining. Public Land Order 7917, issued in 2023 by then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, withdrew the headwaters of the Boundary Waters area from […]
Kate hosts a live episode in Salt Lake City on CWP’s Keep Parks Public tour! Guests: Erika Pollard, National Parks Conservation Association; Davina Smith, Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and Grand Staircase Escalante Partners; Scott Braden, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance; Doug Tolman, Save Our Canyons. Resources Keep Parks Public: Tell us why you love public lands […]
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Proposals to open up public lands for housing development are attracting increasing attention, especially in Utah and Nevada where elected officials have been vocal in their support of this concept. But a growing number of people are realizing that the West’s housing affordability crisis won’t be solved by simply making it easier to privatize and develop public land. […]
Kate and Aaron are joined by author Betsy Gaines Quammen to talk about public lands and extremism. Betsy has written two books about extremism in the West. Her first, American Zion, looks at the connection between Mormonism and extremism. Her second book, True West, which came out last year, digs into the myths that define […]
I know my generation and even past generations haven’t entirely lived up to our end of the deal, otherwise you would be inheriting a country where every individual and every ecosystem is thriving. I know you all have the intelligence and foresight to move our world in a loving direction of progress, and for that, I thank you.”