Interior Department Announces Expansion of Four National Wildlife Refuges to Conserve Habitat, Protect Species and Support Recreation

 

The Department of the Interior today announced the expansion of four existing national wildlife refuges, which will allow for the voluntary conservation of up to 1.13 million acres of wildlife habitat in New Mexico, North Carolina and Texas.

Investing in and expanding the National Wildlife Refuge System, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, furthers the Biden-Harris administration’s work to support community-driven efforts to conserve and restore the nation’s lands and waters through the America the Beautiful initiative. Under Secretary Haaland’s leadership, the Department has also established four new Refuges that will help conserve important fish and wildlife habitat, support working lands, and expand opportunities for outdoor recreation. 

...The Service works with willing property owners to expand refuge boundaries through fee title or voluntary easement acquisitions. The new expansion areas include: 

• Roanoke River National Wildlife Refuge (NC) may now conserve up to 287,000 acres of floodplain habitat along a 137-mile stretch of the Roanoke River from Weldon to the Albemarle Sound, to support rare and at-risk species like the Atlantic sturgeon, cerulean and Swainson's warbers, bald eagles and migratory waterfowl. The refuge was established in 1991 to protect the forests in the Roanoke River floodplain, considered to be the largest intact, and least disturbed, bottomland forest ecosystem remaining in the mid-Atlantic region. 
• Aransas and Big Boggy National Wildlife Refuges (TX) may now conserve up to 150,000 additional acres of habitat in the Gulf Coast Prairies and Marshes ecoregion of Texas to support whooping crane, Eastern black rail, Attwater's prairie chicken, mottled duck and other wintering waterfowl. Established in 1937, Aransas NWR serves as a refuge and breeding ground and for migratory birds and other wildlife and is best known as the wintering home of the last wild flock of endangered whooping cranes. Establishing in 1983 and designated an Internationally Significant Shorebird Site by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network, Big Boggy NWR is a stronghold for the threatened eastern black rail and provides seasonal and year-round habitat for large populations of waterfowl, wading birds, waterbirds, and shorebirds. 
• Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge (NM and TX) may now conserve up to 700,000 acres of habitat in the Southern High Plains along the Texas-New Mexico border to support sandhill crane, pronghorn and lesser prairie chicken, as well as a full suite of other wildlife that rely on the grasslands, playa wetlands and saline lake habitats of the Central Grasslands. Established in 1935, the refuge is the oldest national wildlife refuge in Texas and is best known for hosting one of the largest concentrations of lesser sandhill cranes in North America...

PRESS RELEASE

Secretary Haaland Protects Sacred, Sensitive Lands in New Mexico

 

During a community event in Sandoval County today, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland signed Public Land Order 7940, protecting more than 4,200 acres of Bureau of Land Management-managed public lands in the Placitas area.

The final mineral withdrawal protects, preserves, and promotes the scenic integrity, cultural importance, recreational values and wildlife habitat connectivity of the lands and the surrounding area. The lands will be closed to new mining claims, mineral sales, and oil and gas leases for the next 50 years, subject to valid existing rights.  

“Indigenous communities have called the Placitas area home since time immemorial, with evidence of their presence found from nearly every settlement period of the past 10,000 years,” said Secretary Deb Haaland. “The site contains significant cultural ties to neighboring Pueblos and provides outdoor recreation opportunities to the local community. I appreciate the work of so many people who came together to ensure that future generations will be able to continue to enjoy the beauty and unique values of these special lands.”... 

press release

National pressure mounts for Biden to create Chuckwalla monument, protect other lands

 

Anxious to gain ground ‒ lots of it ‒ before the November Presidential Election, a broad coalition of conservationists and tribes will "present" an 800,000 signature petition to President Joe Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland at a press conference in front of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, urging them to quickly use their powers to protect large swaths of lands and historic sites, including creation of a new Chuckwalla National Monument in the California desert, and an expansion of popular Joshua Tree National Park.

...The coalition will press Biden to use his executive powers under the Antiquities Act to designate lands in the California desert as well as to expand the southern portion of Joshua Tree National Park, along with expected additions to the San Gabriel Mountains and Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monuments.

All told, the groups are pushing for new or expanded designations of 11 wilderness and historic sites in seven states, including California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Illinois and Maryland. Advocates point to the rollback by President Donald Trump of numerous monument and wilderness designations made by departing President Barack Obama as reason for Biden not to delay on the designations. He and Trump are facing off again in November....more

Interior Said to Reject Industrial Road Through Alaskan Wilderness

 

The Biden administration is expected to deny permission for a 211-mile industrial road through fragile Alaskan wilderness to a large copper deposit, handing a victory to environmentalists in an election year when the president wants to underscore his credentials as a climate leader and conservationist.

The Interior Department intends to announce as early as this week that there should be “no action” on the federal land where the road known as the Ambler Access Project would be built, according to two people familiar with the decision who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the decision. A formal denial of the project would come later this year, they said.

The road was essential to reach what is estimated to be a $7.5 billion copper deposit buried under ecologically sensitive land. There are currently no mines in the area and no requests for permits have been filed with the government; the road was a first step...more

New Mexico’s rivers are most threatened waterways in US, report finds

 

New Mexico’s rivers, which include the Rio Grande, Gila, San Juan and Pecos, are America’s most threatened waterways, according to a new report. This is largely due to a 2023 US supreme court decision that left more than 90% of the state’s surface waters without federal protections from industrial pollution, according to state officials.

“Virtually all the rivers in New Mexico are losing clean water protections,” said Matt Rice, the south-west regional director of American Rivers, the conservation group that publishes the annual list. “It has the most to lose, and the threat is particularly acute there.”

‘Solar-powered vacuum cleaners’: the native plants that could clean toxic soil

Read more

New Mexico, New Hampshire and Massachusetts are the only states without permitting power to regulate how much pollution is in their surface water, making them dependent on federal protections from mining activities, wastewater, agricultural runoff and industrial pollution...more

Conservation groups press for big game habitat exclusions in federal solar energy initiative

 

The Bureau of Land Management’s proposal to expand its Western solar energy initiative should be modified to carve out big game migration routes and critical wintering habitat in Wyoming, according to several conservation groups. 

But the agency’s “programmatic” environmental impact statement at least provides a high-level blueprint to avoid piecemeal leasing decisions that often lead to conservation and energy development conflicts, they say.

The BLM wants to increase solar energy production on federal lands 15-fold over the next 20 years, from about 9,200 megawatts to 130,000 megawatts, according to the agency. BLM’s proposal includes five alternatives for where it might offer leases for industrial-scale solar energy development, including the 18 million surface acres the agency manages in Wyoming...more

Ranch Radio Song of the Day

 

Ranch Radio needed a pick me up tune today, and this Swingin' version of Saddle Boogie by Merrill Moore sure got it done for me.

https://youtu.be/8C7YdxbOWE8?si=k4Y2rUgzNnD8nWvC

y

On the second day of the Smokehouse Creek fire, Dale Jenkins was looking out his window. He could see the wispy white smoke passing over the hill on the horizon of his Candadian ranch. A squad of local volunteer firefighters had worked all night to contain the fire. Jenkins, a life long rancher in the Texas Panhandle, had witnessed enough wildfires to know this wasn’t over. It was too windy. The ground was too hot. This was just the beginning. The Panhandle rancher and his family hurried to save more than 100 heads of cattle that were to be sold for breeding in two weeks for more than $300 per head. Each cow needed to be protected. Jenkins personally wrangled 24 cows and 11 calves into a fenced-in area on his land. One stubborn calf refused to comply. Not long after Jenkins thought his cows were safe, the cattle panicked and jumped over the fence.

On the second day of the Smokehouse Creek fire, Dale Jenkins was looking out his window.

He could see the wispy white smoke passing over the hill on the horizon of his Candadian ranch. A squad of local volunteer firefighters had worked all night to contain the fire. Jenkins, a life long rancher in the Texas Panhandle, had witnessed enough wildfires to know this wasn’t over.

It was too windy. The ground was too hot. This was just the beginning.

The Panhandle rancher and his family hurried to save more than 100 heads of cattle that were to be sold for breeding in two weeks for more than $300 per head. Each cow needed to be protected.

Jenkins personally wrangled 24 cows and 11 calves into a fenced-in area on his land. One stubborn calf refused to comply. Not long after Jenkins thought his cows were safe, the cattle panicked and jumped over the fence.

...Jenkins and his peers stressed the fire’s hidden costs.

“Historic homes and ranches burned to the ground — literally museums to our region and way of life. Genetics bred into cows over decades, and generations have been lost. Historic trees used as land markers by the early pioneers are gone,” said Andy Holloway, a Hemphill County extension agent for Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. “This is the hidden cost that deeply affects our ranchers and way of life.”

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE