Sharon

NY Times on “How Megafires are Remaking the World”

by
Firefighters- mysteriously absent from this NY Times story.

 

What’s interesting to me about this NY Times story  is that discussion of adaptation.. most notably, in this case, fire suppression.. is completely missing when discussing bad potential future outcomes. Nothing against reporters.. not having specialists who understand complex topics  is a business decision of the Times.

Dr. Hodges, a conservation ecologist at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, also found herself worried about wildlife. She had been studying some Western screech owls that had been nesting in the heart of the fast-moving inferno. “That speed of fire would be difficult for animals to evacuate in front of,” she said. Had the owls escaped in time? And after Canada’s worst wildfire season on record, what would be left for the survivors?

Fire is a natural phenomenon; some species actually benefit from its effects and even those that don’t can be remarkably resilient in the face of flames. But as fires intensify, they are beginning to outstrip nature’s ability to bounce back. “Not all fires have the same impact,” said Morgan Tingley, an ecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “These megafires are not good for ecosystems.”

Megafires, which dwarf typical wildfires in size, have an immediate ecological toll, killing individual plants and animals that might have survived more contained blazes. In the longer term, changing fire patterns could drive some species out of existence, transform landscapes and utterly remake ecosystems.

Not that long ago, fires were thought to be good and natural.  Fish in streams which had died off would come back, and trees regrow on their own time and so on.  And smoke was not studied as a problem.

But now we have “megafires” from climate change (and other causes) which are bad.  Because they are larger? But of course fires are larger, since suppression folks are building big boxes where possible and using wildfire for resource benefits.

So there’s the acres burned (function of “some unable to suppress, plus some WFU”), severity (function of fuel loads onsite plus fire attributes). Then there’s windspeed, which likely differs by day.  The more human-caused ignitions, the greater the change one will take off on a high-wind day.  Which is not to say that climate change doesn’t have an impact.. but other factors include difficulty in finding and keeping fire workers ..by paying them (!)and a variety of others.

Plus there is the great incursion of the Military Industrial complex into the wildfire space, on the basis of being able to put fires out more quickly.

Globally, the risk of catastrophic fires could increase by more than 50 percent by the end of the century, the United Nations reported.

It could of course.. or it could decrease by 50%, depending on your assumptions about the success of new technologies. Or if countries around the world decided to not pay firefighters appropriately…

This discussion seems to argue that the sand racer is capable of adapting to wildfire as a species, or perhaps is implying that things will be messed up if fire happens where it did not formerly happen. But did it “not formerly happen” due to suppression or other human factors? Isn’t evolution a process that should be allowed to work? Or can’t be stopped from working when environments change for whatever reason.

The Algerian sand racer, a Mediterranean lizard, lives in a variety of habitats, only some of which experience frequent fires. In a 2021 study, researchers found that lizards collected from fire-prone sites reacted quickly to the smell of smoke, flicking their tongues and running around their terrariums. “In places where fire is not a common threat, lizards did nothing,” said Lola Álvarez-Ruiz, a biologist at the Desertification Research Center in Spain, who conducted the study.

*******

Fires that consume more fuel may also produce more smoke per unit of area burned, threatening animals far from the flames.“All air-breathing animals are going to be impacted by smoke exposure, because the chemicals in smoke are toxic,” said Olivia Sanderfoot, an ecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.Smoke inhalation can do more than cause respiratory problems. For months after severe peatland fires produced record air pollution in Indonesia in 2015, Bornean orangutans vocalized less frequently and their voices became harsher.

But if you have lots of material on the ground to be consumed, then what else can you do besides burn it (note “more smoke per unit area”)? Maybe haul some to a sawmill to reduce fuels?

“You could walk half a mile, and you wouldn’t see a single living tree,” said Andrew Stillman, an ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Increasingly, these fires seem to create habitat conditions that are outside of the norms that these species are adapted to.”

This seems to be an argument that large treeless acreages after wildfire are more common now than before- however for much of history we didn’t have satellite imagery.  But I think what’s interesting about this is the idea of “what species are adapted to.” How long does it take for adaptation to occur? Generations are different lengths of time in different species. I think the fear may be that conditions have changed enough that current species will be unable to adapt.

That may be true even for fire-loving animals, like the black-backed woodpecker. The birds nest in scorched trees and feed on the beetle larvae that colonize the charred trunks. But they prefer patches of burned trees that are near stands of leafy, living ones, which protect their fledglings from being picked off by predators, Dr. Stillman and Dr. Tingley, of U.C.L.A., found.

After the enormous Rim fire in California in 2013, scientists searched for the woodpeckers at nearly 500 sites across the expansive burn scar. They found just six birds. “Even though it had created all this great burned habitat, it wasn’t the right kind of burned habitat,” Dr. Tingley said.

 ***********

Fewer clusters of living trees can also reduce regrowth. “In many places, we’re not getting regeneration because the seed source is lost,” said Mr. French, of the National Forest System. “It honestly looks like someone went in and just set off a bomb.”

In dry areas, even before climate change was thought to be a thing, we were aware that some tree species can have trouble regenerating without help.  We developed and  adopted the primitive technologies known at the time as “collecting seed from appropriate sources,” “planting trees” and “protecting seedlings’ which seems to be coming into vogue again.

Scorched, vegetation-less soil, which does not absorb rain well, can also hamper regeneration. Flash flooding after fires can wash ash and sediment into rivers and streams, polluting the water, killing fish and reshaping waterways.

After the Rodeo-Chediski fire in Arizona in 2002, repeated flooding washed away fertile soils that had taken more than 8,000 years to develop. “That has cascading impacts on the kind of plants that can grow,” said Jonathan Long, an ecologist at the U.S. Forest Service, who conducted the research.

What’s particularly interesting about the way that this is reported is that if you click on the link, the study says..

 the second site, Swamp Spring, was treated in 2005 by placing large rock riffle formations and vegetation transplants to prevent further incision and stimulate wetland development. The treatment was soon followed by cessation of channel incision and reestablishment of native wetland vegetation, while headcutting caused extensive erosion at the untreated site for eight years.

The theme of this piece seems to be that “scientists (var. ecologists) tell us really bad things  may happen more in the future, if we don’t do anything like fire suppression, tree planting, or wetland restoration.”  This is actually not all that unusual, either for reporting or for scientific papers.

When Monumentizing Goes Wrong?: The Case of Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

by

This is related to yesterday’s post..Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks is considered to be a co-managed federal unit between the Cochiti Pueblo and the BLM. It’s been closed for three years.

Here’s a story from KRQE News 13.  The story starts out with how difficult it was to find anything out about the closure and when it might be reopened:

The National Monument was closed to the public in the 2020 pandemic shutdown and it remains closed today. Why? KRQE News 13 went digging for answers.

For months, emails and phone calls requesting interviews with the state’s Tourism Department, the Bureau of Land Management, the Secretary of the Interior’s Office, Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez, and Senator Martin Heinrich were answered with replies such as, “We will not be providing a comment or participating in this story at this time.”

Cochiti Pueblo leaders also declined to comment. The BLM updated the statement on its website on April 28, during the weeks of KRQE’s requests for information. Finally, the BLM agreed to chat via Zoom.

“BLM has been meeting regularly with the Pueblo,” said Jamie Garcia, an outdoor recreation planner with the BLM. “We have been in discussions about what reopening looks like.”

This isn’t very transparent.  Conceivably it could have been possible to give that answer sooner. One wonders if the co-management aspect may have made it more difficult to arrive at one answer that could be communicated.

On to the Monumentization aspect:

A ‘Double-Edged’ Sword

Garcia said they’re addressing long-standing issues including over-visitation, staffing needs, and resource protection, alongside Pueblo de Cochiti. “We’ve had such high recreation use and we want to make sure that we are taking a step back and really looking at that big picture item there, and seeing how we can move forward in a more sustainable and responsible way,” Garcia told KRQE News 13.

The Cochiti Pueblo remains closed citing Covid-19 restrictions, blocking road access to the national monument which sits on BLM land. As part of the presidential proclamation, the site is managed by the BLM in “close cooperation and partnership” with the Pueblo.

“I suspect that the designation of the National Monument was a double-edged sword,” said Dr. Smith. “On one hand, it provides resources and legal protections for preservation. But once someone sees a national monument on a map, it’s close to Interstate 25, it’s close to the Albuquerque-Rio Rancho-Santa Fe metropolitan areas — then that just becomes a magnet to draw more people,” Smith explained.

DR. GARY SMITH, UNM PROFESSOR

There’s a calculus here.. do more resources show up in enough quantities to deal with the enhanced visitation from Monumentizing? What, I wonder, was the Monument protected from?

Data published in a government-issued 2020 science plan shows visitation levels each year since the monument designation. In 2000, Tent Rocks recorded 14,674 visitors.

In 2001, that jumped to 25,000 annual visitors with the presidential proclamation. And since then, visitation has soared to more than 100,000 people a year before the covid shutdown.

(Tent Rocks Visitations by Fiscal Year )

“But even before the pandemic, I recall seeing activity discussions between the BLM and Cochiti trying to think about how to handle the large crowds, that it was having a detrimental impact on the landscape that they were joint stewards to preserve,” explained Smith.

During Spring Break 2018, KRQE News 13 reported on the massive line of cars waiting to enter Tent Rocks National Monument. Visitors were waiting 90 minutes just to park their vehicles.

“In the past few weeks, they’ve been over-capacity,” said Danita Burns during that Spring Break surge in 2018. “People from Australia, people that are coming in from Japan. It’s quite the destination now,” she said.

Monuments can attract tourists from outside the area.. this may be good for some in local communities, but lead to problems of overcrowding and reduction of the experience for locals and wildlife.

According to the pre-2020 data report, “Current visitation is nearly three times the original planned capacity,” which was designed to hold about 50,000 visitors annually. That’s been a concern for those working at the site.

Dr. Gary Smith with UNM students at Tent Rocks in 1992.

Timed ticketing, fee increases

So, will visits to the monument move to timed ticketing? Garcia says an online reservation system along with a fee increase has been proposed.

“We have not implemented anything yet, but it is something we would like to do, make sure that we can keep up with growing costs of supplies and demand,” Garcia told KRQE News 13.

Meanwhile, locals are still seeing advertisements for Tent Rocks, and still waiting for the monument to reopen. “Oh, I’ll look forward to going back again, for sure,” said Smith.

Dr. Smith said his colleagues and friends have been messaging him, asking for updates about the monument. “Do you think Tent Rocks will open this spring? How long can they keep it closed? You know, so it’s – everyone wants to know,” Smith said.

The Bureau of Land Management says it will update plans for Tent Rocks on its website, but they have yet to provide a timeline on when the national monument will reopen. Part of that depends on when the pueblo decides to open its gates to the public once again.

It seems to me that Monumentizing, in some cases,  is like many politically symbolic activities.  Someone announces something that sounds good and makes a splash… then leave the same old folks with the same pots of dollars and competing priorities to actually carry it out.

Co-Management with Tribes: A Roundup of Info Attempting to Clarify

by

We read in news stories about co-stewardship (I think everyone at Interior and USDA is working on this) and co-management.

Co-stewardship is explained in this Joint Secretarial Order. It seems to be about sharing information and knowledge and working on stuff together.

The definition of co-management seems hard to get at, possibly because different reporters use the term differently. This seems relatively clear from  this High Country News piece:

The distinction between co-management and co-stewardship — terms the federal government uses for agreements to collaborate on land management with tribal nations — is subtle but important. “Co-stewardship” covers a broad range of collaborative activities like forest-thinning work in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest in partnership with the Hoonah Indian Association, where Indigenous knowledge can be included in federal management. But “co-management” is more narrowly defined. In those instances, tribal and federal governments share the power of legal authority in decision-making of a place or a species. This is the case with Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument in New Mexico, which is co-managed by the Pueblo de Cochiti and the Bureau of Land Management, and with the salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest.

In this story, also in HCN, they talk about Bears’ Ears and the new Arizona Monument as being co-managed:

The designation creates a commission for tribal nations with ancestral ties to the area — in this case 13 distinct tribal nations — to manage the lands within the monument alongside the federal government, similar to the commission established for Bears Ears.

As we previously discussed on TSW, though, establishing an advisory commission does not necessarily lead to sharing decision-making authority with the group.  The Black Hills National Forest, for example, has a FACA committee but the committee does not “co-manage.” The current Admin always holds all the legal cards in any decision and in any litigation, to defend or not or settle.

There is a fascinating legal paper by Monte Mills worth taking a look at if you are interested. The below is from pages 145 and 146.

As for delegation of authority, Obama’s Proclamation differs from the proposal submitted to the him by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition.
The Coalition carefully dissected the issue of what constitutes a lawful delegation of authority to tribes and premised its proposal on the basis that a delegation of authority is permissible insofar as it is not total, and remains subject to the final decision-making authority of the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior.417 Instead of delegating complete authority, “the Tribes and agency officials will be working together as equals to make joint decisions.”418
Though a modification of the Coalition’s proposal, Obama’s Proclamation establishes a substantive framework for collaborative
management of the Monument:
The Secretaries shall meaningfully engage the Commission or, should the Commission no longer exist, the tribal governments through some other entity composed of elected tribal government officers (comparable entity), in the development of the management plan and to inform subsequent management of the monument. To that end, in developing or revising the management plan, the Secretaries shall carefully and fully consider integrating the traditional and historical knowledge and special expertise of the Commission or comparable entity. If the Secretaries decide not to incorporate specific recommendations submitted to them in writing by the Commission or comparable entity, they will provide the Commission or comparable entity with a written explanation of their reasoning.419

This sounds a bit like a “response to comments”, but OK. Bottom line- does co-management mean that feds and Tribes are peers in decision-making- any decision needs to be agreed upon by both parties?  Or are Tribes “the most important stakeholders to listen to.” I’m sure these would be functions of specific legal authorities.  Either way, is there a reason not to co-manage everything if the legal aspects could be worked out?

Finally, from the second HCN article:

While many see co-management as a step toward land return, environmental historian and ethnobotanist Rosalyn LaPier, who is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe, and Métis, has pushed back against that idea. In an interview with High Country News last week, LaPier said that the federal government should be ready to return public land to tribes who want it now, without requiring co-management as a first step. “The federal government doesn’t want to let go of their say over public lands and allow Indigenous people to take leadership. And we’re fully prepared to take leadership,” LaPier said. Pointing to intensifying wildfires in the Western U.S., which are due in part to a century of fire suppression, she added, “Why would Native nations want to co-manage with the United States, when the United States government has shown over and over again how they mismanaged public lands?”

I wonder if there’s a list of the Tribes who want land return ASAP.

Cyanobacteria in Wyoming: Toxic Mystery

by
Shoshone National Forest hydrologist Gwen Gerber and Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality staffers Kelsee Hurshman, Ron Steg and Jillian Scott check out the shoreline of Brooks Lake Creek just below the outflow from Upper Brooks Lake. Although the water flows through a remote, wild, high-altitude landscape, the watershed is plagued by potentially harmful algal blooms. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)

The toxic mystery of Wyoming’s backcountry cyanobacteria blooms

Water quality specialists have found evidence of so-called blue-green algae blooms in rivers, frozen lakes and even in seemingly pristine subalpine watersheds. From Wyofile.

Many unknowns

A mysterious environmental influence — or combination of factors — is believed to be triggering the blooms. There are theories, but DEQ employee Ron Steg, who leads the agency’s Lander office, is clear: There’s no saying exactly why cyanobacteria are striking this area every summer.
“This particular watershed, the geology is high in phosphate,” Steg said. “It could be atmospheric deposition. We don’t know, and that’s why we are studying this.”
The DEQ is specifically examining what’s going on in the Brooks Lake watershed in detail because its 234-acre namesake lake has struggled with algal blooms that, on the worst occasions, have been implicated in fish kills so severe that fish went belly up miles downstream in the Wind River. Since 2018, Brooks Lake has occupied a slot on the Wyoming DEQ’s “impaired list.” At one time, fingers were pointed at Brooks Lake Lodge and its formerly surface-discharging sewage lagoon, but problems with nutrients and cyanobacterial blooms higher in the watershed have led to a more holistic investigation.
The Brooks Lake watershed, however, isn’t the only place in Wyoming where people and their pets are finding harmful cyanobacteria blooms in unlikely places.

****

Then there’s the backcountry. Cyanobacteria blooms are often associated with abundances of nutrients, like fertilizer from agriculture, and warm water typically found at lower elevations. So why are blooms showing up in places like Togwotee Pass?

Gerber, the Shoshone National Forest hydrologist, doesn’t have any firm answers, but she has noticed a trend within the 17 waterbodies on the national forest where cyanobacteria have been detected in high enough concentrations to warrant an advisory. All of them except for one, she said, are located in the Absaroka Volcanic formation — which suggests a component of the geology could be a contributing factor.

TRCP Video on Expanding Access to Public Lands

by
6000 or so rights of way in Region 1 FS.

I’ve been traveling the last two weeks (and this week) and was fortunate to attend the Public Lands Foundation annual conference in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Thanks to them for putting on an excellent program! The topic was access and we heard from all kinds of interesting folks, from County Commissioners, to a ranch LLC President, to the State Director. We didn’t talk much about the corner crossing issue. At the Conference, Joel Webster of TRCP (the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership) had an excellent presentation on access. Joel said that it was equivalent to this video, so here is the video.

It starts kind of slowly (IMHO) but about 8:15 starts talking about easements and the difficulties of figuring out what is public and what isn’t, and how TRCP and others are working on it. It includes an interview with an FS Region 1 Lands person. The video mostly focuses on hunting as hunters (maybe) tend to traverse the landscape more than other kinds of recreationists.

As a recreating person, more access for me is an unalloyed good. At the same time, even hikers impact wildlife. So perhaps it raises the question of how alloyed the good might be in some cases. And of course people, including hunters can exhibit poor behavior, and who pays to clean it up? Nothing in the federal lands business is simple..

And a great big shout-out to FS and BLM lands folks!!!

Wildfire Commission Report Released

by

From this page.

 

The commission’s second and final report was submitted to Congress on September 27, 2023 and reflects one of the most sweeping and comprehensive reviews of the wildfire system to date.

The report makes 148 recommendations covering seven key themes:

  • Urgent New Approaches to address the wildfire crisis
  • Supporting Collaboration to improve partner involvement at every scale
  • Shifting from Reactive to Proactive in planning for, mitigating and recovering from fire
  • Enabling Beneficial Fire to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire
  • Supporting and Expanding the Workforce to hire and retain the wildland firefighting staff needed to address the crisis
  • Modernizing Tools for Informed Decision-making to better leverage available technology and information
  • Investing in Resilience through increased spending now to reduce costs in the long run

Opportunities to Act:

Rather than selecting one or more potential recommendations, the Commission urged an “all of the above” approach, because the scale of the problem requires broad integrated, solutions. While the resulting recommendations are extensive and diverse, they are also complementary and interrelated. With these solutions in hand, the commission is recommending Congress act as quickly as possible.

Commission members will remain empaneled for six months following the final report being submitted to Congress.

 

Links:

 

Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission Webinar September 27

by

Needed to post this in time..

The above is an image.. you actually need to click here to register. Hopefully at least one someone will attend and report on it at TSW.  If you do please email me with your reporting.. sharon at forestpolicypub.com.

Kelly Martin offered to host a separate Zoom for interested TSW-ites, please email me or note in the comments below if you are interested. I will schedule something when I get back from my break.

“You Might Be a District Ranger” and Fall Blogging Break

by

I’m taking a fall blogging break until October 9. I’m thinking the report of the Wildfire Commission will be coming out next week. Some people already have it. The rumor mill says it will say something about more money and more agency coordination. I hope that someone will read it and post about it.

I thought I’d leave you with this post I found on LinkedIn by Camille Howes, Forest Supervisor on the Gila National Forest. It gave me a smile as many of these resonated with me.. except the topic of “endless conversations” varies by position. And I still like “endless conversations” about trees..

Now, I realize some folks might not be sure if they are “ranger material” so below I have provided some self-reflection thought starters to help you ascertain if you might already be ranger and not even know it.

* If you like dragging a can of dripping fire through the forest…you might be a District Ranger.
* If you find yourself craving endless conversations about livestock…you might be a District Ranger.
* If you desire a close, personal connection with your local elected officials…you might be a District Ranger.
* If you enjoy long, scenic drives to attend meetings at the supervisor’s office…you might be a District Ranger.
* If you own over a dozen Yeti travel mugs with various logos from across the agency… you might be a District Ranger.
* If you love the sounds of chainsaws ripping through wood on a crisp autumn morning…you might be a District Ranger.
* If you can simultaneously manage multiple personalities, including a few of your own…you might be a District Ranger.
* If you love talking about your district at the post office, grocery store, laundromat, beauty salon, church, or gym…you might be a District Ranger.
* If you know the maximum number of allowable persons at an event without a SUP, but can’t remember your oldest kid’s name…you might be a District Ranger.
* And lastly, if you find deep, personal satisfaction in serving your staff, your community, your landscape, your country, and future generations…you are a District Ranger.

Challenge yourself today…join us! Become a District Ranger in Region 3. I assure you, the rewards are endless.

And here’s a link to USAJOBS  openings for District Rangers.
Also, here’s  a handy description of some current internship opportunities.

Abandoned Campers And Squatting In National Forests: Interview with FS Region 2 Law Enforcement

by

We’ve seen some stories about this before, but hunting season definitely brings this to mind (exceeding limits and leaving unoccupied RVs in the forest). This was an issue that I noticed in the Bighorns even ten years ago, so it can’t be easy to solve. I’d be interested to see from current employees (1) is it a problem where you are? (2) what have you tried to deal with it? and (3) what kind of help or resources would you need to deal with it?. I think about Forest travel management and how “bad actors” off-trail ruined it for everyone, in some respects. As Jon said in his post: “The goal was to reduce resource damage from unmanaged motor vehicle use off that road system.”
Hopefully this won’t happen with dispersed camping.

This is a more comprehensive story on the issue, but was published in the Cowboy State Daily, so that’s the Wyoming connection.
Here’s a link. Thank you Cowboy State Daily for no paywall! You can always donate to them if you appreciate their reporting.

A Forest Service official also told Cowboy State Daily that the problem is ongoing across the West.

“Within the Rocky Mountain Region, which covers five states — Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota — abandoned campers and RVs and long-term recreational camping continue to be issues in national forests throughout the region. We tend to see higher rates during the summer and fall months and lower rates during the winter months,” said Nick Walters, the law enforcement patrol commander for the Forest Service’s regional headquarters in Lakewood, Colorado.

Is Private Management The Answer?
A long-term parking area was set up on the National Forest near Greybull in the 1980s, District Ranger Mark Foster recently told Cowboy State Daily. He oversees the Medicine Wheel Ranger District, which is based in Greybull and part of the Bighorn National Forest.

The system worked well at first, but then people started abusing it, leaving broken-down campers there for years — so long that animals started taking up residence inside some of them, he said.

Now, Foster wants the camper parking area cleared out.

Foster said he doesn’t want to permanently ban long-term camper parking. Instead, he hopes the Forest Service can convince a private concessionaire to take over the site.

They could charge a minimal storage fee and crack down on bad actors by seizing abandoned campers and immediately putting them up for auction, he said.

To sell or auction off abandoned campers, the Forest Service must go through a bureaucratic process that can take up the three months, he said.

Stinking Carcasses
Fawcett said that from what he’s seen in the Sheridan area, he’s convinced that people are flagrantly ignoring camp site time limits, and he doesn’t think the Forest Service is doing enough to crack down on it.

“It’s pretty obvious that the Forest Service and the users don’t pay attention to this,” he said.

Mosely said that as she and her husband have been making the rounds among campsites over the past couple of years, they have noticed some people who seem to have stayed in particular sites for months on end.

“We’ve seen people who stay in one spot for three or four weeks, or even months at a time,” she said.

And as hunting seasons open up across Wyoming and the rest of the region, a few hunters are campsite slobs, Mosely added.

“It’s not just the trailers, it’s the carcasses of animals that they won’t bury or properly dispose of,” she said. “When they’re done taking the meat from a big game animal, they leave the skin and the rest of the carcass just sitting out on the ground. The smell is nasty.”

Worse Near Big Cities
While Mosely said she saw people hogging good campsites at Flaming Gorge, Walters said Wyoming might be spared the worst of the abuses, which seem to take place near large metro areas.

“We see more recreational use on the National Forests that are close to highly populated cities or towns. With this use comes an increase in long-term camping, abandoned campers, vehicles, trash and waste. It’s hard to say if any one place is worse than another. These activities impact each forest or ranger district where they occur,” he said.

“We tend to see more extended use near the Denver Metro area, but we have resources available to assist with removal. The more remote district offices do not tend to have resources immediately available, so several abandoned campers could significantly impact those areas,” Walters added. “I am not able to respond to the question of whether there has been an increase or decrease in this activity from previous years.”

Check Local Regulations
To avoid annoying other campers, or possibly getting on the wrong side of the law and having their RVs impounded, people should double-check camp site time limits in whatever area they’re headed to, he said.

“Since most forests have slightly different stay limits, I suggest that individuals reach out to the Ranger District office that oversees the area they plan to visit. The Ranger District will be able to provide the most up-to-date rules and regulations for that specific area,” Walters said.

I’d just add that (in my experience) it’s not always easy to access human beings at Ranger Districts to ask questions via phone or email.

The Missing Utes and Coverage of the Uinta Basin Railway Project

by
I think this is the preferred route. here’s the website: https://uintabasinrailway.com/

If you look at media coverage of this issue, sometimes you don’t even see the Ute connection mentioned. I wasn’t keeping a list, but ran across a recent story from a few days ago on NPR from Aspen Public Radio in which Utes were not mentioned among the folks who support the railroad.

The below op-ed ran in the Denver Post on August 14, 2023.

It’s also interesting what Chairman Murray of the Ute Tribe Business Committee has to say about consultation on the Camp Hale Monument designation, and the Tribe’s hunting and fishing rights.

As Chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee, I am shocked and disappointed by the actions of Gov. Jared Polis, U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, and other state lawmakers that reflect disregard and contempt toward our peoples’ ancestral ties to Colorado.

Ute Indians occupied what is now the state of Colorado from time immemorial. Although the federal government forced us to relocate to eastern Utah in what we today call our Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Colorado remains our ancestral homeland.

Once we were forcibly relocated to the arid Uinta Basin, energy mineral production has become the main source of livelihood for our people, who would otherwise struggle to put food on the table, access education, and provide shelter for our families.

The Uinta Basin Railway Project would provide much-needed infrastructure and allow our Tribe to access energy markets nationwide, but Colorado is dead set on standing in our way. Governor Polis and Colorado lawmakers are lodging a campaign to shut down this project simply because it would connect our oil with a wider market.

As planned, the Uinta Basin Railway is an 88-mile single-track rail line that would connect the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah to the National Railway Network, providing energy mineral producers in this region with the infrastructure needed to access markets throughout the nation for the first time. About eight miles of track would cross Tribal lands on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.

While the federal permitting process is near completion, Eagle County, Colorado, has joined environmental advocacy groups in filing suit asking that these federal permits be set aside, causing yet further delay in groundbreaking on the project.

Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper are using the recent derailment accident in Ohio as justification to deny us the ability to market and transport the oil produced on our land from our Reservation. This is a flawed comparison. The Ohio derailment involved highly hazardous, flammable substances. The unique crude oil we produce from our Reservation is a waxy product that does not flow like regular oil and is not flammable. It is transported by rail as a solid, not as a hazardous liquid.

Efforts by Polis and Colorado lawmakers to block this important project reveal their deference to environmental lobbyists and advocacy groups whose livelihoods do not depend on sustainable energy development.

These groups blindly oppose any and all oil development, and Colorado officials have clearly bought in. It is a shame that Colorado continues to act with no regard for the adverse impacts on a marginalized people who have long been stewards to the lands and resources they claim to protect. This is not environmental justice. In fact, it is the very opposite.

Opposition to the Uinta Basin Railway Project is not the only recent example of Colorado’s dishonorable treatment of our Tribe.

We retained hunting and fishing rights within Colorado boundaries under our treaties with the United States, but our efforts to work in cooperation with the Colorado state government to exercise and enforce our treaty rights have been stonewalled every step of the way.

Following years of refusing to meet with us as the elected leadership of the Ute Indian Tribe on this issue, Governor Polis and his administration are now refusing to enter into a cooperative agreement surrounding the exercise of our treaty rights. Governor Polis has no authority whatsoever to interfere with our treaty rights, and our Tribe plans to proceed in exercising our rights as affirmed by the Supreme Court in its 2019 opinion in Herrera v. Wyoming.

Unfortunately, the Biden Administration has followed Colorado’s lead in ignoring our treaty rights surrounding our ancestral homelands.

President Joe Biden recently established the Camp Hale National Monument in the middle of our ancestral lands. This was done with no government-to-government consultation with our Tribal leadership whatsoever.

Over a century after our people were stripped from our homeland and pushed into the Utah desert, the Biden Administration now seeks to further dispossess our ties to these lands by designating a monument without including us and attempting to erase our history and connection to these lands.

Julius T. Murray III is chairman of the Ute Indian Tribe Business Committee. The Ute Indian Tribe resides on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in northeastern Utah. Three bands of Utes comprise the Ute Indian Tribe: the Whiteriver Band, the Uncompahgre Band, and the Uintah Band. The Tribe has more than 3,000 members, with over half living on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. The Ute Indian Tribe operates its own tribal government and oversees significant oil and gas deposits on its 4.5 million-acre Reservation. The Tribal Business Committee is the governing council of the Tribe.