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Below is the Little Range Map for context:

Here’s Sam’s post:

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Santa Fe national forest Supervisor Shaun Sanchez has a lot on his plate trying to rebuild credibility after the agency’s 2022 intentional burn ignited a massive wildfire that so far as cost the taxpayers over $4 billion. Drinking water supplies in the affected communities are contaminated with toxic heavy metals likely caused by the blanket use of fire retardants. Post fire flooding resulting from increasingly intense summer thundershowers continues to erode adjacent farmland and ancient irrigation systems.

The normally bustling Santa Fe forest headquarters was mostly empty when a colleague and I visited last week. More than 80 percent of the recreation staff is gone. Around a conference table that seemed too big we discussed the weather and shared hope that this winter’s first snow would permit the burning of thousands of debris piles that have built up from years of forest clearing. However, warm winds soon melted most of the snow creating another of the seemingly endless delays.

In my more than four decades of forest activism in the Southwest, Shaun is probably the most engaging Supervisor I’ve encountered. He listens and asks good questions. He’s the first to have grown up in the unique mix of cultures in northern New Mexico. Instead of just passing through, he has a deep sense of belonging to this place.

Our meeting concerned the fate of the vulnerable white pines. It’s been more than a decade since a committee of scientists recommended that a refugia be established in the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed to protect a self-replicating population of white pines still free from the century-old white pine blister rust. Despite years of pleading nothing has been done and millions of white pines were needlessly cut, piled and burned in fuel reduction projects.

New Mexico’s intermingled population of southwestern white (Pinus strobiformis) and limber pines (Pinus flexilis) is unique. Recent research has identified high levels of resistance to blister rust from seed collected in the Lincoln, Cibola and Santa Fe national forests. After 7.5 years of experimental exposure to blister rust spores, three populations had a greater than 70% survival rates representing perhaps the highest level of resistance documented to date in a North American white pine species. Preserving this diversity is essential to white pine survival.

Ecologists in the 1920s were critical of the Forest Service when it told landowners to cut down the last American Chestnuts for their valuable wood as these majestic giants were being eliminated from the eastern forests by chestnut blight. The genetically resistant “redwoods of the east” were likely lost forever when the agency ignored this advice. In the 1960s, rust resistant western white pines were removed from the forests of Idaho and Montana when the cut was accelerated to extract their valuable timber before most of them succumbed to the pathogen. No need to repeat this sad story in the Southwest.

Instead, update the Santa Fe forest plan to keep up with the current science. It’s not big step — both New Mexico’s Cibola and Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves forest plans protect white pines — and the regional office (what’s left of it) wants forest plans in the Southwest to be consistent.

What will Washington say? Although white pines are not a commercial species on the Santa Fe, Trump officials will likely see any protection as a needless distraction. Uncommon courage is needed to stand up to these timber bullies.

Let Shaun know you have his back. [email protected].

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I asked Sam for some links, and Johnson and Sniezko_2021_Quantitative disease resistance to WPBR is the resistance work he is referring to, by one of my old buddies at Dorena.

Here’s the Santa Fe Watershed Management Plan (funded by CFLRP) and the key paragraph p. 18.

Continue to protect Southwestern white pine. During planning of restoration treatments a concern was expressed for the fate of Southwestern white pines in the municipal watershed, because populations have suffered in the West in recent years due to the exotic white pine blister rust. White pines in the municipal watershed have been reproducing successfully in spite of the threat of blister rust and thus the municipal watershed has been identified as a possible sub regional refugia for this tree species. The protection of southwestern white pines should continue to be an objective throughout long-term prescribed burning maintenance.

I suppose the word should be “refugium’ since they are speaking of a singular place. It does make me wonder how a series of refugia would be designated (by whom) and managed, since I don’t think there are forest geneticists in R-3. And technically, I don’t think two contractors are a “committee of scientists” nor are they geneticists..so.. not to get be defending disciplinary boundaries here..

Here were the other questions I had:
1. “after the agency’s 2022 intentional burn ignited a massive wildfire that so far as cost the taxpayers over $4 billion.” If this is Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon, I thought that Calf Canyon was started by a resurgent burn pile and Hermit’s Peak by an escaped prescribed fire, which were I guess two “intentional burns” if you want to characterize a resurgent burn pile that way.

2.

New Mexico’s intermingled population of southwestern white (Pinus strobiformis) and limber pines (Pinus flexilis) is unique. Recent research has identified high levels of resistance to blister rust from seed collected in the Lincoln, Cibola and Santa Fe national forests. After 7.5 years of experimental exposure to blister rust spores, three populations had a greater than 70% survival rates representing perhaps the highest level of resistance documented to date in a North American white pine species. Preserving this diversity is essential to white pine survival.”

The referenced genetic study was only of SWP. Here is what the study says, not three populations, but three families of of the 40 sampled.

We assess progeny arrays from 40 P. strobiformis families (1873 seedlings), originating from three populations, inoculated with C. ribicola. Subsequently, the seedlings were assessed for signs, symptoms and resulting impact in a common garden trial over a 7.5-year period to determine the types and frequency of
resistance in a portion of this species’ range. There was a high incidence of both stem symptoms and mortality in the P. strobiformis families tested, and families ranged in survival from 0 to 84.6%. Three families had >70% survival, representing perhaps the highest documented QR to date in a North American white pine species.

But the fact that SWP is relatively rare would be a reason to protect it. Not like sugar pine, WWP or even limber.

So a logical thing would be to collect cones from all the SWP and test them, then collect seed from those trees for planting. That’s what we did for sugar pine, western white pine, and whitebark.

Here’s a link to everything you might want to know about SWP from the fire effects information, including fire ecology.

3. “Ecologists in the 1920s were critical of the Forest Service when it told landowners to cut down the last American Chestnuts for their valuable wood as these majestic giants were being eliminated from the eastern forests by chestnut blight.The genetically resistant “redwoods of the east” were likely lost forever when the agency ignored this advice.” I asked Sam for a citation for this, as I had never heard it. Many Weeks Act eastern forests had been cut over by logging companies, e.g. the Monongahela. Also, I’m also not sure that there was an ecological science per se in the 1920’s.

4. “In the 1960s, rust resistant western white pines were removed from the forests of Idaho and Montana when the cut was accelerated to extract their valuable timber before most of them succumbed to the pathogen.” Again, there’s a great deal more to this story according to this 1999 GTR “White pine in the American West a Vanishing Species”..

Starting in 1880, the farreaching western white pine forests became the principal target for logging. The Inland Northwest’s first timber mill was built in 1880, and the second followed in 1882. Logging removed massive white pine groves for more than 100 years. After the 1910 fire episodes and the onset of logging, the young trees then fell victim to yet another challenge: white pine blister rust, an Asian fungus introduced to western North America in 1921 by way of Europe.

Probably some of you remember people who had gotten their start in the FS with Ribes eradication.
This was what the authors saw happening in 1999..

On Federal lands, harvest rates that create openings seem headed for such low levels that it appears questionable whether significant white pine restoration can take place. Without some sort of disturbances that create openings, forest succession will lead to the replacement of white pine by other species.

5. Trump? “timber bullies” on the Santa Fe?

It would be helpful to know what the SF is not doing (more at the prescription level), that the other forests are doing to protect SWP. And maybe someone has a more up-to-date range map?

Andy Kerr reviews a book by Richard L. Hutto, A Beautifully Burned Forest: Learning to Celebrate Severe Forest Fire.

Back in 2010, when the 2012 Planning Rule was being developed, I wrote a piece here “Talking Across the Concrete-Abstract Divide.” The comments, by folks like Andy Stahl, John Rupe and Lynn Jungwirth are worth going back to.

Last week, I was talking with my spiritual coach and she expressed it differently.. she said “you see the world from the bottom-up ” rather than  “top-down.” In the sense that I understand the  world based on my observations and building from there, as opposed to seeing “the big picture.” She said she could see this in teams, and even in families.  Some of this could be tied to Jung via Myers-Briggs types; or even neurodiversity of various kinds. I’m sure there is a philosopher or psychologist who has understood this and written about it.

It’s easy to imagine how annoying the different types could be to each other.  Bottom-up thinkers could be seen as picky and pedantic, as in “can’t see the forest for the trees.”  Top-down thinkers could be seen as generalizing to the point of meaninglessness.  Think of “global temperature averages”.. an average is not actually true or meaningful to plants and animals anywhere.  At the same time, we complement each other. As an evolutionary biologist, I think that different ways of thinking within a tribe must have an evolutionary advantage, and that we can, in fact,  get closer to the truth by considering both points of view.

In our world, sometimes someone has a generic statement. Say “it is unlikely that logging to control fire will interact with wildfire” or “commercial logging inherently has greater impacts on environmental values like habitat and soils.” I just naturally go to “then how come we see frequently stories like this?” Or “why does it seem like folks are using the same equipment on non-commercial projects (almost all, where I live)? What equipment are you talking about exactly? What if you rip skid trails, does that still count?

I like to place the generalizations “in conversation” as they say, nowadays, with the lived experience in specific places with specific practices and tools  of myself and others.  And words matter.. you could say I am “challenging” (seems unnecessarily adversarial) or the more gentle “questioning.”  I prefer the more even-handed “let’s place these two perspectives in conversation.”

We of the bottom-up persuasion of have predictable questions to the generic statements.   How do you know this? What information are you using and how did you acquire it? Sadly, it seems like often there is no forum for having these kinds of discussions. And it’s not just forest world… in religion world, it’s the difference between theologians and social scientists of religion. For example, what do say, Catholics believe about topic x. You could ask the Pope what they’re supposed to think. You could ask scholars at universities to give their opinions (probably based on their diverse own experiences). Or you could ask social scientists to conduct a survey asking those specific questions.  You’re likely to get different answers from any of those approaches.

I realize that what I think of as being helpful “hey, that’s not always the case, perhaps you could say this instead” is not always seen to be helpful by superiors, employees, peers, and readers of TSW.

Let’s look at a few more of these..

• The Assistant Director at Rocky Mountain Station who claimed that if we studied “systems,” we wouldn’t need research about organisms.
• Sitting around the table at a RO meeting with some profs at University of Colorado. They kept talking about “fuel treatments in the backcountry” I asked them to name one specifically so we could look at the purpose and need and take the discussion deeper. Our Chief of Staff signaled to me to keep quiet. I guess her idea was that if we didn’t challenge them, they might like us more. I don’t think that has actually worked that way.

In both of the above examples, there is a perceived power imbalance which can make it difficult to have an open dialogue.

• Objections.. what do we know about them? “it’s an important part of public involvement” vs. “what can we learn about how they are working in practice by looking at who objects and what value is or is not added?”

I’ve seen many situations in which either the structure doesn’t exist to have these discussions, or folks think it’s potentially bad for relationships to have the conversations.  In my view, these same convos  might lead us to a deeper place of understanding of why we view things differently and in fact a greater appreciation for each other.  More conversation, less “othering” as they say nowadays.

In my case, I show respect precisely by engaging (your views matter to me!) rather than letting generalizations go unquestioned.  So I hope that my bottom-up kinds of comments and clarifications are taken in that spirit.

High Country News essay. First paragraph:

“I first read Denis Johnson’s novella Train Dreams outside, leaning against a tree. It was 2019, and my Forest Service trail crew was camped out in a quiet corner of Washington’s Alpine Lakes Wilderness, clearing the Jack Creek trail through a two-year-old burn. In the evenings, after I’d rinsed the grime off in a shallow creek, I savored Johnson’s descriptions of the rough and lonely life of his protagonist, Robert Grainier, a logging-crew laborer in Washington’s forests a hundred years ago.”

Here is what i heard back from SSA on how the change was handled and whom to call if that didn’t happen.

We would refer you to the SSA webpage: Social Security Fairness Act: Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO) update | SSA

On background, if a beneficiary was receiving benefits that were reduced by WEP and/or GPO when the SSFA was passed into law on January 5, 2025, their benefit should have been automatically adjusted, and they should have received a mailed notice.  If a person believes they are eligible and their benefits were not adjusted or they were not notified, they should call 1-800-772-1213 Monday through Friday, from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. local time to discuss their specific case and to verify the information we have on file.

So it sounds like if you were not receiving benefits because you weren’t eligible to get them pre-2025, you wouldn’t have been notified.  Since I first posted about this, I’ve heard from folks who were automatically notified and adjusted.  But there are those of us out there who were not notified, so you or your friends or relatives could be among them.  Since folks in this situation have to apply and won’t get the benefits back in time (I think they go back six months), it’s important for them to apply as soon as possible.

Welcome back to Forest Service and other employed folks! We’ve missed you!

Don Amador sent me a list of his “predictions” for the New Year.  This sounds like fun so I thought I’d highlight a few, add my own, and  give you all a chance to add yours.  I have a few more, which I’ll put in separate posts, and you can submit a guest post as well.

Here are three of my favorites of his predictions/wishes..

 DOGE effort helps refocus Forest Service leadership to redirect fiscal and other resources out to local units to empower District Rangers and Forest Supervisors to increase the pace and scale of on-the-ground projects that benefit natural, cultural, and recreation programs.

I think this is happening anyway, although it’s more about leadership intent than DOGE.  Also we all know this is not easy to do.  This next one is more novel.

 Forest Service Chief, Tom Shultz, creates a new “Trail Czar” position in the agency to promote the designation of roads, trails, and areas for OHV and other outdoor recreation activities.   That new Czar will spend a lot of time in the field meeting with National Forests that already have a high quality trail recreation program and, most importantly, those Forests that do not to encourage them to get on the trail recreation train.

While Don says “OHV and other recreation activities”,  I might say all recreation activities, including OHV.

National and regional motorized and non-motorized outdoor recreation groups will continue to collaborate and find common ground on a growing number of access challenges realizing there is strength in numbers.  Those collaborative efforts take on even more importance as they address  new problems and find solutions.

This is a real dream.. how can they (motorized and non) work together better?  What’s preventing them from doing that now? Any guest posts on this topic or other predictions/wishes would be appreciated.

[The following essay was written by Wilderness Watch’s Mason Parker. The piece details Wilderness Watch’s objection to a U.S. Forest Service decision to allow more than 10,000 domestic sheep and their lambs to graze on 10 allotments—including one which has not been grazed in more than 40 years—totaling about 144,000 acres in the High Uintas Wilderness, which is on the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest in Utah. This decision puts countless native bighorn sheep at risk of sickness and death, due to fatal diseases they contract from domestic sheep. – mk]

Domestic sheep grazing and Wilderness are always at odds
By Mason Parker, Wilderness Watch

Stumbling over the rugged alpine landscape of the High Uintas Wilderness, a bighorn lamb is coughing and struggling, afflicted with pneumonia as the cold skies of winter set in. Here in northeastern Utah, a battle between domestication and wildness has been raging for three decades, while the West’s wild bighorns have fought for survival for over two centuries.

In September, Wilderness Watch filed an objection to a decision signed by the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest to continue domestic sheep grazing on 144,000 acres, nearly one third of the High Uintas Wilderness. Releasing another 10,000 domestic sheep into the wild would put countless bighorn sheep at risk of sickness and death, leaving them vulnerable to the harsh conditions of the High Uintas in winter. Sick lambs don’t live long out there.

Brought to America from the old country, the pathogen Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, or Movi, causes the runaway spread of pneumonia after being introduced to bighorns through domestic sheep. The pneumonia, which is undetectable in domestic sheep, is spread through nose-to-nose contact, a friendly greeting between two long-separated descendants of a common ancestor. For these bighorn herds, the result is nothing short of catastrophic. First the disease annihilates the herd, then it becomes endemic. Ewes become chronic carriers, infecting their lambs for decades after the initial outbreak. Any bighorn lamb that becomes infected has likely been issued a death sentence. If the infection doesn’t take their life, the sickness leaves them vulnerable to predation and the elements. In North America, the bighorn population has plummeted by an estimated 96 percent since Euro-American colonization. There are many reasons for this, but the primary cause of untimely mortality among wild sheep is pneumonia. Tragically, the agencies managing these areas refuse to implement simple solutions, even as they witness the wildlife they’re responsible for dying excruciating deaths year after year.

The impact of domestic sheep grazing on Wilderness doesn’t end with dying lambs—endless ecological problems arise when you turn a Wilderness into a feedlot. Unsupervised sheep defecate wherever they like, which has led to filthy conditions in areas of the High Uintas like Bald Mountain, where domestic sheep run roughshod. Backpackers have reported so much feces covering the ground they couldn’t even find a place to set their packs.

Domestic sheep grazing leads to the depletion of vegetation that would otherwise feed native wildlife, like elk, mule deer, and, of course, bighorn sheep. This leads to accelerated soil erosion and sedimentation that flows downstream and gets dumped into vulnerable ecosystems, impacting aquatic life as well. Excessive sedimentation clogs fish gills, reduces oxygen levels, disrupts the food chain, and leads to the loss of sensitive species such as cutthroat trout.

And yet, having access to these Wilderness lands, overgrazing and trampling them to mud and dust still isn’t enough. Permittees demand the trapping and killing of native wildlife like black bears, mountain lions, and coyotes. This, of course, is after the ranchers and government worked together to trap, hunt, and poison gray wolves in a coordinated campaign of extermination in the Uintas that ended when the last wolf was killed in 1929. Utah’s Bighorn Plan, which is supported by the Forest Service, calls for the killing of cougars and the helicopter gunning of potentially infected bighorn sheep, rather than the more logical and humane closing of livestock grazing allotments. You and I pay for this! Taxpayers foot the bill to prop up the failing business model of public lands ranchers across the West, including 13 million acres of Wilderness. In fact, the ranching corporation grazing their domestic sheep in the High Uintas Wilderness pays less than one cent a day per sheep for the privilege. Where’s DOGE when you need them?

If wild animals are not safe in Wilderness, then there is nowhere safe for them left in the world.

Domestication is sweeping the planet at an unprecedented rate—wild animals make up only four percent of the mammals on earth. The other 96 percent is nothing but humans, our pets, and our livestock. Chickens and poultry make up 70 percent of the avian life left, more than double the population of remaining wild birds. If we haven’t drawn a line already, when will we? The ecological turmoil resulting from modern agricultural practices should be enough, but what about the misery and loneliness at the end of the extinction crisis? E.O. Wilson called this era of mass extinction and biological catastrophe the Eremozoic period, or the Age of Loneliness, when we have given up all the world’s wildlife and biodiversity for a cheeseburger and another pair of socks.

While the thought of dying bighorn lambs and mass extinction is unbearably depressing, some of our ecological problems have straight-forward solutions. Protecting the bighorn sheep of the High Uintas is one such problem, and the solution is clear: end domestic sheep grazing in this alpine Wilderness. Yet land managers seem fanatical in their desire to appease those who exploit the Wilderness to line their pockets.

Wildernesses like the High Uintas are the last remaining sanctuaries for wildlife, as the planet succumbs to the sprawl of civilization. It is vital that these lands remain safe for wild bighorns, because they have nowhere left to go. If we allow ranchers to feed from the public trough, it should come with an understanding that it is done with respect for the land and its wild inhabitants, not at the cost of ecosystem collapse and mass extinction. If this means we must end the practice altogether, especially in Wilderness, so be it. The agencies that approve plans leading to the death of bighorns and the destruction of ecosystems are not just complacent in the ranchers’ conquest, they are equally responsible.

The reality is that domestication and wildness are at odds with one another. They cannot coexist in any sustainable way, because the primary goal of domestication is the taming of wildness. While wildness now only exists in small pockets around America, there are some who wish to see it eradicated entirely. Nearly everything is not enough. A world of domestication is defined by barrenness, sickness, and boredom, but a world of wildness is fertile and vigorous and intense. We must do everything we can to protect what’s wild and prevent the transformation of Wilderness into feedlots. For the bighorns of the High Uintas, there is no more room for compromise.

Mason Parker is Wilderness Watch’s Wilderness Defense Director.