Laura Paskus,
Environment Reporter
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Hi All,
On last week’s New Mexico in Focus, state Department of Agriculture Secretary Jeff Witte and I talked about how the state’s farmers and ranchers have fared his year, what consumers can expect thanks to drought and water shortages here and on the Colorado River, and the future of farming in our changing world.
You can watch the broadcast interview by clicking on the video below or visiting the PBS Video App.
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And since our interview aired with current and former firefighters, Colorado’s Rep. Joe Neguse introduced the Housing Our Firefighters Act, which would create a housing stipend for wildland firefighters working more than 50 miles from their residence, and the Care for Our Firefighters Act, which would establish mental health programs for them. He’s hoping to add those provisions to the National Defense Authorization Act.
Just some of the news from around the U.S. Southwest:
• KJZZ reported that the University of Arizona has opened a center focused on climate change and tribes. The Indigenous Resilience Center, according to the story, “will work directly with tribes on projects like solar power, off-grid water resources, agriculture and food resources and native plant adaptation, to name a few.” Karletta Chief (Diné), who we interviewed in 2020, will lead the center.
• New Mexicans might have been jealous of Arizona’s wild monsoon season this year. But, the news isn’t all good. KNAU reported that wet conditions have contributed to a record-high season for West Nile virus, which is spread by mosquitoes.
• Last week, the Albuquerque City Council voted to eliminate city bus fares. We have an upcoming episode that focuses on Together For Brothers, an Albuquerque-based group that advocates for transit equity, and you can read The Daily Lobo story about the zero-fares initiative.
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Recently, we joined Together for Brothers and City Councilor Lan Sena in the bosque. |
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• According to KFDA-TV, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has granted the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority $46 million toward building part of a water pipeline that will eventually send 15 to 28 million gallons of water per day from Ute Lake near Logan to the City of Clovis and Cannon Air Force Base. This pipeline has been in the works for many years, since long before 2018, when the Air Force revealed that Cannon Air Force Base contaminated local groundwater with “forever chemicals,” or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
• The City of Santa Fe anticipates receiving $6 million in federal funding for its San Juan-Chama Return Flow Project. The city pumps groundwater, uses water stored from the Santa Fe River, and water from the Rio Grande—including “San Juan-Chama water,” which is piped from tributaries to the San Juan into the Chama, a tributary of the Rio Grande. (I know, it’s complicated.) With the return flow project, Santa Fe plans to “reclaim” its San Juan-Chama water and after cleaning it, return it to the Rio Grande.
• I’m sure everyone has seen the news about the 23,000-year-old human footprints at White Sands National Monument, but I can’t help but share links to the study itself, published in Science, and the New York Times story by Carl Zimmer, who wrote:
The footprints were first discovered in 2009 by David Bustos, the park’s resource program manager. Over the years, he has brought in an international team of scientists to help make sense of the finds.
Together, they have found thousands of human footprints across 80,000 acres of the park. One path was made by someone walking in a straight line for a mile and a half. Another shows a mother setting her baby down on the ground. Other tracks were made by children.
• Looking beyond the Southwest, I also want to mention two other stories: “Utu in the Anthropocene” in Places Journal about redesigning colonial landscapes and the Māori concept of reciprocity, and “Does Nature Have Rights? A Burgeoning Legal Movement Says Rivers, Forests and Wildlife Have Standing, Too” at Inside Climate News.
While the need for change really does lie with governments, corporations, and industries, our individual choices and actions matter. I realized that again on Sunday morning while sitting with a friend and watching a small, untidy corner of land in my Albuquerque neighborhood.
This corner I love is maybe an eighth of an acre in size; just a spot my neighbor left outside the confines of her walled yard. There’s a motley assortment of cholla, tamarisk, desert willow, yucca, sage, and mulberry, locust, and conifer trees. It's like a mini high desert forest—complete with a messy forest litter of dead cholla branches, leaf litter, and pine needles, as well as a busy, overlapping canopy—and I’m always amazed by how much wildlife it supports. (It stands in contrast, by the way, to a lot across the street razed to barrenness last year for a big, new house.)
Drinking our coffee, we watched a family of curve-billed thrashers dart in and out from the cholla that hosts their nest. Rabbits foraged under the brush and woodpeckers knocked on locust pods. Roadrunners fluffed their feathers in the cool morning sun and ran across the street—necks outstretched.
This tiny sanctuary has changed how I think about my own yard, where I provide water for birds and other wildlife, leave the crab apples that fall strewn about the place, and nurture plants that will provide food and shelter. I want to expand their habitat, provide a connection to what they already have. I don’t care as much what my human neighbors think about my yard, as what I might provide for the non-human neighbors.
Regardless of the challenges we face, that we’ve foisted upon this planet, it’s still easy to feel joy that we share this planet with such a wide and wild variety of neighbors, wherever we live. And I’m always thankful to be reminded that everything we do matters to those around us.
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Best wishes,
Laura Paskus
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