Monthly Archives: August 2014

Road Trip: Truth or Consequences

Posted on by

August is the best month to visit Santa Fe. Petunias cascade out of hanging baskets on the Plaza, Carmen’s arias waft across the sagebrush and pinyons after sunset, and a patient waiter recommends the perfect glass of red to accompany the duck enchilada mole. For those of us who live in this charming city and run the risk of taking it for granted, August is a good month to escape, if only for a very short while.

Photo by: P. Nixon

Photo by: P. Nixon

Dave and I did just that on Wednesday last week. We shut off the computers, locked the office door behind us, leaving stacks of files on our desks, and pointed the car south on I25. I had packed the map of New Mexico and a cooler filled with sandwiches, chips, and iced tea in the front; the bottle of whiskey was locked in the trunk with the suitcases.

Our destination was the small town of Truth or Consequences in the southwestern part of the state where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was conducting a public hearing to discuss the fate of the Mexican gray wolf. We stopped once on the 200 mile trip at the Walking Sands rest area south of Albuquerque to stretch our legs, photograph the beware of rattlesnakes sign, and trade places in the car. I drove the last 90 miles watching thunderstorms move from west to east, sweeping across the San Mateo Mountains and  Black Range. Sporadic downpours slowed us down, but ended as quickly as they began.

We arrived in T or C, known best for its hot springs and 1951 name change, with just enough time to grab a taco at Maria’s before the start of the hearing. Two local police cars cruised the neighborhood next to the convention center while we looked for a place to park.

Photo by P. Nixon

Photo by P. Nixon

Fish and Wildlife was just beginning their Power Point presentation when we took our seats. About two hundred people turned out–ranchers, birders, hunters, campers, and concerned citizens. They represented farm bureaus, environmental groups, and, sometimes, just themselves. Seventy-six got the chance to speak, uninterrupted, for two minutes each, addressing their comments to a moderator and Benjamin Tuggle, Fish and Wildlife’s Southwest Regional Director.

Afterward Dave and I had a long soak in one of the mineral baths at the Sierra Grande Lodge, time to reflect on all we had heard.  Like most of the hearings conducted in New Mexico and Arizona over the past year the comments favored the wolves by about two to one with most of the speakers asking for continued  protection and expanded territory for the lobos.  Those against cited the loss of cattle to depredation, the pressure on deer and elk populations, and the cost of the reintroduction effort as reasons the program should not be expanded.

On Thursday we returned to Santa Fe–no time to make a side trip to the nearby Gila Wilderness where less than  month ago a family of wolves called the Coronado Pack was released.  Another trip, we promised ourselves.

It’s been a week and I am still listening to my recording of the hearing, transcribing comments, both pro and con, for a future post.  Luckily, there are still a few reporters who do that work quickly and accurately.  I found this account of the proceedings in the online edition of the Silver City Daily Press the day after the meeting.

 

 

 

Bluestem Pack – Summer 2014 Update

Posted on by

As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
Rudyard Kipling

Photo Credit: James Zeschke via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: James Zeschke via Compfight cc

The Bluestem Pack still runs in the White Mountains of Arizona–twelve years after the original family of wolves was released into the wild.  Last week a telemetry flight located the alpha pair, AF1042 and AM1341, and five pups born in 2013 a few miles south of Noble Peak. It appears they probably also have new pups, born in the spring of this year.

When I last wrote an update back in April, little was known about AM1341.  A few months after the Bluestem’s prior alpha male, AM806, was illegally shot in the summer of 2012, an unidentified male began traveling with the pack.  In January, 2014 he was  captured, collared, and assigned a studbook number, but it took a  genetics test to  confirm that he was the father of last year’s pups.

The pack has gotten into some trouble over the last two months.  One of the 2013 pups, f1332, has been traveling alone for several weeks and in June killed a calf.  A second incident occurred in mid-July when a wolf injured two horses; telemetry reports confirmed that it was AF1042, the alpha female.

Most of the Bluestem Pack’s 2012 pups (the last litter fathered by AM806) have perished, but one, F1280, survives and has become the alpha female of the Hawks Nest Pack.  The two wolves (AF1280 and AM1038) have established their territory in the north-central portion of the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona and were recently located a few miles west of Gobbler Peak.  In late July the field team documented the alpha pair howling accompanied by one or two pups.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducted  public hearings last week  in Arizona and New Mexico  to take comments on  proposed  changes to the rule that governs the management of the small population of Mexican wolves  that live in the wild.  Fish and Wildlife’s final decision, expected in January,  will greatly impact the odds that today’s pups will be able to find mates and establish territories–to survive and thrive.

I attended the meeting in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico on Wednesday night and the comments mostly favored the lobos, but they still have a long way to go.  I’ll write more about the proposed rule changes and the  hearing in upcoming posts.

Welcome to Wolf Week!

Posted on by

Yes, it’s true.  I borrowed the idea from the Discovery Channel, but I promise no snarling, growling, menacing wolves here.

Mexican Gray Wolf at Wildlife West Nature Park Photo Credit: Paula Nixon

Mexican Gray Wolf at Wildlife West Nature Park
Photo Credit: Paula Nixon

It’s a big week for the Mexican gray wolves native to the Southwest with two public hearings scheduled to discuss their future.  The first will be held in Pinetop, Arizona tonight, the second in Truth or Consequences (T or C), New Mexico on Wednesday night.  US Fish and Wildlife officials will conduct both hearings, giving the public an opportunity to voice their opinions about  proposed rule changes to the reintroduction program, which has allowed the wolves to be reintroduced into their historic range over the last sixteen years.  This recent article in the Arizona Republic provides more details.

Stay tuned for the story of Ernesta, a female wolf recently re-released to the wild with a new mate and pups; an update on the Bluestem Pack, successfully living in the wild for twelve years; and the tale of a road trip to T or C.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t Miss the “Super” Super Moon

Posted on by

“. . .I looked out the window and it was the moon.  Big as a house! I never seen the moon so big before or since . . . ” Raymond in Moonstruck-1987

Tonight’s the night–the second of three super moons this year (the final one will occur next month, on September 9th).  With the earth and moon almost as close as they ever get in their  elliptical orbits the full moon will appear larger and brighter than normal.

August 8, 2014 Photo Credit: Eli Nixon

August 8, 2014
Photo Credit: Eli Nixon

If you wonder why you don’t remember hearing about super moons until just recently, this Earth/Sky post explains that it’s a relatively new term for a “fairly routine astronomical event” (it happens approximately once every 14 months).

“Cosmo’s moon” is what we call it at my house–the name that Raymond gave the magical light  that he saw from his bedroom window in the movie Moonstruck.

Koshari the Bear: A Cautionary Tale

Posted on by

Where the Sandia and Manzano mountains meet the plains east of Albuquerque lives a bear named Koshari. Tagged three times by New Mexico Game and Fish in 2005 for nuisance behavior, he’s one lucky bear.

Koshari courtesy of John Weckerle

Koshari courtesy of John Weckerle

On Friday morning I took the long way from Santa Fe south to Edgewood,  down the scenic Turquoise Trail. My destination was Wildlife West Nature Park, a zoo where all of the animals are native to the Southwest and most have been rescued after being  injured or becoming habituated to humans, no longer able to live in the wild.

The park reminds me of my backyard on a much larger scale with a different mountain range in the distance–lots of open ground dotted with pinyon pines, juniper trees, cholla cacti, native grasses, and wild flowers.

The bear habitat is the next to last one on the loop around the zoo and I found Koshari napping directly in front of the viewing window–sprawled out on his back, four paws up.

by P. Nixon

Koshari’s Habitat by P. Nixon

Named for the Native American clown (Koshare), the black bear has been at the park for nine years, since he was two-years-old, just a youngster.  He came from the Navajo Lake area in northern New Mexico where he discovered the easiest and tastiest lunches came out of the coolers on houseboats.  His life was spared with a generous donation to construct a half-acre bear habitat at WIldlife West.

It’s all about food for bears and Koshari is no exception.  He is fed a varied diet–fruit, vegetables, meat, dog kibble.  As winter approaches, like his cousins in the wild, he increases his  calorie count,  eating upwards of 20,000 a day.  Although he doesn’t hibernate he does slow down, eating much less during the dark and cold months.

PleaseComeAgainEyes still closed, Koshari rolled over on his side, swatted a pesky fly, and covered his face with a paw.  Before leaving I dropped a couple of dollars in a donation box used for special treats for the bruin–one of the few acceptable ways to contribute to the feeding of a bear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hollyhocks Galore!

Posted on by

Four-feet, five-feet, six-feet-tall–a bevy of the statuesque flowers sway in the breeze, a welcoming sight at the entrance to my bank. They’re everywhere–peeking over the tops of adobe walls at art galleries on Canyon Road and towering over short picket fences at downtown bed and breakfasts.

Thomas Jefferson planted hollyhocks in his garden at Monticello and Georgia O’Keeffe painted this one with a blue larkspur on her first trip to Taos in 1929. My grandmother Lester had a row of them out by her fence in Topeka and showed me how to push a bud with a bit of a stem on it through the center of an open upside-down blossom, well-dressed dolls wearing twirly, full skirts–magenta, white, and yellow.

Native to China hollyhocks (Alcea rosea) made their way first to the Holy Land and from there to southern Europe during the Middle Ages according to Ruth L. Fish’s charming history of the flower.  The sturdy flowers came to New Mexico with the Spanish, who called them Las Varas de San Jose, rods of St. Joseph.

To see their abundance in July and August in northern New Mexico makes it hard to believe they aren’t natives. Fish points out, ” . . . no other plant has flourished with such persistent vigor as it has shown, despite the handicaps of general neglect, poor soil , and drought that it has often had to suffer.”

By P. Nixon

By P. Nixon

Many in Santa Fe are in well-tended, irrigated flowerbeds, but my favorites are those that thrive in unlikely places. The one pictured here is in a neglected, unwatered bed between the street and a sidewalk, surrounded by weeds, standing in front of a dead tree, gaily blooming as if it were the star attraction in Mr. Jefferson’s garden.

As the summer winds down, it’s a good time to gather some hollyhock seeds–discreetly!  Wiki-How provides fifteen steps  to successfully grow the flowers from seed, although I am not likely to follow them.  I’ll drop a few near my back fence and let nature take its course.