Replies

Now head north and west a little from Albuquerque, towards Los Alamos and you will find land destroyed by Forest Service Fire and Logging policy mis-management. A shame that is. You can actually drive a great road from Los Alamos to Cuba NM and pass through National Forest Service, BLM, Indian, and Private Forest and see the effects of the different management policies. From Now Barren scorched Federal Land, to healthier forest of the BLM and Indian Lands.

I would love to see you expand on this. I'm not sure what you are saying here.

A few years ago, the US Forest Service decided they wanted to reclaim an ancient meadow, so they sent out some workers to set an extremely hot fire. In New Mexico, in the dry spring, on a windy day. The fire ended up consuming over 450 homes in Los Alamos, along with beautiful forests from where the fire was set to the Santa Clara Indian reservation, where it was finally contained.

The point being, some of our government agencies are run by extremists that do not allow for proper maintenance. But the other agencies, such as were mentioned, do better jobs at balancing preservation needs with fire protection. The drive he mentioned is one of the most beautiful in NM. And you can tell the difference in the forests as you pass into different jurisdictions.

Absolutely. First I am not a scientist, I don't have a degree in Forestry (although I do have my Forestry Merit Badge ;) So this falls into the category of opinion, not fact and contains my biases.

You can drive a circle and go through a checkerboard Bureau of Land Management Land, Privately Owned Land, Indian Owned Reservation Land, and the Santa Fe National Forest.

Predominantly coniferous/temperate forested lands with many use desginations from Wilderness to Grazing by Permit to Private Use. Each follows the philosophy of the steward. Much of the private & BLM land is logged by permit and/or grazed. The National Forest is what it has become.

You can literally see as you travel from land controlled by one steward to the next the differences in philosophy, and health of the forest.

From Santa Fe you take 84 north, take 4 west, just before Jemez Springs take 126 to Cuba. This is a dirt road passable by cars when dry, else you better have a 4 wheel drive. Once in Cuba take 44 west for a short while and circle back to 84 on 96 through Gallina. It would take a full day.

Made the drive last summer. Beautiful drive. You will see junipers and scrubland to tall massive Ponderosa Pines.

Unfortunately you will also see massive burn areas from the past summer, where the fire was fully involved and the earth scorched to the ground. As you pass from those barren, eroding areas into back into the forest you ask yourself why? We might as well clear cut it. Likely if we had it would recover more quickly in some areas and we would have had the use of the trees. At the very least why did we not go in and take out deadfall for paper production, or selectively logged to thin, or checkerboard clear cut to create meadows and fire breaks.

On the drive you can pretty much tell where you are by the activities and amount of deadfall. In many parts of the National Forest you have tangled messes of dead pines, clogged with aspens. It is a powder keg waiting for the next wet spring to grow the grasses, and dry summer to make them into tinder for lightning.

Why it is we think we need to manage water flows to save minnows in the Rio Grande, by not manage forest growth to save the forest is beyond me! Completely illogical. If it were up to me I would hand it all over to the BLM.

Sorry for the spastic writing style, I just got back from starbucks...

-- lates
-- jrawk