September 30 – Fence removal, Datil area.

The Double H Ranch was donated to the Rocky Mtn Elk Foundation a few years back to be managed for wildlife. An old fence incorrectly marks the boundary between the Double H and the Cibola National Forest and is a wildlife impediment. We will remove the fence and as many posts as we can. You can camp out on Friday or leave early on Saturday and meet us at the site. We will camp out Saturday night as well and go for a morning hike in this beautiful area or you can head back that evening. It’s about 2.5 hours from ABQ. We’ll help with carpools where we can. Saturday lunch, dinner, and Sunday breakfast provided.

Contact Michael Scialdone, scial@nmwild.org, 505-843-8696 to confirm you can attend or for more info.
NOTE: this project is being done instead of the Cebolla Canyon hike we had planned.

OTHER PROJECTS
Oct 7 – Upper Red River Restoration, hosted by Amigos Bravos. Contact
Rachel Conn at rconn@ammigosbravos.org.

Oct 14 – Ojito Trail Maintenance. Contact Michael Scialdone,
scial@nmwild.org, 505-843-8696 to confirm you can attend or for more info.

Wilderness Designation Trade-Offs Faulted By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer

Congress is on the verge of approving half a dozen bills that would protect as much as 1 million acres of wilderness areas across the West, but the move has infuriated environmentalists who charge that lawmakers are giving away too much pristine public land to real estate developers and local communities in the process.

If lawmakers finish work on the legislation before adjourning — several bills have passed the House already and a Senate hearing is scheduled for Wednesday — it would amount to the largest designation of new wilderness areas in a decade. But advocates and critics are in a bitter fight over the trade-offs, with opponents saying the public is paying too high a price. …

The new legislative approach reflects a simple political reality: Republican congressional leaders will accept new wilderness areas only if they come with these kinds of trade-offs. Wilderness designations have often been difficult to push through Congress because they are more restrictive than national forest or park designations, and bar man-made structures or roads within their confines.

Agency struggles to stop artifact theft By JULIE CART, Los Angeles Times

Only about 18 percent of Canyons of the Ancients has been inventoried to assess historic, cultural or scientific values. That’s more than the BLM knows about a great many of the places it administers. Less than 6 percent of the 262 million acres managed by the agency has been inventoried for cultural resources.

Although about 263,000 cultural properties have been documented, some archeologists calculate there are more than 4 million sites across the BLM’s lands in the West.

With 100 archeological sites per square mile, Canyons of the Ancients is regarded as the richest trove in an area famous for its remnants of American prehistory — the Four Corners region of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. Yet Canyons of the Ancients has only one law enforcement officer to police the monument’s 250 square miles.

At many federally managed cultural sites, damage is widespread, from casual pilfering by arrowhead collectors to excavating by professional thieves.

List of U.S. Wilderness Areas: Information From Answers.com

Four federal agencies of the United States government administer the U.S. Wilderness Areas, which includes 680 wilderness areas and 105,695,176 acres (427,733 km²). These agencies are:

* United States Forest Service
* United States National Park Service
* United States Bureau of Land Management
* United States Fish and Wildlife Service

This is an area larger than the state of California or Iraq. In Alaska, there are 58,182,216 acres (235,455 km²) of wilderness. This represents about 56% of the wilderness area in the United States. The National Park Service (NPS) has oversight of 44 million acres (180,000 km²) of wilderness at 47 locations. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has responsibility for nearly 21 million acres (85,000 km²) in 71 areas. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oversees more than 6.5 million acres (26,000 km²) at 177 unique sites. The Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Forest Service oversees nearly 35 million acres (142,000 km²) of wilderness areas in 407 areas. Some wilderness areas are managed by multiple agencies, so the above totals exceed the actual number of units (680) in the system. In addition, some of the 47 NPS areas with wilderness have multiple units designated as such (for example, Lake Mead National Recreation Area).

Some areas are designated wilderness by state or tribal governments. These are not federal parks.

List of U.S. state and tribal wilderness areas: Information From Answers.com

List of wilderness areas designated by U.S. state and tribal governments. Eight states had designated wilderness programs in 2002 while some other states had designated wildernesses. In 2002, the 9 state programs had 74 wilderness areas with a total protected area of 2,668,903 acres (1,080.5 km²). Florida had had 10 wilderness areas but their authorizing legislation was repealed in 1989.

wilderness study area: Information From Answers.com

A wilderness study area (WSA) contains undeveloped federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, and managed to preserve its natural conditions. WSAs are not included in the National Wilderness Preservation System until Congress passes wilderness legislation.

On Bureau of Land Management lands, a WSA is a roadless area that has been inventoried (but not designated by Congress) and found to have wilderness characteristics as described in Section 603 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 and Section 2(c) of the Wilderness Act of 1964. BLM manages wilderness study areas to protect their value as wilderness until Congress decides whether or not to designate them as wilderness. Wilderness bills often include so-called “release language” that eliminates WSAs not selected for wilderness designation.

Some WSA’s are managed exactly the same as wilderness areas, and the rules for others permit activities that are generally excluded from wilderness. For example, some WSAs allow mountain bikes and off-road vehicles.

all BLM WSAs by state

Protected areas of the United States: Information From Answers.com

The protected areas of the United States are managed by an array of different federal, state, tribal and local level authorities and receive widely varying levels of protection. Some areas are managed as wilderness while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation. By international definitions, the United States had 7448 protected areas, not counting marine areas, as of 2002. These protected areas cover 578,000 square miles (1,500,000 km²), almost 16% of the land area of the United States. This is also one-tenth of the protected land area of the world. U.S. marine protected areas cover an additional 347,000 square miles (900,000 km²) with varying levels of protection.

Some areas are managed in concert between levels of government.

* List of areas in the National Park System of the United States
* List of National Wild and Scenic Rivers
* List of BLM protected areas
* List of U.S. National Forests, includes National Grasslands
* List of USFS protected areas
* List of U.S. Corps of Engineers protected areas
* List of U.S. marine protected areas
* List of U.S. National Wildlife Refuges
* List of U.S. wilderness areas
* List of Biosphere Reserves in the United States

National Landscape Conservation System: Information From Answers.com

The National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) houses all of the designated special places on land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency of the U.S government. This conservation system consists of more than 800 individual units on 26 million acres (105,000 km²), including U.S. National Monuments, National Conservation Areas, U.S. Wilderness Areas, wilderness study areas, National Wild and Scenic Rivers, National Scenic Trails and National Historic Trails.

List of U.S. state parks: Information From Answers.com

ABQjournal: Around New Mexico

Environmental groups Sinapu, Animal Protection of New Mexico and Forest Guardians will present a slide show about mountain lions Friday at REI in Albuquerque.

The program, “Mountain Lions in New Mexico & the West: Natural History, Conservation, & Co-Existence,” will include information about cougar natural history, skills to co-exist with the predators and issues about the state’s cougar management.

Wendy Keefover-Ring, director of Sinapu’s carnivore protection program, and Jon Schwedler, of Animal Protection’s cougar campaign, are touring eight New Mexico cities in advance of New Mexico Game Commission meetings where cougar management will be considered.

The event is at 6 p.m. at REI, 1550 Mercantile NE.