I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The Valles Caldera National Preserve near Los Alamos is in poor ecological condition, according to a proposed 10-year restoration plan that calls for prescribed burns, forest thinning and stream bank restoration efforts.
The 89,000-acre Preserve was purchased by the U.S. government in 2000, after which the trustees initiated inventories of forests, soils, waterways and wildlife. Those inventories show that decades of clear-cut logging, heavy livestock grazing and fire suppression efforts have left the Preserve in poor ecological condition. Most of the Preserve’s forests are dense stands of young, secondary trees that are vulnerable to insect infestations and wildfires, according to the proposed restoration plan.
The plan proposes thinning of 20,000 acres and prescribed burns of nearly 60,000 acres of the Preserve over the coming decade. Pesticides would be sprayed to control invasive weeds and hundreds of miles of roads will be closed and seeded.
Public comment on the proposed restoration plan must be submitted before the public Preserve board of trustees meeting, Sept. 29.
The preserve has been the site of numerous other ecological and biological research efforts. Arizona State University disease ecologists are studying plague-carrying fleas in the caldera’s ground squirrel populations and Gunnison’s prairie dog colonies, for example. NMSU researchers are studying high-altitude hypertension among cattle grazed in Valles Caldera, the highest-altitude cattle grazing area in the U.S.
U.S. Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall have introduced a bill to transfer management of the troubled Preserve to the U.S. National Park Service.
