Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities


** Backlash against controlled burns could increase fire risk
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Monday, May 23, 2022
A prescribed burn at Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. Steve Segin, USFWS ([link removed])

Response to the Hermits Peak Fire could make forest management more challenging in the West, despite the urgent need for it. The Hermits Peak Fire in New Mexico, now over 300,000 acres ([link removed]) , started as a prescribed or controlled burn ([link removed]) that got out of control and later merged with the Calf Canyon fire. Ecologists and forest management experts are concerned that the public response to this incident ([link removed]) will mean that this essential forest management tool will be not be available in the future.

After New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called for a halt to prescribed burns ([link removed]) , Chief Randy Moore announced Friday that the U.S. Forest Service would suspend all prescribed fire operations ([link removed]) across the country while it conducts a review.

The severity of this fire highlights the need for more forest management on federal lands. Controlled burns, when used safely, are an effective way of reducing wildfire fuel and have been used by Indigenous people for centuries. Instances of a prescribed burn escaping fire lines are extremely rare ([link removed]) .


** Gridlock in Congress stymies land protection across the West
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The CORE Act, which would bring legislative protections to 400,000 acres of public lands across Colorado, remains stalled out in Congress ([link removed]) . The slow progress in protecting land in Colorado and the West ([link removed]) is highlighted in a Center for Western Priorities report entitled Conservation Gridlock ([link removed]) . According to an opinion piece in the G ([link removed]) rand Junction Daily Sentinel ([link removed]) , Colorado still has huge swaths of unprotected public
land that face threats from mining, oil and gas development, and expansion of roads.
Quick hits


** Federal judge blocks plan for 35 gas wells on national forest land in western Colorado
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Colorado Sun ([link removed])


** Historic drought requires Colorado River Compact redo
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Los Angeles Times ([link removed]) | E ([link removed]) &E ([link removed]) News ([link removed])


** Forest Service suspends all planned burns across the U.S.
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CNN ([link removed]) | Reuters ([link removed]) | A ([link removed]) ssociated Press ([link removed])


** Accountable.US renews IRS complaint against anti-30x30 group
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Huffington Post ([link removed])


** State lawmakers call for national biodiversity plan
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Public News Service ([link removed])


** These cultural sites could soon become national parks
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NewsNation ([link removed])


** Questions surround hydropower plan for canyon in western Colorado
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Colorado Sun ([link removed])


** 19,000 acre Bison Range preserve returned to Tribal management
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Missoulian ([link removed]) | Montana Public Radio ([link removed])
Quote of the day
” While I once thought that these aridification scenarios were kind of abstract and way out in the future, I don’t think that anymore. It’s absolutely urgent that we start thinking now, while there’s time, about how we adjust the compact, the regulations, the necessary reductions, in the most careful way so that we limit the damage, which can really be extreme.”
—Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, L ([link removed]) os Angeles ([link removed]) Times ([link removed])
Picture this


** @Interior ([link removed])
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While we have made significant progress in safeguarding species on the verge of extinction, many face challenges to recovery, including habitat loss and climate change.

Photo of black-footed ferrets by Kimberly Fraser / @USFWS ([link removed])

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