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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

From a news release this afternoon: Gila National Forest personnel are expected to resume supervision of the Skates Fire today. The Arizona Central West Zone Incident Management Team projects total containment of the fire tonight. Forest personnel will oversee any remaining mop-up and land rehabilitation operations. Many firefighters demobilized Saturday, some returning to their home [...]

I heard from the Forest Service this evening that the Bear Fire is now at 20,000 acres. That’s two days of activity. No cause determined yet, but I think nature was not at fault, since there hasn’t been any lightning. More here.

I know the site has been focused on fire issues lately, but, I haven’t had a chance to handle anything else. I’ve driven back and forth between the Lake Roberts area and Silver City so many times that I could do it blind. In the process, I’ve learned to take pictures out the side of [...]

The smoke lingering over Silver City is not from the Skates Fire, but from a new blaze detected earlier today. Looks like all the predictions that the dry weather here in the Gila would increase the risk of fire were correct: The Bear Fire, which started early this afternoon about 17 miles east of Alma, [...]

Or are they? There are forecasters in the National Weather Service’s Albuquerque office who have never seen a really juicy monsoon. You know the kind— towering late-afternoon knots of summertime purple over the mountains that roll down and cleanse the Rio Grande Valley, day after day. The last time summer gave us that kind of [...]

(Click for larger image) If you check the larger version (oh, my bandwidth is going to be insane) you can see a large volume of smoke just below the ridge line (look right-of-center). That’s a burnout operation, according to Dawn Sleight, a spokesperson with the Type 1 Incident Management Team out of California. That team [...]

Not much knew information, and, unfortunately, no new pictures. However, here’s the latest fact sheet (Skates Fire Fact Sheet 6-17-06)from the Forest Service regarding the fire. Highlights: 8,500 acres burned Residents were allowed to return to their homes briefly 30% of the fire was contained (as of Saturday morning) 364 personnel (roughly the same number [...]

(click for larger image) Red area was fire activity Thursday morning (from what I understand). The black line running along the top of the map was the hand line. Each grid is 1 mile square. The red lines drawn with a sharpie at the top are where the fire breached the hand line Thursday afternoon.

(click for larger image) At about 4:00 Thursday afternoon the Skates Fire, after spreading almost two miles from its position this morning, breached a hand-cut fireline. According to fire officials, about 50 structures in the Lake Roberts/Sapillo Creek area were threatened by the fire, though none were destroyed thanks to the hard work of fire [...]