About 75 area residents attended a National Public Lands Day celebration this Saturday along the Boston Hill Trail System. Several speakers discussed the site’s history and the contributions made by volunteers and officials in developing the area for open space use. Above is Silver City town councilor Gary Clauss, who addressed the crowd against a [...]

My sister just sent this along, and I though many of you would be interested: A federal judge on Wednesday overturned the Bush administration’s rules on road construction in untouched areas of national forests and reinstated a Clinton-era ban on new roads in nearly a third of federal forests. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte sided [...]

Democrat candidate for State Land Commissioner Jim Baca will be in the area this evening. He’ll be at Steve and Denise Blake’s Pinos Altos home, starting at 6:30 p.m. Albuquerque blogger Johnny Mango had a good post about Jim at the Duke City Fix site earlier this week: He pointed to the Sandia Mountains on [...]

Heading into the weekend, I wanted to share this nugget of truth with you, courtesy of Mark Kleiman: There are, however, at least two conservation measures that have, as far as I can tell, modest costs (and in one case huge side-benefits) and potentially substantial energy-saving potential. Both have to do with reducing the “heat [...]

Representatives from Sen. Pete Domenici’s office were in town to meet with local residents and officials yesterday. The topic: the Southwest Water Planning Group. Comprised of eighteen governments and quasi-governmental agencies in the four counties in southwest New Mexico, the planning group was established to decide what to do with 14,000 acre-feet of water granted [...]

New Mexico’s Sen. Pete Domenici, on opening up coastlines to oil and gas drilling: “I will, in due course, argue for opening more and more and more and more,” Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Monday. “That’s how I see it happening. I think this is the first giant step [...]

From New Mexico Matters: Eight governors — including Democrat Rod Blagojevich of Illinois — are urging Congress to approve legislation that would help states clean up abandoned mines. In a letter to Congress, the governors also are calling for lawmakers to approve a provision that would extend health care benefits to retired miners. snip (Blagojevich), [...]

Rep. Tom Udall’s bill to protect Valle Vidal from energy development passed the U.S. House unanimously yesterday: The natural beauty of this area of the forest, known as Valle Vidal, remained largely unblemished as the 101,000-acre mix of scenic conifer forests and open meadows became a sporting playground for Hollywood stars and moguls, and later [...]

Still have some fire action going on north of Signal Peak (click for larger version): The blaze is being managed for wildland fire use, which basically means they’re letting it burn dry fuel that’s accumulated on the forest floor for the last decade or so. In 10 days its grown to about 3400 acres. It’s [...]

I know the blog has been very un-political lately, and that’s going to change right now. With the election just a week off, it’s time to focus on last minute primary wrangling. Let’s start off with this question from New Mexico Matters: My question is this: (Are) negative ads going to help or hurt Geno [...]

This is just a quick link to a great story: Today’s GOP-controlled Congress has shown itself to be no friend of the environment, but even by conservatives’ own standards, last October’s surprise was a standout. An amendment inserted at the last minute into a budget reconciliation bill would have opened up millions of acres of [...]