Wildfire

  • Two new wildfires at Pocatello today

    Ralph Maughan

    Pocatello, Idaho. There was a lot of lightning early this morning 2 – 6AM. Now there is a rapidly growing fire (see photo) north of Pocatello Creek on the southern boundary of the Indian Reservation burning in sagebrush, grass, some thick juniper and aspen. It has spread rapidly.  It has been named the 2 1/2…

  • Fire season finally hits Idaho.

    Ralph Maughan

    Despite long wet spring, cool summer rangefires take hold- Pocatello, Idaho. Unlike the U.S. Southwest, Idaho has had a very cool and wet last 6 months in most parts. The result has been almost no wildfires, especially forest fires; but the rangelands are now dry in many places, especially where too many livestock have degraded…

  • Wallow Fire will have big impact on wildlife

    Ralph Maughan

    Giant fire is killing and maybe renewing- The Wallow Fire continues its sweep across a mountainous region of Eastern Arizona, and is now reported burning into New Mexico. Wildlife are fleeing the flames and the smoke.  During the great Yellowstone Park area fires of 1988, animals died, but surprising few large animals died for the…

  • Arizona’s Wallow Fire explodes across the mountains

    Ralph Maughan

    Blaze is now 400,000 acres! Looks like the already huge fire doubled in size in a day. This is in some of Arizona’s best mountain and wildlife country. Wallow Fire continues to grow Blaze hits 389,000 acres; Eagar, Springerville lose power. Our earlier stories on the Wallow Fire. Big Arizona forest fire burns through Mexican…

  • Big Arizona forest fire burns through Mexican wolf habitat (updated)

    Ralph Maughan

    Here is an important, but little reported story from Demarcated Landscapes- Fire evacuations in the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area. Update: Arizona fire: Residents forced to flee as winds fuel blaze. Threats to towns rise as governor declares a state of emergency. Arizona Republic. Update 2: Burnout to help endangered wolf pups in wildfire’s path.…

  • Giant forest fires roam across northern Alberta

    Ralph Maughan

    Strange May blazes burn a third of Slave Lake, Alberta, and threaten to cook the tar sands area- It’s only mid-May, and it still struggles to get much above 60 degrees here in Eastern Idaho, but forest fires are torching northern Alberta, not all that far from the Arctic Circle. A third of the town…

  • Federal firefighting promotes building in the wildland interface

    Ralph Maughan

    So then, maybe it should stop? Economist Ray Rasker spoke the obvious at University of Montana’s Conservation and Climate Change lecture series. He also talked a little politics. If there is no guarantee of the feeds throwing money to the wind to save houses along the national forest boundaries the counties might be a lot…

  • Climate Change Takes Toll on Lodgepole Pine

    Ralph Maughan

    The most abundant of all Western pine falls at astounding rate- Every Western pine from the Yukon to New Mexico is suffering high mortality from unusually severe attack by native insects, diseases and direct mortality from drought and heat. Lodgepole pine, which often grows in vast almost monocultural stands, is dying too.  Almost anyone who…

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‎”At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour.”

Edward Abbey

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