Arizona
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Changes in the riparian vegetation along the San Pedro River before and after livestock removal from the main river corridor. The Bureau of Land Management released its Environmental Assessment for livestock grazing in the San Pedro National Conservation Area (SPNCA) in Arizona. The BLM has decided that the rancher’s interests trump the public interest in…
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Ponderosa pine in New Mexico Blue Range Wilderness. Photo George Wuerthner A new paper, Indigenous fire management and cross-scale fire climate relationships in the Southwest United States from 1500 to 1900 CE, was recently published. Based on solid scientific research, it makes the important point that indigenous fire management was local rather than landscape or…
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The Sonoran Desert National Monument was designated in 2001, but livestock grazing persisted until 2015. Now the BLM wants to restock a portion of this national monument. Photo George Wuerthner The Sonoran Desert National Monument is a spectacular representation of the Sonoran Desert landscape managed by the Arizona office of the Bureau of Land Management…
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TRUMPING OUR PARKS The Trump Administration is on the warpath against the environment. From increasing oil and gas leasing on our public lands to decreasing national clean air standards for automobiles, eliminating environmental law enforcement, attacking the Endangered Species Act, removing the United States from the Global Climate Accord, and reducing oversight of livestock grazing…
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Summer in Arizona reminds us all of the area’s most precious habitat: riparian forests that provide cool, canopied respite from the blazing sun. The cool, clear waters and the shade trees are valuable not just for humans looking for a break from the desert glare, but for the unique and special wildlife species that call…
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Arizona and New Mexico might be calming down a bit as the multitude of wildfires are now igniting to the north- May and June are almost always the peak months of wildfires in the southwest — Arizona and New Mexico. By late June monsoonal rains usually dampen these fires. In the meantime, the cooler and…
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Some good news for the day. An apparently healthy male jaguar has been documented in southern Arizona. This is good news after the Macho B incident where another male jaguar, the only one known to live in the entire US, was trapped and later died due to trapping stress. We wrote about that incident in…
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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…