Using fire as a tool in land stewardship
By Hillary Renick.
Fire as a tool
Fire, powerful and often feared, has been a fundamental part of the life of healthy forests throughout history. Fire helps seeds germinate, aids in keeping meadows and grasslands balanced, and attracts healthy habitat for animals, insects and pollinators. Utilizing skills acquired by living in place for millennia and learning the rhythm of the seasons through observation, experimentation, and practice, Indigenous cultures use fire as a land management tool. By developing low-risk land management practices, Indigenous communities achieve the same effect as wildfire, but minimize the length of disruption...
by John Livingston, Colorado Parks and Wildlife , Southwest Region Public Information Officer
MOSCA, Colo.—A decades-long effort to establish new populations of imperiled Rio Grande chub and Rio Grande sucker fish in Colorado’s San Luis Valley led to a historic day on the Medano Ranch of Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) collaborated with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Park Service (NPS) this fall to translocate a population of Rio Grande chub and sucker from Crestone Creek in the Baca National Wildlife Refuge to Big Spring Creek in the Medano Ranch.
More than...
By Anya Kaats.
For twenty years, Wes Atkinson owned and operated a successful hunting outfitter business, but in 2012, after a life-altering psychedelic experience, he sold his company and walked away. “Continuing would have been out of integrity with what I had experienced,” Atkinson explained.
Subconsciously, he had already begun to question the ethics and motivations of the industry he was a part of, and the psychedelic experience brought his unfolding realizations to the surface. “Everyone talks about following your bliss, and doing what you love, but nobody talks about what happens when you start contaminating what you love with commerce....
By Anya Kaats.
When Susan Pierce-Platais moved to the San Luis Valley (SLV) in 1996, she was eager to use her experience and background in nature conservation to help protect the Valley’s natural resources. A few years later, Pierce-Platais along with like-minded friends including Cathy McNeil, Christine Canaly, and Karen Henderson established The Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust (RiGHT) to help landowners protect and preserve their land through sustainable and regenerative management. Pierce-Platais currently serves as RiGHT’s executive director.
“When I moved here, I approached The Nature Conservancy to ask what was most needed in the area in terms of conservation,...
By Daniel S. Johnson, Saguache County Firewise Program.
Do we save the greenbelts from fire or from fire mitigation? Firstly, I want to state that I am not working on the Baca Fire Department’s greenbelt or common lands mitigation, nor am I a spokesperson for them. My Firewise Program focuses on private lands to reduce wildfire threats to homes. But fighting wildfires has been my career for 49 years and I still do, so I can offer a valid assessment of the projects.
There is no rational argument that most greenbelts are not overgrown and unhealthy. The original work on...
By Anya Kaats.
In 1992, Congress passed The Sangre De Cristo Wilderness Act, designating 220,803 acres of land as protected wilderness along the mountain range. In 2000, with the passing of The Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve Act, another 50 square miles of land was converted to designated wilderness. Since then, several other tracts of land have been added, but 110,000 acres of land on the east side of the San Luis Valley (SLV) has yet to be officially designated and is “needing closure,” says Christine Canaly, long-standing director of the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council (SLVEC).
In a...
By Zaylah Pearson-Good. Photography by Cary Aloia.
Scattered throughout vast agricultural fields, shrublands, grasslands, and meadows, are some of the San Luis Valley’s (SLV) most vulnerable and vital ecosystems. Wetlands, the transition ecosystems between upland and aquatic areas, filter pollutants and sediments from water and soils, acting like the kidneys of our planet.
These soggy, vibrant ecosystems also protect against major flooding events by absorbing excess water, slowing its velocity, storing it, and slowly releasing it back to the land.
Wetlands make our Valley more resilient against climate change by retaining carbon, creating buffers during wildfires, recharging the aquifer, and mitigating the...
By Zaylah Pearson-Good
Fear strikes as an incessant, nasally buzz grows closer and closer. Before you can even anticipate the entry point, a small straw punctures your skin and begins filling the belly of a mosquito, soon to be a crimson balloon. The bug simultaneously injects its saliva into your body, producing an itchy, hot welt that can take up to a week to heal. Fever, muscle weakness, hives, and other alarming symptoms can result from bites in those with severe allergies. Mosquitos’ annoying presence, paired with the fact that they are vectors for deadly diseases, leads many of us...