He also started a UN Foundation to help bring peace to the world, thanks to his starter $1 billion contribution, and he tapped former U.S. Sen. Tim Wirth of Colorado to lead it. Wirth recalls how Turner, once dubbed “Captain Outrageous,” liked to shoot from the hip and could never be bothered by whatever passed as political correctness. A plaque on his desk in Atlanta said it all: “Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way.”.

Most of all, Turner left a significant swath of private lands in better condition than he found them. In Montana and other parts of the Rockies, Turner bought huge ranches and made sure the land was healthy enough to grow a bison herd to over 55,000 animals at its peak.

Turner never subscribed to the notion that property rights trumped the common good. He also challenged the conviction that landowners ought to be able to do whatever they want on their land—even if it resulted in environmental harm.

As an entrepreneur with green intentions, Turner believed he could operate better and cheaper in recovering wildlife and rivers on his ranches that had been degraded by overgrazing. He was able to show that smart management also offered safe harbor to wildlife without sacrificing profit.

Some locals around Bozeman, Montana, in the 1980s thought Turner was out of his mind when he placed a conservation easement on his 113,000-acre Flying D Ranch, one of the largest easements in America at the time. The easement limited development in perpetuity, and had Turner exploited the Flying D as a real estate play, he could easily have made hundreds of millions in profit. 

Turner could make a big impact on people. One was the billionaire businessman Thomas Kaplan, who likens Turner to a combination of John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt. Kaplan says Turner inspired him to co-found Panthera, now the leading global wildcat conservation organization, as well as The Orianne Society, named after his daughter  and dedicated to perpetuating the survival of snakes.

Kaplan likes to recount how, when he visited Turner’s Flying D, he saw a wolf pack and howled back and forth with them. The ranch was home to the one of the largest, free-ranging wolf packs in North America, co-existing with Turner’s buffalo, and a population of elk, deer, moose and other wild animals that moved on and off the property.

Turner issued an edict that wolves visiting his land were never to be hunted or lethally controlled. Emulating the Turner model, Kaplan acquired thousands of acres in a vast wetland area of southwest Brazil called the Pantanal, and there he advanced a model of co-existence between cattle ranchers and jaguars. The Pantanal is considered the best place in the world for watching jaguars, and even cattle ranchers, who used to shoot the cats, now have eco-lodges on their estancias.

Turner was aware of his foibles, for which he hoped he would be forgiven. Biologist Mike Phillips, who oversaw a number of rewilding projects for Turner, told me, “In these recent years, as he was in decline, Ted once asked me, “Mike, we did okay, didn’t we?’ And I replied, “Ted, we accomplished exactly what we set out to do so long ago. I reminded him that he had done more as a private citizen to benefit native species than any other individual in the history of the world.”

Phillips said that Turner choked up with emotion.

Jane Fonda, Turner’s “third and favorite wife,” according to those who knew the couple, told me that after a brutal childhood with a hard-driving father who took his own life, along with a sister who died young from lupus, Turner found solace in nature.

“What did he want most of all? asked Fonda. “To be recognized as a good guy. There was a part of Ted who believed that by trying to save nature and bring more peace to the world, he could save himself. But he saved much more than that.”

Todd Wilkinson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about the West. He is a longtime journalist and founder of Yellowstonian.org, who wrote an award-winning biography about Turner.

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Just 286 wild lobos roam Arizona and New Mexico, and perhaps 35 inhabit Mexico, while 350 are in captivity. Humans have nearly wiped these wolves out.

Irrational wolf hatred hampers recovery, that hatred issuing from people who want to control public land, and from some hunters, outfitters and ranchers. For example, last April, the Catron County Commission, a loud voice for private control of public lands, unanimously passed a resolution proclaiming a lobo “emergency.”

The commission has been declaring lobo “emergencies” since 2006, when fewer than two dozen lobos populated the entire Southwest.

Audrey McQueen, a New Mexico Catron County Commissioner, hunting outfitter and board chair of the County Livestock Authority, was quoted by Outdoor Life magazine as follows: “We are scared. We’ve had deputies posted at the school this year so our kids can go out and play.”

There’s no record of lobos ever attacking humans. Kids face more danger from poodles.

McQueen also complained that Mexican wolves have “changed (elk) behavior.” Translation: Elk now act like elk, fleeing when hunters stop their trucks. The biological problem facing all living lobos is that they are descended from just seven survivors, making inbreeding a concern. If they lose the protection of the Endangered Species Act, their populations will continue to diminish and inbreeding will increase. Arizona Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican, has already introduced an “Enhancing Safety for Animals” bill that would remove Endangered Species Act protection for lobos.

Until 2023, lobos were thought to have mostly escaped the genetic damage of inbreeding. But that year, Greta Anderson of the Western Watersheds Project learned from a public-records request that conjoined toe pads, called “syndactyly”—a symptom of severe inbreeding in canids—was seen on the carcass of a captive lobo raised in this country and released in Mexico.

Now that researchers are looking for syndactyly, they’re finding it in both wild and captive lobos. A solution, Anderson explained, would be letting lobos occupy the northern part of their natural range where a few could hybridize with northern gray wolves, as they did historically. A new shot of northern gray wolf genes in the lobo population would relieve the genetic bottleneck.

But a federal recovery plan imposes an artificial boundary—Interstate 40, which slices off the top third of Arizona and New Mexico. Whenever possible, all lobos that cross to the north are returned to the south. This boundary, insisted on by the two state wildlife agencies, is making true recovery impossible.

South of I-40, lobos are classified as a “non-essential experimental population,” meaning it’s fine for managers to kill them if they are deemed problematic. It’s only north of I-40 that lobos are fully protected as “endangered.”

A draft recovery plan prescribed three U.S. subpopulations, each with at least 200 lobos: one south of I-40, two north. But then-Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican, wrote an editorial excoriating the plan, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ran for cover.

The current plan prescribes only a single subpopulation of 320 lobos, all south of I-40, and a subpopulation of 200 in Mexico. The Mexican subpopulation is a fantasy.

There’s scant public land in Mexico, and ranchers there still poison wolves. Biologist David Parsons of the Rewilding Institute led lobo recovery from 1990 to 1999. “We’re not paying attention to the best available science required by the Endangered Species Act,” he said. “This artificial boundary precludes expansion (and) Mexican wolves remain at risk of extinction.”

The current practice of cross-fostering lobos—placing captive-bred pups in dens to be raised by wild wolves—would work if lobos had decent genetic diversity. But pups take two years to reach sexual maturity, and mortality is naturally high in the wild.

That’s why Anderson, Parsons and other wolf allies advocate adult pack releases.

“Cross-fostering is a tool in the toolbox, but it’s very slow and very labor-intensive,” said Anderson. “And some of the (parent) wolves are being used over and over again, sending basically the same genetic content into the wild.”

Meanwhile, wolf haters are shooting lobos on both sides of I-40.

Ted Williams, a longtime environmental writer, is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.

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If you look at the last century in New Mexico, stretches of higher temperatures have lengthened; heat waves are hotter and nights, consistently warmer.

Rising heat and expanding aridity harm ecosystems and wildlife and hotter days are dangerous for anyone outside, especially people without housing or access to cool spaces. Extreme heat even interacts with certain medications people need for their physical and mental health. 

It should be no surprise that we’re facing another crackly-dry spring, summer, and fall. Fans watching the March 2 Oscars on Albuquerque TV saw flashing red-flag fire warnings. The next day, high winds and dust storms blasted the state; near Deming, a haboob of fast-moving dust shut down highways.

As of early March, 92 percent of New Mexico was experiencing drought, with almost 30 percent of the state in severe to extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Arizona is in even worse shape: 100 percent of the state is in drought, with 87 percent in severe to exceptional drought. And the interior West’s three-month outlook is for warm, dry conditions — especially in Arizona and New Mexico.

Here in New Mexico, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District—which supplies water for farms—is warning runoff season will be short and river flows, low. The district’s leaders are urging farmers to plan for extended periods between irrigation deliveries and say that without summertime monsoons, they will not meet everyone’s needs this year.

During the 1900s—including during the infamous 1950s drought and earlier in this century—armers could often still expect full water allocations in a dry year.

Now, when farmers don’t receive water—and the Rio Grande dries for long stretches—it’s not only because there isn’t enough snow melting off the mountains.  It’s also because consistently dry soils suck up any moisture, making both forests and croplands thirstier.

Not only that, but decades of persistent drought and warming temperatures have desiccated reservoirs along the Rio Grande and its tributary, the Chama River.

On the Chama River, Heron Reservoir is 14 percent full; its neighbors, El Vado and Abiquiu, are at 14 percent and 51 percent respectively. Further down the watershed, on the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico, Elephant Butte Reservoir is only 13 percent full, and its neighbor, Caballo, nine percent full. 

In New Mexico, some water users, including the irrigation district, rely on water piped from the Colorado River watershed into the Chama and then the Rio Grande. This year, most of that supplemental water won’t be there.

The view upstream on both watersheds is also troubling, especially in Arizona, New Mexico and southern Utah where the snowpack is “below to well-below median.” Last month, the Colorado River’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, were 34 percent full, the lowest they’d been in early February for the last 30 years of records.

I’m alarmed by many things happening right now, including the disappearance of climate data from federal websites and the gutting of federal workforces and budgets. We need wildland firefighters, scientists, and the staffers who kept our parks and public lands functioning.

But as a reporter who has covered climate change and its impacts in my state for more than two decades, I take the long view along with a local view.

We have known for decades that the planet is steadily warming and that the impacts of climate change would intensify. And we must resist focusing solely on the current chaos of the federal government.

There’s never been a better time to become immersed in local politics or organizing, and to hold state and local leaders accountable for action on climate.

We can collaborate on local solutions and work together to better deal with the crises we face. Really, we have no choice.

Laura Paskus is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about Western issues She is longtime reporter based in Albuquerque and the author of At the Precipice: New Mexico’s Changing Climate and Water Bodies.

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Writers on the Range has a simple two-part mission. One of its aims is to engage Westerners in thinking and talking to each other about issues important to the region. The other aim is to entice readers to look forward to these fact-based opinions, with the hope that they’ll then want to keep their local journalism outlet alive and flourishing.

This year, the focus of writers ran the gamut from A to W. Abortion bans, wrote Idaho-based Crista Worthy, caused women’s health to suffer severely, while wolves, wrote Story Warren, were unfairly blamed for killing livestock in Colorado.

Several columns covered the depleted Colorado River, while longtime journalist Rocky Barker wrote that at last, four Klamath River dams would be demolished in the Northwest to help struggling salmon populations.

Greg McNamee made an excellent case for paying wildland firefighters what they deserved for their hazardous work, and Pepper Trail, the renowned Oregon biologist, wrote several opinions, including one about his own efforts to save wildlife from fatal encounters with vehicles.

No matter what Marjorie “Slim” Woodruff writes from her perch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon—insulting hikers for their lack of trail etiquette, mocking visitors for their Instagram obsessions— readers love how she slings her stings. Her pieces routinely run in 50 or more outlets.

From the Yellowstone area, Molly Absolon was also a popular writer, telling about backcountry heroes—mostly volunteers—who extricate hikers, climbers and drivers of snow machines from dangerous situations they’d gotten themselves into.

In Colorado, Erica Rosenberg detailed how federal land exchanges almost always serve the wealthy, and in Alaska, Tim Lydon wrote about his recreationally oriented town of Girdwood, so out of whack economically that teachers can’t find local housing.

Ernie Atencio celebrated the work of two Westerners who died recently, the New Mexico rancher Sid Goodloe, who transformed ranching by promoting short-duration, rotational grazing, and Dave Foreman, founder of EarthFirst! who worked to save old-growth forests, wilderness and migration corridors for big game.

The most-read award goes to Writers on the Range publisher Dave Marston, whose piece about the looming energy gap appeared in 67 publications. It also prompted an invitation from Amory Lovins, the guru of energy efficiency, for Marston to visit his Rocky Mountain Institute and learn why his column was so wrong about small, modular nuclear power being an option. Marston accepted that invitation, and this January his opinion will reveal whether he’s seen the light, so to speak.

Writers on the Range fields diverse reactions on its website, and some, to put it mildly, get personal. The column by Dana Johnson headlined “Mountains don’t need hardware,” enraged some technical climbers. The director of The Access Fund, which wants climbers to be able to put bolts into mountains in wilderness, vilified Marston, even accusing him of securing his position through “nepotism.”

Marston, who wrote eight opinions this year, didn’t bother to point out that not that many people choose to work for free, no matter what their last name.

There also emerged a healthy conversation about whether too many out-of-area hunters crowded public land. Andrew Carpenter’s opinion prompted rancher Lesli Allison to reply that 80 percent of scarce winter habitat for big game is provided by ranchers, and that cutting hunting tags for outsiders threatened the ability of ranchers to make a living.

Whatever retired land-use professor Rick Knight writes about—monster mansions polluting views or how much fun it can be to work like a dog restoring neglected land—readers love his message. They can tell he knows and cares about protecting the region’s open lands. But then, every opinion writer this year seemed to share his passion for the fascinating and often contentious West.

Finally, opinions can have impact if they’re sent out at the right time. “Outrage in Wyoming,” by Savannah Rose, urged the state not to auction off 640 acres within Grand Teton National Park. Her piece helped raise the number of angry objectors to 9,000, with 7,000 comments coming in the last week. The pressure worked: Wyoming officials postponed a decision on an auction until sometime in 2024.

Betsy Marston is the editor of Writers on the Range, an independent opinion service that seeks to spur lively conversation about the West. Want to comment, get on our newsletter list, or write a column? Go to writersontherange.org.

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According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in 2022 there were 10% fewer hunters across the country than there were when hunting peaked in the 1980s. At the same time, four Western states — Colorado, Montana, Idaho and Utah — saw more hunters than ever before.

A key driver of this trend is out-of-state hunters who have run out of luck in their home states: elk, deer and other big game species have declined precipitously in many parts of the nation.

“Opportunities to hunt elk are very limited where I live,” said Wisconsin resident Erik Rollefson. “My home state only has a few hundred elk and issues fewer than 10 elk hunting permits per year. I have a better chance to get a license in any Western state.”

Out West, big game hunting licenses are distributed in state-run lotteries. While most are reserved for local residents, some can be allotted to non-resident hunters. Hunter numbers are down 8% in New Mexico, but the state still reserves 16% of its licenses for non-residents.

Contrast that with Colorado, where as many as 35% of the licenses go to out-of-state hunters. Colorado also sells unlimited “over-the-counter” licenses that do not require a lottery entry to purchase. Policies like this have contributed to a whopping 26% more hunters in the state than there were in 2008.

It’s not surprising that many local hunters resent losing hunting opportunities to visitors. “Many residents depend on hunting for food,” said Rebecca Bradley, a bow hunter from Colorado. “I’d prefer that the state reserve licenses for locals that want them before setting any aside for non-residents.”

Consider Montana, where hunter numbers are up almost 4%. Big Sky Country sold slightly fewer hunting licenses to residents from 2008 to 2021, but non-residents bought 35% more licenses over that same period. With more out-of-state hunters pressuring game, some residents tell me they’d rather stay home.

“The non-resident (hunter) numbers have gone up like crazy,” said Joe Perry, a Montana rancher and founding member of the Montana Sportsmen Alliance. “That excludes residents.”

Though hunting tourism may discourage some locals from hunting, It’s a windfall for state wildlife agencies while subsidizing license prices for residents.

Except for Utah, which reserves just 10% of its tags for non-residents, Western states such as Colorado, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, and Wyoming receive more than 60% of their license revenue from non-resident hunters.

That’s because non-residents pay so much more to hunt than residents do. The Wyoming Legislature recently passed a bill to increase certain kinds of non-resident elk licenses from $576 to $1,258, while a resident pays just $57.

Increasing costs for hunting licenses and what many say is crowding in the outback may finally reduce the ranks of out-of-state hunters. “It’s a big expense, and you don’t get to experience the wilderness if the mountains are overrun with hunters,” said Rollefson, the hunter from Wisconsin. “I’d rather go less often but have a higher-quality hunt, with fewer hunters and more animals.”

Joe Livingston, a public information officer for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, said the agency’s approach is that “the animals take priority,” although “crowding has become a factor.”

The agency is considering reducing the non-resident license allocation from 35% to 25%, a change expected to cost the state $1.4 million. 

I live in Colorado, but I no longer hunt locally. I support allocating fewer hunting licenses for visitors so that locals don’t feel locked out. I believe resident hunters and a local hunting culture that’s invested in public land and its wildlife deserve to take priority over hunting tourism. Those of us who live in the state are the ones who pay taxes, vote and volunteer to clean up trails in the mountains.

If locals lose interest in hunting because wild places have become crowded, and animal populations drop because deer and elk are over-pressured, the next generation of hunters will be seasonal tourists rather than year-round stewards of their local area.

We need to preserve the wildness we’ve got left in Colorado along with the wild animals that depend on it. To do that, local hunters need to come first when it comes to issuing licenses to hunt.

Andrew Carpenter is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Colorado.

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For 60 years the air was dingy, polluted by two, enormous coal-fired power stations in nine units that produced 3,723 megawatts of generation — enough to power two million homes. Now, just 1,540 megawatts remain in two units equipped with modern, air-pollution control systems.

Starting in the 1960s, the town’s giant smokestacks could be seen from miles away, and their dangerous emissions helped add the designation of “national sacrifice zone” to this Four Corners area. Pollutants included “beryllium compounds, chromium compounds, cobalt, and five other carcinogens,” reports ProPublica.

But these days you might describe Farmington, population 46,422, as an attractive river town where “you can see mountains 100 miles away,” says Mike Eisenfeld, energy and climate program manager of the San Juan Citizens Alliance, a regional environmental powerhouse with 1,000 members.

Farmington is becoming known for its recreation, ranging from national parks and monuments to eight miles of river walks and mountain biking on 120 miles of trails.

“Jolt Your Journey!” is how the town promotes itself to visitors. A cultural battle, though, is being fought over what substitutes for coal as a power supply.

Given the town’s near-constant sunshine and underused grid tie-ins to Sunbelt cities, solar-powered electricity might seem the obvious replacement. However, the people with clout in town — Mayor Nate Duckett, City Manager Rob Mayes, and the nonprofit Farmington Electrical Utility — yearn for the good old days of fossil fuels.

Power from the now-closed San Juan Generating Station was cheap, says Mayor Duckett, who enjoys broad local support, having won his seat with 86% of the vote in his last election in 2018. “It was also homegrown,” he adds, “and there were good jobs,”

To keep its coal plant open, Farmington, chased a carbon-capture scheme even though its history is one of failure. All eleven of President Obama’s carbon capture projects have either gone belly up or were never built. A Mississippi coal project alone cost $7.5 billion, leaving only mountains of scrap.

Farmington’s failed carbon-capture scheme cost millions of dollars in legal fees and precious time. Without power-purchase contracts, Farmington Electric had no steady electrical supplier when its coal-fired electricity was switched off. The utility burned through a good portion of $100 million in reserves buying gas and electricity on the open market.

To rebuild a financial cushion, the Farmington utility raised customer rates in April. This angered many residents though resentment had been simmering for years. Everyone knew that coal was nearing its end, yet no plans had been made for developing a major replacement.

Aztec, a town of 6,163, was once a customer of the Farmington utility, but it rebelled, now buying carbon-reduced electricity from Guzman Energy. Neighboring Bloomfield, population 7,371, says it also wants to partner with Guzman. Meanwhile, solar development has been flourishing around Farmington, with 1,300 megawatts of utility-scale generation either planned or under construction.

Farmington could easily get into the action since it can self-permit. It also owns those valuable grid tie-ins through its substations. In fairness, it has vague plans for a solar array, but an inefficient, gas-powered plant is what’s in the process of getting built to augment a big gas plant they already own.

Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which gave a boost to nonprofit utilities like Farmington Electric, there’s federal money available to help build solar arrays. The Act allows a utility to build and sell renewable electricity while also raking in generous government incentives. Farmington’s need is pressing, as both New Mexico and the region aren’t producing enough homegrown energy.

All of the financial support right now for developing solar power adds to the frustration of area conservationists.

Mark Pearson, executive director of the San Juan Citizens Alliance, says, “Farmington… wants to export chemicals manufactured from natural gas in the region. But they have the means to export a finished product — electricity made from the sun — via high-voltage electric lines.”

 The Alliance’s Eisenfeld thinks a tipping point is fast approaching. “You need the philosophical buy-in that the transition from coal to clean energy is actually upon us,” he says. “Then it all happens quickly.”

But for now, the good ole’ boys are still in charge. Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.

This column has been corrected. Aztec, buys carbon-reduced, not carbon-free electricity from Guzman Energy.

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According to state records, this well last produced oil in 2007, and even then it was at a rate of about 25 to 50 barrels per year. Though the state inexplicably lists the well’s status as “active,” it’s not. And the listed owner is a company that no longer exists in any solvent form.

In other words, State Senate #2 meets the criteria for an “orphaned” oil and gas well. It’s just one of more than a million such wells nationwide, which are a growing environmental threat resulting from decades of policy failure by state and federal regulators.

“Orphaned” is an inaccurate term. The parent companies that originally drilled and profited from these wells mostly didn’t die—they fled. Once the wells stopped making money, they were sold to smaller, less solvent companies that then vanished into a haze of bankruptcy. The unplugged wells were left to ooze methane and other nasty stuff with no one around to clean it up.

It’s abandonment, plain and simple.

The State Senate #2, for example, was originally drilled by Standard Oil Co. of Texas — yes, that Standard Oil — back in 1960, but the hole was dry, so workers plugged it and moved on. Two decades later, Raymond E. Sitta, Jr., took over the lease and applied for a permit to reopen the well. When oil came bubbling out, he named it State Senate #2.

After Sitta died in 2008, his estate sold the well to BIYA Operators, a local mom and pop company, which sold it in 2014 to Colorado-based Diversified Resources.

Three years later, Diversified filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and abandoned its interest in all the mineral leases in the Horseshoe Gallup field. That’s how State Senate #2, along with some four-dozen other wells and a leaky pipeline network, became wards of the state.

It’s a common story. The Horseshoe Gallup field is rife with such stories. Another group of wells down the road changed hands several times before being acquired by Chuza Oil, owned by the Dallas producer of a reality television show called Cheaters. Now Chuza is bankrupt, and its wells and assorted other detritus are a methane-oozing mess.

The pattern repeats across New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. Wyoming has at least 1,500 “orphaned” wells.

In theory, the companies took care of the cleanup tab as a condition of their drilling permit. In reality, the required bond amounts don’t get close to covering the costs. The Bureau of Land Management, for example, requires an operator to put up just $10,000 per individual well. Bigger operators can take out a single, $150,000 blanket bond that covers all of their wells — whether it’s five or 500 — on public lands nationwide.

Yet the average cost to plug and reclaim a single oil and gas well, according to a 2021 study, is a whopping $76,000, with costs for deeper wells shooting up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. That would add up to a $3.8 million cleanup bill for Chuza Oil’s 50 wells in the Horseshoe Gallup field.

Court records show the company’s reclamation bonds with the Navajo Nation and federal government add up to less than $130,000, or about $2,500 per well. That means federal taxpayers — you and me — are on the hook for the remaining $3.7 million and change. And that’s just for one company’s wells in one location.

Equally maddening is that the regulators must have seen the warning signs but didn’t — or couldn’t — act to make the responsible parties take responsibility while they were still somewhat solvent.

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act authorized $4.7 billion in federal funds for cleaning up abandoned oil and gas wells. On the one hand, it’s necessary to end this massive threat to the climate, the environment and public health.

But the truth is that it’s also a corporate bailout.

The antiquated federal royalty rate of 12.5% must be jacked up considerably — 25%, anyone? — to bring it in line with what states charge. A portion of the royalty should also go into a reclamation fund so that corporate owners pay to clean up the messes they leave.

Jonathan Thompson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is the editor of the Land Desk and a longtime Western journalist.

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Recreational users have won most of these cases in the Rocky Mountain states, as courts have decided that public ownership of water gives the public a right to access the state’s waters. 

Colorado was the first to put such language in its constitution, and several others followed suit, including Wyoming, New Mexico and Montana. Other states, including Utah, have such language in statutes.

But the beds and banks of many Western streams belong to the owners of adjoining lands unless the land along a stream is government-owned. That leads many landowners to see a stream as part of their property, while paddlers and anglers view it as a public resource.

Recently, the New Mexico Supreme Court further defined access, ruling that the public has the right to stand on privately owned streambeds to boat through or fish — a loss to landowners who want to exclude the public.

New Mexico decided the first case about recreational use of water that flows through private land in 1945, when its supreme court ruled that the public has a constitutional right to float on waters that are owned by the public. Dissenting judges complained about destroying property rights, but the precedent was set.

Other state courts have reached similar decisions about their state’s public ownership laws. First, Wyoming, then Idaho, Utah and Montana all found that the public has a right to float the state’s waters because the public owns them. But specifics vary, especially about public rights to touch privately owned streambeds. For example, there is a right to wade in Montana but not Wyoming. 

Only Colorado rejected public access, as a divided court in 1979 saw public ownership of water as less meaningful than ancient property rules favoring landowners. Because Colorado has no public right to touch private streambeds, an angler is suing to have the upper Arkansas River declared “navigable” — meaning the state would own its beds and banks.

This issue flared up in New Mexico when the State Game Commission under then-Gov. Susana Martinez (R)) adopted a rule allowing a landowner to close off waters flowing through their property if the commission approved the landowner’s petition.  

The rule was always legally dubious, but it took New Mexico’s recent Supreme Court decision to overturn it. The court ruled unanimously that the right of public access includes walking and wading on privately owned streambeds as “reasonably necessary” for fishing and other recreational uses.

Not surprisingly, New Mexico’s recreation community loved the recent decision, while landowners did not. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) seemed relieved that the issue was decided, though not necessarily thrilled with the outcome.

Her spokesperson told the Albuquerque Journal that the ruling “provides needed clarity on the issues of stream access.” The governor had not advocated for public access, and was widely seen as having axed two Game Commissioners for their pro-access positions.

State elected officials and agencies have rarely led the charge for public access in the Rocky Mountain states. Except for the early New Mexico case, all lawsuits have been brought by recreational users, not state agencies. Sadly, elected officials are often reluctant to support access despite the popularity of outdoor recreation, perhaps because of the influence of wealthy streamside landowners.

That leaves the courts to play a crucial role, although they do not always get the last word. In Utah, the legislature soon curtailed the public rights recognized by its supreme court in 2008.

Disagreements continue about what waters are, and should be, open to the public. But except in Colorado, the Rocky Mountain courts have not allowed landowners to exclude recreational users, largely because the law declares that water belongs to the public.

The recent New Mexico decision is the latest to affirm that public ownership means public access.

Reed Benson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a longtime kayaker and a law professor at the University of New Mexico, focusing on water law and policy.

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Then the Calf Canyon fire raced off on April 9 when similar winds fanned embers in burn piles first kindled in January. The two fires soon merged. Together, as of June 12, they have scorched 320,333 acres, with two-thirds of the fire perimeter regarded as contained. 

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s reaction was to insist that federal agencies reconsider their policy on spring burns. The chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Randy Moore, responded by announcing a halt on prescribed burning for a 90-day review period.

Inevitably, the blowups invited comparison to the 2000 Cerro Grande fire in New Mexico that began as a prescribed burn, then blew out of Bandelier National Monument and into Los Alamos. It was the largest chronicled fire in the state’s history — until now.

Prescribed fire is not likely to be challenged in principle. Recognition seems widespread that controlled burning is a legitimate source of good fire that can reduce the threat from areas likely to burn. States from Florida to California have even reformed liability law to encourage burning on private lands. 

The real threat to fire management is death by a thousand cuts, each breakdown leading to shutdowns, each partisan group extracting a concession, that together so encumber the practice that it can’t be implemented. There is always something that can cause a prescribed burn to be shuttered. There is no equivalent mechanism to make up the loss. 

It’s not news that the Western fire scene has become complicated. The early 20^th century days, when one response — extinguish by 10 am the next morning — was adequate are long past. It was a marvelous administrative stroke: No confusion, no compromise, one size fits all.

But it made the fire scene worse by encouraging ecological rot and an incendiary buildup of fuels. The change in policy was clear and necessary: Fire is inevitable, and we need to manage it.     

Today, all aspects of landscape fire are plural. Fire control does not mean one thing; it embraces many strategies. It might refer to protecting towns or sage grouse habitat. It can resemble urban firefighting, or for reasons of safety, cost and environmental health, it could mean containing fires within broad borders. 

It varies from extinguishing an abandoned campfire to herding mega-fires rolling over the Continental Divide. It might involve bulldozing around municipal watersheds, or working-with-nature firelines in wilderness.  It might mean setting emergency backfires that can resemble a prescribed fire done under urgent conditions..

So, also, with prescribed burning. It might mean burning logging slash or piled cuttings from thinning operations. Or it might refer to broadcast burns that range freely over areas from an acre to a landscape. It can mean burning to improve forage in tallgrass prairie, to prune pine savannas, or to promote habitat for Karner blue butterflies.

Wildfire acts as an all-spectrum ecological catalyst. Good prescribed burns will do the same thing.

The choice isn’t between one strategy or the other; it’s selecting from a variety of techniques that work in particular settings and seasons. We need them all, not least because each strategy by itself can fail.

Fires escape initial suppression at a rate of 2-3 percent. Prescribed fires escape at a rate of 1.5 percent for the National Park Service, or less than 1 percent according to Forest Service records. Managing naturally caused fires has a similar rate of failure. When an escape occurs, however, its destructiveness makes news.

Those figures are not likely to drop. We can’t control the setting of a wildland fire as we can a blowtorch. All we can do is juggle strategies so that each strategy’s strengths fill the others’ weaknesses.

The 2000 blowout in New Mexico made prescribed burning more difficult but led to a National Fire Plan. Twenty years later, the fire scene has grown bigger, meaner, tougher. The Hermits Peak fire will likely end up an order of magnitude larger than Cerro Grande. 

Inevitably, our future holds a lot of fire. The goal is always to find and employ the right mix of fire for the land.

Steve Pyne is a contributor to Writers on the Range, Writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a fire historian, urban farmer and author of The Pyrocene.

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Split into basins by an imaginary border at Lees Ferry, Arizona, each state can share blame for the rapid depletion of reservoirs that once held over four years’ flow of the Colorado River. But now, Lake Powell and Lake Mead edge closer to empty. With water savings gone, the Lower Basin has been trying to cope, though the Upper Basin carries on business as usual. Meanwhile, 40 millions Americans depend on flows from this over-diverted river.

So far, leaders in the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming appear to be hoping that their counterparts will agree to use less water. This is hardly a useful strategy and seems a lot like a dangerous game of chicken.

The brunt of low flows has been borne by the Lower Basin states of Arizona, Nevada and California. Thanks to a series of agreements between 2007 and 2021, by the end of this year the three states will curtail their river use by more than 1 million acre-feet — 325 billion gallons. But it’s likely these cuts won’t change much.

Federal data released last month predict that Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the nation and the Lower Basin’s water savings account, will continue to lose water for years to come. Lake Powell, the Upper Basin’s savings account, is also vulnerable. But that raises the obvious question: What are Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico doing to limit their water use and conserve? The answer is not much.

In the Upper Basin’s four states there are no self-imposed curtailments of Colorado River allocations — no blockbuster, big-city conservation initiatives, no real signs that leaders are convinced that climate change is not only happening but also a major threat to the region.

More discouraging is that in 2016, the interstate collective of Upper Basin officials, known as the Upper Colorado River Commission, officially decided to take more water out of the river. That decision stands today.

Some of the largest projects on the Upper Basin’s wish list include the Lake Powell Pipeline, Green River Block Exchange, Wolf Creek Reservoir, and the Fontenelle Dam expansion. These proposed projects would drain billions of gallons from the system, reports the nonprofit Save the Colorado.

Does anyone think that extra water exists?

The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the Colorado River’s infrastructure, released a report in mid-February that predicts Lake Mead will drop another 30 feet by the end of 2023 –– leaving the reservoir 160 feet lower than in the year 2000. It also predicts more cuts for Nevada’s and Arizona’s shares of the river, as well as for California.

In the Upper Basin, where the Colorado River begins, no cuts are proposed. And according to a new report from the Utah River’s Council, a nonprofit fiscal and water watchdog, most of the Upper Basin states continue to use more than their share of the river, even though drought and aridity have reduced river flows.

While the three Lower Basin states use more water than the drought-stricken Colorado can deliver annually, leaders in Arizona, Nevada and California share a spirit of sacrifice when it comes to limiting water use. From my experience running a nonprofit river-protection group, I know that collaboration toward these efforts represents a resolve to act.

The Lower Basin states, for example, are working to fund a water-recycling facility near Los Angeles. The plant would reduce California’s reliance on the Colorado River and give Nevada and Arizona some of that river water in return for their joint funding. Collaborations like this need to start happening in the Upper Basin, but where are the examples?

Water managers in both basins tell folks they are doing their best to deal with the river’s decline, but only the Lower Basin’s actions can be quantified. It’s time for the Upper Basin to blink in this game of chicken and ensure equitable and prudent uses of the river. The lines dividing the states are invisible, but bathtub rings on Lake Powell and Lake Mead are all too visible.

Kyle Roerink is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is the executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, a nonprofit that defends water supplies from undue political and corporate influence in the nation’s two driest states, Nevada and Utah.

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