Bombing Glacier National Park
The Hungry Horse News
Railroad claims more study needed in avalanche zones, By HEIDI DESCH
Plans for controlling avalanches along Glacier National Park’s southern boundary range from doing nothing to using military artillery to remove snow. …
The draft outlines four alternative forms of action. One is a no action alternative which maintains the status quo, a plan that calls for extending and adding snowsheds, an alternative that permits blasting avalanches for up to 10 years with a commitment from the company to construct snowsheds and an alternative that allows the railroad to blast avalanche chutes when need be indefinitely. … [mjh: the blasting option is favored by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF)]
Steve Thompson, with the National Parks Conservation Association, said the snowshed alternative is the “most effective and most safe†approach.
“The best way to deal with it is snowsheds, not by firing Howitzers up into the Park,†he said in an interview this week.
He said the environmental risks are the least with that alternative.
The railroad, however, wants the environmental review to be delayed to allow for more analysis. …
“We know enough to know that the best is snowsheds,†[Thompson] said.
Snowsheds would have to be extended less than a mile. The estimated cost of building the additional snowsheds would be more than $5 million, according to the document.
BNSF has also said it would be too expensive to extend snowsheds in the area.
It’s a response that Thompson doesn’t buy.
Thompson said the company has shown “record profit†recently. The railroad has been running lines profitably across the continental divide for decades and has never had to blast before, he noted.
He said using explosives may be less expensive up front, but building snowsheds would be the best long-term solution.
NM Trapping Update
The New Mexico State Game Commission has set trapping policy for another two years. Once again thanks to everyone who sent letters and comments protesting leg-hold and lethal traps on New Mexico’s public land. NM Game and Fish received over 1150 of them- almost all from New Mexico residents. At several points, some proposals for change were offered by the game department. None went as far as to prohibit traps from public land, but they did include actually funding real world surveys of furbearer populations in the state to learn how these exploited animals are really doing, shortening the trapping season by a month (which would have brought it more in line with other western states), reducing the allowable trap size, increasing the distance from roads from the current 25 yards up to 75 yards and possibly imposing bag limits on some species. In the end though, the State Game Commission, bowing to pressure from trappers, agreed only to the very modest change of shortening the season by a mere two weeks.
Regrettably, the trapping season has begun again this winter and will go on through the end of March. Fur prices are at an all time high owing to world-wide demand. Here at home there are still no bag limits and no limit to the number of traps that may be set. No warning signs need be posted anywhere. The by-catch will still include family dogs, birds, and other animals possibly even endangered ones. Be watchful where you hike, ride, camp, birdwatch and enjoy the beautiful public lands that belong to all of us.
If you should encounter a trap or hear of someone who has, please share the tale. If you believe the trap was illegally set, please call NMG&F at 505-476-8066 and report it. Please share your experience with us too. You may write to notraps@kitcarson.net. If you desire, we will protect your anonymity. Also please visit the website trapping pages at http://www.riogrande.sierraclub.org/campaigns/trapping/Traps.htm . Here you will find a description of the types of traps used in NM and how to open them. (Although I greatly hope you never have need of this information in the field.)
Sincerely,
Mary Katherine Ray
Wildlife Issues
Rio Grande Chapter Sierra Club
national sacrifice areas
alibi . december 7 – 13, 2006
An Altered Land
The quest for coal bed methane consumes both a New Mexican landscape and a way of life that depends on it
By William deBuys
The federal government has tried to ameliorate the fragmentation of interests on public lands by pursuing an official policy of “multiple use.” At times the strategy has worked, but only when guided by an ethic of restraint and supervised by honest referees. The plain fact, clear to all but selectively denied according to self-interest, is that coarse uses, if unchecked, drive out the fine. Backcountry skiing dies where snowmobilers swarm like hornets. Hiking and fishing become joyless in a cow-burnt meadow, and nothing gets along with cut-and-run logging. …
In 2003, the BLM adopted a management plan for its Farmington resource area that predicted approval over the next 10 years of an additional 9,942 gas wells on federal lands across a major swath of the San Juan basin, encompassing Hart Canyon, the Rosa and much else, where 18,000 oil and gas wells were already active. …
But sacrifices notwithstanding, the nation’s dependence on foreign oil has doubled since 1982 (to 56 percent of total consumption), and in the same period U.S. dependence on foreign gas has tripled to almost 15 percent. And no one speaks publicly about sacrifice.
Park Service Reports Surge In Violence Against Rangers
Park Service Reports Surge In Violence Against Rangers By Matthew Daly, Associated Press
It is getting more dangerous to be a forest ranger — and it is not because of the animals.
Attacks, threats and lesser fights involving Forest Service workers reached an all-time high last year, according to government documents obtained by a public employees advocacy group. Incidents ranged from gunshots to stalking and verbal abuse.
The agency tally shows 477 such reports in 2005, compared with 88 logged a year earlier. The total in 2003 was 104; in 1995, it was 34. …
“Things like off-road vehicles are taking people into the backcountry to get away from all rules of civilization, and trouble appears to be ensuing,” said the [Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility’s] executive director, Jeff Ruch.
Fed-Up Germany Kills Its Only Wild Bear
Fed-Up Germany Kills Its Only Wild Bear By Craig Whitlock, Washington Post Foreign Service
Until last month, Germans hadn’t seen a wild bear in their country for more than 170 years. On Monday, they showed they still knew how to hunt.
Bruno, a bear who had romped across southern Germany since migrating over the Alps from Italy six weeks ago, was shot by a Bavarian hunter at sunrise. Government officials had authorized the use of deadly force after they failed to take him alive with an assortment of tricks, including a pack of Finnish tracking dogs, tranquilizer darts and nonlethal traps imported from the United States. …
Bruno, who was 2 years old and weighed an estimated 220 pounds, was born in northern Italy into a family that was resettled there as part of a wildlife restoration program. Italy and Austria have encouraged the growth of their small bear populations and have programs to compensate farmers and others for bear-related losses. …
Plans are to stuff him and put him on display in a museum in Munich — next to the remains of the last bear killed in Bavaria, in 1835.
U.S. Kills Wolf, Hunts His Mate
ABQjournal: U.S. Kills Wolf, Hunts His Mate By Tania Soussan, Journal Staff Writer
The Mexican gray wolf reintroduction program took another stumble this week with the shooting of a male wolf by the government and efforts to capture or kill his mate.
The pair, known as the Nantac Pack, have killed four cows this month, most recently on Sunday. They also were involved in two possible and two probable depredation incidents involving cows since being released in New Mexico on April 25.
The male was killed Sunday in New Mexico by a sharpshooter on the program team. Efforts to trap or kill the female were continuing Monday, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Elizabeth Slown.
Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity said, “We’re very troubled that they’re wiping out yet another pack.”
The wild population of the endangered wolves has been declining since 2003. The loss of the Nantac wolves would put the current count at 31-45 adults plus an unknown number of pups in Arizona and New Mexico.
Several other wolves have been removed from the wild or shot for killing cattle in the last several weeks. …
Meanwhile, the Center for Biological Diversity and 20 other conservation and animal protection groups called on new Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to issue an emergency moratorium on killing depredating wolves until the wild population reaches 100 and stabilizes.
Albuquerque: Portrait of a Western City — lecture and booksigning 10-17-06
Talk and Book Signing
ALBUQUERQUE’S NATURAL HISTORY SETTING
Voices in Science, Fall, 2006 Talks at the Museum Series
Tuesday, October 17, 2006, 7 p.m.
New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science
1801 Mountain Road NW, Albuquerque, NM 87104
Admission $2.00 for the general public, $1.00 for members, seniors and students
For more information, contact 505-841-2872
DISCUSSION
On Tuesday, October 17 at 7 p.m., three experts on Albuquerque’s natural history will be presenting a lecture at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. Museum staff members Jayne Aubele, Tim Aydelott and Larry Crumpler will be discussing how the location and geology of the Albuquerque area influenced the unique growth of the city as part of the museum’s Voices in Science Series. Following the discussion, they will be signing copies of the new book to which they are contributors, Albuquerque: Portrait of a Western City (Clear Light Publishing, 2006). Admission is $2.00 for the general public, $1.00 for members, seniors and students.
Albuquerque’s location has contributed to the flourishing of the city through the natural factors of the Rio Grande, the Sandias and Tijeras pass, among others. Aubele, Aydelott and Crumpler will talk about the Rio Grande Rift that caused the valley where the river now flows and the mountains that form our eastern skyline as well as the volcanoes that created our west mesa. Albuquerque has experienced 300 years as a city, thousands of years as a good place to live, and millions of years of geology.
Tim Aydelott is the Museum’s Public Information Officer. He has taught students all over the state about their local natural history in museum outreach programs. Jayne Aubele is Senior Education Specialist, a geologist who has extensive field experience in New Mexico. Larry Crumpler, Ph.D., is Research Curator, a geologist with particular interest in New Mexico’s volcanoes.
BOOK SIGNING
Aydelott, Aubele and Crumpler contributed a fascinating chapter covering the geology of the Albuquerque area to the new book, Albuquerque: Portrait of a Western City. Compiled as the city celebrates its Tricentennial, Albuquerque: Portrait of a Western City celebrates the city’s rich history and culture while providing travelers with a selection of the best places to go and things to do. A book signing will follow the event.
ALBUQUERQUE
Portrait of a Western City
Many Cultures & Opportunities
Edited by Mary Kay Cline
Contributions by Tomás Atencio, Jayne Aubele, Tim Aydelott, Cynthia L. Chavez, Larry Crumpler, Jerry Geist, Tazbah McCullah, Tom Miles, Jim Moore, Sherry Robinson, Tom Rutherford, Joe S. Sando, Carlos Vasquez and Jim Walther.
ISBN 1-57416-087-7 , 136 b&w photos, 4 maps, 6 x 9, 288 pp., $16.95 WEB BOOK FORMATâ„¢
www.clearlightbooks.com/albuquerque
Secrets of Casas Grandes Exhibit – Santa Fe, NM
Museum of Indian Arts & Culture
Opening on November 5, 2006, Secrets of Casas Grandes explores questions that have baffled archaeologists for decades—examining what the ceramics of Casas Grandes can tell us about the people who made and used them. The exhibit runs through October 7, 2007.
Secrets of Casas Grandes is unique in its focus on both archaeology and ceramics. Concentrated around the prehistoric site of Paquimé, Casas Grandes was the most complex society of its time, blending elements of ancestral Puebloan and Mesoamerican culture. During the Medio period of A.D. 1200–1450, Casas Grandes was a major regional center of interaction and trade, with evidence of ball courts and exotic goods such as copper, shell, turquoise, and macaws.
http://www.miaclab.org/events/index.html
The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture is located on beautiful Museum HillTM at 710 Camino Lejo off Old Santa Fe Trail in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm.
http://www.miaclab.org/visit/main.html
The Future of Wilderness – November 11, 2006 (updated)
Please join the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance for our 6th Annual Conference….
2006 New Mexico Wilderness Conference
The Future of Wilderness
November 11, 2006
Sunrise Springs Inn and Retreat
242 Los Pinos Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Directions: http://www.sunrisesprings.com/map_and_directions
Registration will begin at 8:00am
Conference runs from 9:00am to 4:00pm
Wild Reception and Auction from 4 to 6:00pm
Please Pre-Register Space is limited
Advance Conference Registration Fee: $40 including a tasty lunch from the Blue Heron Cafe and entrance to the Wild Reception.
Featuring:
* Michael Soule, the Father of Conservation Biology, presenting his grand vision of the “Spine of the Continentâ€
* Roger Kaye, Wilderness Specialist, Author and Conservationist presenting “The Last Great Wilderness: The Campaign to Establish the Arctic National Wildlife Refugeâ€
* Ken Madsen, award-winning writer, photographer and conservationist from the Yukon, giving a Slide Show “The Arctic Connection”
* Arturo Sandoval, President of the Coalition for New Mexico Wilderness, presenting “Diversity in New Mexicoâ€
* Dave Foreman, Director of The Rewilding Institute and Founding Father of NMWA, presenting “The Future of Wilderness”
Additional Workshop Sessions Include:
Saving the Gila: New Mexico’s Last Wild River by Dutch Salmon
Wilderness & the Human Spirit by Roger Kaye
The Mexican Wolf by Michael Robinson
Volunteer Workshop by Christianne Hinks and Nancy Morton
Arctic Workshop by Erik DuMont and Ken Madsen
Saving Otero Mesa by Nathan Newcomer and Stephen Capra
Join us for a Wild Reception and Auction following the Conference with Auctioneer Extraordinaire Dave Foreman.
Bid on Wilderness Trips including:
Stay at Bear Mountain Lodge in the Gila; Llama Trek and Lunch near Taos; Guided tour of Otero Mesa; Ladder Ranch Private Tour and Stay; Backpack with Wolf Expert Dave Parsons in the Gila Wilderness; and more.
Silent Auction:
Bid on artwork, gear, books, gift certificates and more.
Please pre-register to hold your place, space is limited.
You can register in three ways.
1. On-line at: https://secure.ga1.org/05/nmwild_2006conference
2. Call us at: 505/843-8696
3. Send a check to:
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
PO Box 25464
Albuquerque, NM 87125
www.nmwild.org
Otero Mesa’s Value Lies in Beauty
ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor
Otero Mesa’s Value Lies in Beauty
I MADE MY first trip to Otero Mesa in September. Otero Mesa is a huge New Mexico resource, but not as an oil and gas field.
Otero Mesa’s value lies in its water, its wildlife and its beauty— all of which are as immense as its 1.2 million pristine acres. I am horrified that this huge area of quintessential New Mexico now faces ruin.
I saw pronghorn antelope, mule deer, a golden eagle, burrowing owls, a great horned owl, harriers, red tailed hawks, kestrel, a gray fox, kangaroo rats, jack rabbits galore, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, nine species of native grasses, myriad yuccas, cacti and more. Otero Mesa is easily one of the most alive places in America.
That Otero Mesa is vast, beautiful and supernaturally alive is without doubt. That there are measurable oil or gas reserves is highly suspect. Can we afford to permanently ruin Otero Mesa? I say no— emphatically no.
All New Mexicans need to rally around this unique, imperiled asset. Otero Mesa has huge income potential for southern New Mexico as a future national park. Shortsighted, meaningless destruction of this land by greedy oil companies could very well be the biggest environmental mistake we’ve ever made as a state and as a country.
JOE ADAIR
Albuquerque
Hiking the Continental Divide Trail (CDT)
This hiker was recently in the paper. He’s hiking the Continental Divide Trail (CDT), having previously hiked the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and Appliacian Trail (AT).
We’ve hiked small pieces of the CDT and can easily visualize parts of his trip.
Jump to October 2006, around day 100, for his hike in New Mexico.
Where the Moon Stood Still, and the Ancients Watched
Where the Moon Stood Still, and the Ancients Watched – New York Times By MIRIAM HORN
Why did the Chaco people — the Anasazi, or “ancestral Puebloans,†as their descendants prefer — build an enormous ceremonial Great House at Chimney Rock, so far from home, 1,000 feet above the nearest water supply and at the base of immense sandstone spires?
It was not until two decades ago that archaeologists arrived at an explanation that most now accept: the Chaco people built the Great House as a lunar observatory precisely aligned to a celestial event that occurs just once in a generation.
That rare event, a “major lunar standstill,†is happening now, and continues through 2007. To witness this extraordinary moonrise, some two dozen visitors, including me, arrived to climb the Chimney Rock mesa in the middle of an August night.
Every 18.6 years, the moon does something strange: it radically expands the voyage it makes each month across the sky and, at the northern and southernmost edges of that journey, appears to rise in the same spot for two or three nights in a row.
[mjh: That same phenomenon figures into the famous Sun Dagger spiral on Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon. I highly recommend you follow the link to this article which begins with a breath-taking photo by Helen L. Richardson and nicely balances the personal, the historical and scientific facets of this story. See also Chimney Rock Pueblo Outlier to Chaco Canyon (mjh)
]
Canyons of the Ancients proposals address development, preservation
Cortez Journal Online – Cortez Colorado By John R. Crane | Journal Staff Writer
“We would allow the standing architecture to deteriorate and go back to the earth,†Jacobson said during the presentation. “That follows a Native American philosophy of not interfering with these ancestral structures.â€
Balancing energy development and site protection is the main thrust of an early draft of management alternatives for Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.
Three options each contain a different level of protection of archaeological sites in the 164,000-acre monument, and each opens varying numbers of acres to leasing for oil-and-gas resource drainage. …
Amber Clark, with the San Juan Citizens Alliance in Durango, said the draft alternatives are typical — with one emphasizing more protection, another less, and another proposing an even balance between development and protection.
However, Clark wondered why all the alternatives contained a lease option.
“I don’t understand why there’s no alternative not allowing a lease,†she said.