KSL News: Drought Reveals What’s Under Lake Powell, John Hollenhorst reporting

Lake Powell has dropped to its lowest level since 1969, when it was first filling up.

The long drought is giving us an unprecedented chance to see what’s under the lake created by the Glen Canyon Dam, and what effect it’s had.

It’s possible people alive today will never see Lake Powell as low as it’s going this winter. It’s expected to drop another five feet and then rebound about 50 feet this summer.

If the drought is broken, the lake may again cover up “The Secrets of the Bathtub Ring”.

Boating on smooth winter water, we have the lake to ourselves. The white bathtub ring looms, now 140 feet from top to bottom, a measuring stick for seven years of drought.

alibi . february 10 – 16, 2005
Trouble on the Turquoise Trail
Proposed mine draws ire of local residents
By Christie Chisholm

[There is a] proposal by A&M Rock company to build a quarry just over a mile away from [Golden, New Mexico, along Highway 14]. The San Pedro Rock Quarry would also be located within two-and-a-half miles of the Turquoise Trail Scenic Byway — a nationally recognized road that attracts over 100,000 tourists every year. Because of its proximity to the national landmark as well as a number of local neighborhoods, the proposal is stirring up a great deal of local concern — and a lot of community action.

The Turquoise Trail Preservation Trust (TTPT) is the main association spearheading the efforts to prevent the new rock quarry from being built. …

The original plan for the quarry proposed that it would stretch over 92 acres on a 127 acre site, and would have a lifespan of 31 years. Mining 400,000 tons of rock annually, the narrow two-lane byway would provide passage for 24-ton trucks five days a week, one every eight minutes, says Prosapio. The quarry would also need to consume more than 1 million gallons of water every year in order to mitigate air pollution.
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San Pedro Quarry Information

A page dedicated to providing information to the public regarding the proposed San Pedro Quarry, located along the Turquoise Trail Scenic Byway, New Mexico
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ABQjournal: Guest View: Help Preserve Turquoise Trail
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Turquoise Trail Preservation Trust
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Turquoise Trail Association New Mexico Enchantment USA
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BLM, San Pedro Rock Quarry Environmental Assessment

3 by 4 Four Corners area offers a trio of hikes rich in history, scenery by Ron Dungan, The Arizona Republic

Some of the best hiking in Arizona is not entirely in Arizona. It’s in the Four Corners area, where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and the Grand Canyon state meet. The Anasazi lived there centuries ago, leaving the remains of an ancient civilization in scenic red-rock country. Here are three hikes in the Four Corners area where you can explore the past and get your fill of high-desert backcountry…. [keep reading]

ABQjournal: Program To Release Northern Aplomado Falcons in Southern N.M. By Tania Soussan, Journal Staff Writer

As many as 150 endangered northern Aplomado falcons raised in captivity would be released in southern New Mexico every year for the next decade under a federal plan announced Wednesday.

The birds are native to Chihuahuan Desert grasslands in southern New Mexico and Arizona but disappeared from the area in the early 1950s.

Falcons have been seen near Deming, New Mexico, every year since 2001, and a pair successfully raised three chicks there in 2002.

The Fish and Wildlife Service will hold a public hearing March 15 in Las Cruces and will accept written comments through April 11.

The releases would begin in summer 2006. Ted Turner’s Armendaris Ranch near Truth or Consequences and Otero Mesa south of Alamogordo are possible release sites.

The Peregrine Fund of Boise, Idaho, is breeding the birds and would handle the releases and most of the costs. It has reintroduced falcons in Texas.

The falcons are striking raptors with a bold black-and-white facial pattern. They favor open grasslands with scattered trees.

Habitat destruction and pesticide contamination caused their decline. … There is evidence that oil and gas drilling and cattle grazing can damage falcon habitat and disturb the birds.

Google Maps

TopoZone

National Geographic Maps

FEBRUARY 5th, 2005

Join the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, the Coalition for Valle Vidal, the Coalition for Otero Mesa and Natural Resources Defense Council for a rally for America’s wildest public lands, focusing on Otero Mesa, Valle Vidal, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Saturday, February 5th, 2005
2 pm – 5 pm
Kimo Theatre, Downtown Albuquerque

This Event is FREE

Come learn what you can do to help protect Otero Mesa, Valle Vidal, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from Oil & Gas Development! Special Guest Speakers include:

Gloria Flora, activist and former Forest Service employee; Poet Jimmy Santiago Baca; Terri Swearingen, activist and winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize; Gwich’in activists from the Arctic; Martha Marks, President of Republicans for Environmental Protection; Pojoaque Pueblo dancers, and some Surprise Guests!

Plus musical performance by: “Holy Water and Whiskey.”

Contact Nathan Newcomer at 505/843-8696 for more information.

SEND a FREE FAX on Otero Mesa to President Bush!

Join the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance or Donate to Help Save Wild Lands!
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance – Protect Our Public Lands Rally!

DenverPost.com – LOCAL NEWS
Protected since 1889, Goodman Point Pueblo slated for initial mapping in April
By Electa Draper

A 142-acre high-desert parcel a dozen miles northwest of Cortez so impressed federal officials in 1889 that they set it aside and made it off-limits to homesteaders.

They gave this protection to the ancient Indian village more than 15 years before the great pueblos of Chaco Canyon and spectacular cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde were so protected.

The Goodman Point Pueblo thus escaped the brush clearings, crop plantings and excavations that stripped many other Ancestral Puebloan sites in southwestern Colorado, including a thoroughly ransacked Mesa Verde, archaeologist Kristin Kuckelman said.

This spring, for the first time, scientists will begin to comprehensively study Goodman Point. Active from about A.D. 1000 to 1280, it is one of the largest sites in a corner of the state renowned as a treasure trove of pre-Columbian culture.

The National Park Service will work on this six-year phased project with the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, a private nonprofit with a long history of research in the Four Corners region.

The Albuquerque Tribune: Visual Arts
The bird man of the Manzanitas
By Ollie Reed Jr.
TIJERAS – Jess Alford is sitting in his living room on a recent, gray, chilly morning, sucking in the warmth from a wood-burning stove and a steaming cup of green tea as he watches the fluttered comings and goings of birds just outside the windows of his Manzanita Mountains home.

“When I lived in Dallas, I had to drive 200 to 250 miles to get out of development,” he says. “Here, I’m on the edge of the Cibola National Forest. I just have to walk out the door to be in nature.”

Which is where, Alford, 71, has decided he wants to be, where he needs to be…..

[mjh: the article is good; so are the pix]

Find a Forest by State

New Mexico
Carson National Forest
Cibola National Forest
Gila National Forest
Kiowa National Grassland
Lincoln National Forest
Rita Blanca National Grassland
Santa Fe National Forest

Recreation.gov

88 Recreation Areas

Colorado Daily
More than pottery shards

While much knowledge has been gleaned from the cluster of Anasazi ruins near Yellow Jacket, Colo., dating back to about A.D. 630, there is still much to be learned from the artifacts in the collection, according to Steve Lekson, curator and professor of anthropology at the CU Museum. …

During its height at about 1250, the Yellow Jacket community was home to as many as 2,000 people, according to Lekson. The Joe Ben Wheat Site Complex, considered a suburb of the greater Yellow Jacket community, was a village of six or seven houses. It is well known for the large number of “kivas,” underground structures often used as religious sites. By 1300, these people were gone, as were all the tens of thousands of Pueblo people of the Mesa Verde area.

The Joe Ben Wheat Site Complex recently was accepted to the National Register of Historic Places. Most of the reorganization project is expected to be completed by mid-March. …

In February 2004, Lekson received a grant from the State Historic Fund of the Colorado Historical Society to help reorganize the collections, a vital step in making them more useful for research. The project also received additional funds from the estate of Joe Ben Wheat, who died in 1997, and the Archaeological Conservancy of Albuquerque, N.M., which now oversees much of the Yellow Jacket site.

“To make the collections more user-friendly, we are rebagging and reboxing everything and entering it all into a database on a computer system,” said David Cain, a graduate of the museum and field studies program at CU-Boulder who is working on the project. “The goal is to really streamline the research process.”

The grants, which totaled $113,343, are funding the process of reorganizing the artifacts, creating a public database for the collection and developing a Web site, which is currently under construction.
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Introduction, Archaeology of Yellow Jacket Pueblo (5MT5)

Yellow Jacket Pueblo Database, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center [NOT the database mentioned in the article above]

The Yellow Jacket Pueblo Database includes a wide variety of field and laboratory data generated as a result of Crow Canyon’s researchArchaeology at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center

Utah site reveals a new past By Katy Human

“Something big” happened in this part of the world about 1300, said Kevin Jones, Utah’s state archaeologist: The Fremont people and their Anasazi neighbors abandoned agriculture. The Anasazi retreated to Mesa Verde’s easily defended cliff homes. The Fremont living in Range Creek also may have retreated to steep cliffs – radiocarbon dates aren’t in yet.

Many researchers suspect burgeoning populations and other cultural changes left those ancient North Americans vulnerable to a years-long drought about 1250.

“We generally know that environmental conditions got rough. We know that social conditions got rough … I wouldn’t be surprised if disease was involved,” Jones said. “Whatever it was, we may be able to find out here.”

After their third field season at Range Creek, a once-private ranch put under federal and state protection last year, archaeologists still haven’t put a shovel to dirt.

But in Range Creek Canyon, they’ve found more artifacts, more untouched mounds of trash, and bigger stores of corn than at any other Fremont site.

And the items are in stranger places: At some point, the Fremont in Range Creek chose to live in homes perched hundreds of feet up sheer cliffs rather than in the stream-fed valley below.

Life & Leisure News Article | Reuters.com By Judith Crosson

As the gray wolf hovered on the brink of extinction a decade ago, U.S. officials embarked on a controversial plan to open the vast refuge of Yellowstone National Park to the pack-based predators in the hopes of rebuilding the species.

Seeking to reintroduce an animal that had been an icon of the West even though it was reviled by ranchers, the Clinton administration 10 years ago this month released gray wolves imported from Canada into Yellowstone with great fanfare. The following year they introduced more into nearby Idaho.

The effort has been a resounding success. From just 14 when the program began, the population has risen to 165 wolves in 15 packs in Yellowstone, a 3,472-square-mile expanse that lies mostly in Wyoming. Including those that have migrated outside the park, their number stands at about 850.

“The area just cried out for wolves. We knew if we could just get them in they’d be successful,” Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said.

Environmentalists call the gray wolf’s revival in the western United States a rare success in the politically charged battles over conservation.

Greenpeace USA

Mogollon Keystone Forest

Stretching from Flagstaff, Arizona almost to the Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico, the Mogollon Keystone Forest marks the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau where it meets the great Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts. It is part of the larger Arizona Mountains forests ecoregion. The prominent feature is a long escarpment, known as the Mogollon Rim, that extends for several hundred miles, with an average elevation of 7,000 feet.

The Mogollon Keystone Forest is best characterized by its vast stands of Ponderosa pine, the largest of its kind in the United States, but also is marked by the pinyon-juniper ecosystem of the upper deserts to the high elevation spruce fir forests. …

Critical to the wildlife and human populations of this arid region are its rivers; the most notable being the Gila, Verde, San Francisco and Blue. The Wild and Scenic Verde River is the only river in this keystone forest are a that has this status. However several other rivers, including the San Francisco, are strong candidates. Wilderness areas along the Mogollon Country include San Francisco Peaks, Matazal, Mount Baldy and Blue Wallow, Gila-Aldo Leopold Complex and Blue River Primitive Area. These protected areas are considered biological hotspots.

Greenpeace USA

America’s Keystone Forests: A Map for Moving Forward

The U.S. Forest Service will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2005….