Earlier this year, I interviewed folks with the US Bureau of Reclamation about US Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s plans for the Middle Rio Grande.

Here’s an except of that short piece I wrote for Environmental Flows Bulletin:

Now, Salazar has appointed eight members to a new Secretary’s Middle Rio Grande Conservation Initiative Committee and directed the committee to collaborate with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to create a new development plan by July 2012.
Salazar has directed members of the new committee to focus on more than just water management and endangered species concerns and consider conservation, education, and recreation. During the recent subcommittee meeting on conservation, members within the group even discussed instream flow issues.
Next, each of the three subcommittees must identify partners and set goals. They will then incorporate those into the larger committee’s plan, which the public will have an opportunity to comment upon before Salazar returns to New Mexico in July.

There was one public meeting in March, and I haven’t seen a listing for the upcoming meetings. (I’ll keep you posted.) But you can weigh in on the Middle Rio Grande right now. Like, really, right this very minute.

Visit this website: http://www.mrgesa.com/Default.aspx?tabid=488. Scroll down and look toward the right side of the page, where it says “Public Input.” Next, click on the Public Comment Form. It’ s a Word document that you can complete and email, print and mail, or bring to the next public meeting.

This month marks the release of Environmental Flows Bulletin, a new project of the Utton Center at the University of New Mexico School of Law.

Environmental Flows highlights ideas, strategies, and successes of organizations and individuals across New Mexico who are working to ensure environmental flows for the state’s rivers and streams–and it’s a project that’s pretty exciting for me. You can read the entire issue of Environmental Flows online here.

The stories I worked on for the inaugural issue include:

“Bringing Beauty Downstream: Mayor Coss on the Santa Fe River,”

“Conservationists and Irrigation District Blaze the Way on Water Transfers,” and

“Salazar Convenes New Committee on the Middle Rio Grande.”

You can also read a note from Utton Center Director Denise Fort and Editor Susan George and a guest column from Rio Grande Restoration’s Steve Harris about a new project on the Rio  Chama.

If you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter, please send an email to alexander@law.unm.edu. And if you have story ideas or information about cool projects, drop me an email at laura.paskus@gmail.com.

While researching and writing a story about some recent books about New Mexico’s environment, I spent a lot of time perusing my bookshelves and revisiting some old favorites.  Below is a makeshift–and undoubtedly incomplete–list of some of those favorites, as well as some suggestions from other readers.

Please be sure and add your favorites in the comments section. Or, you can email me at laura.paskus@gmail.com. (And no, these aren’t in any particular order.)

By the way, I’m itching to get my hands on Paul Bauer’s guidebook, The Rio Grande, A River Guide to the Geology and Landscapes of Northern New Mexico. Bauer just won the 2011 award for Outstanding Outdoor Guide Book from the National Outdoor Book Association and a John P. Taylor Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Mexico Riparian Society. (Read more about that here.)

New Mexico Environmental Bibliography:

The Orphaned Land: New Mexico’s Environment Since the Manhattan Project, by VB Price

A Great Aridness, by William deBuys

Reining in the Rio Grande, by Fred Phillips, Mary Black, and G. Emlen Hall

The Rio Grande: An Eagle’s View (Photographs by Adriel Heisey)

Eco-Tracking: On the Trail of Habitat Change, by Dan Shaw

The Tree Rings’ Tale: Understanding Our Changing Climate, by John Fleck

Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History, by Paul Horgan

Rio Grande, Edited by Jan Reid

Rio Grande, by Harvey Fergusson

High and Dry: The Texas-New Mexico Struggle for the Pecos River, by G. Emlen Hall

Land, Wind and Hard Words: A Story of Navajo Activism, by John W. Sherry

The Navajo People and Uranium Mining, Edited by Doug Brugge, Timothy Benally, and Esther Yazzie-Lewis (with intro by Stewart Udall)

Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico, by Stanley Crawford

The River in Winter: New and Selected Essays, by Stanley Crawford

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, by Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold’s Southwest, Edited by David E. Brown and Neil B. Carmony

The Walk, by William deBuys

Valles Caldera: A Vision for New Mexico’s National Preserve, By William deBuys and Don J. Usner

Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range, by William deBuys

The Mountains of New Mexico, by Robert Julyan

The Chaco Coal Scandal: The People’s Victory over James Watt, by Jeff Radford

Related to Los Alamos National Laboratory:

The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico, by Joseph Masco

In the Shadow of Los Alamos: Selected Writings of Edith Warmer, edited by Patrick Burns

Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War, by Hugh Gusterson

Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community, by Jon Humner

Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, by General Leslie M. Groves

The Myths of August, by Stewart Udall

UPDATE:

Roadside Geology of New Mexico, by Halka Chronic

A Field Guide to the Plants and Animals of the Middle Rio Grande Bosque, by Jean-Luc E. Cartron, et al.

Field Guide to the Sandia Mountains, ed. by Robert Julyan and Mary Stuever

ANOTHER UPDATE

From a SRF reader:

Captives and Cousins, Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands, by James Brooks

Understories: The Political Life of Forests in New Mexico, By Jake Kosek

Manifest Destinies, The Making of the Mexican American Race, by Laura Gomez

Land, Water, and Culture: New Perspectives on Hispanic Land Grants, edited by Charles Briggs and John Van Ness

I started off 2012 by reading five great books about New Mexico’s environment–and then getting to interview and wander about with some of those authors and photographers. It was a great way to start off the year, and I hope you’ll read that essay online at the Santa Fe Reporter.

Now my question to you is: What are your favorite books about New Mexico’s landscapes and environmental issues? Drop a note in the comments section and let me know. (Include your favorite field guides, too, please.)

I have a ton of favorites, and I’d love to add mine to yours and create a comprehensive online list.

And the first person to contribute to the list–and to email your mailing address to laura.paskus@gmail.com–will receive my extra copy of  VB Price’s book, The Orphaned Land.

By they way, those five books I write about in “No Page Unturned” include:

The Orphaned Land: NM’s Environment Since the Manhattan Project, by VB Price
A Great Aridness, by William deBuys
Reining in the Rio Grande , by Fred Phillips, Mary Black, and G. Emlen Hall
The Rio Grande: An Eagle’s View (Photographs by Adriel Heisey)
Eco-Tracking: On the Trail of Habitat Change, by Dan Shaw

…and here’s a picture of those two mouse-hunting coyotes I mention in the essay:

Can you spot the porcupine?

Within the first three days of the new year, I was lucky enough to spend time in the Sandias, on the West Mesa, and then along the Rio Grande as it flows through Albuquerque.

It was a good way to start the year, not only because hitting the sands (and scrambling around on granite or basalt) is preferable to being cooped up inside with the computer, but because I’ve cleared the slate on some old projects and am currently compiling a “to do” list of stories to research and write in 2012.

Climate change and water are big issues, obviously, as are oil and gas development and hydraulic fracturing. And right now, I’m particularly interested in adaptation.  The world looks different–ecologically and economically–than it did even a few decades ago.  I want to explore where we’re headed in the future–and New Mexico is a great place to do that.

Send your story tips and ideas to laura.paskus@gmail.com–and here’s to an interesting and productive 2012!

This promises to be really interesting. Be sure and check it out on Sunday in Albuquerque:

Fulbright Association

New Mexico Chapter

Perspectives on Climate Change

3 pm, Sunday, October 16, 2011

Jewish Community Center

5520 Wyoming Blvd. NE

Albuquerque, NM 87109

INTRODUCTION

“Current views in Congress on the threats of global warming”

Senator Jeff Bingaman (by video)

PANEL

“The scientific evidence that growing carbon dioxide levels and global warming are largely of human origin”

Professor David Gutzler

The University of New Mexico

“Potential consequences of global warming, from inconvenient weather to global catastrophe”

Dr. Mark Boslough

Sandia National Laboratories

“Obstacles standing in the way of addressing global warming- a business community perspective”

Mr. Jeff Sterba

Chairman, PNM Resources

Q & A

Mr. John Fleck, moderator

Science writer, The Albuquerque Journal

Free and Open to the Public

Co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Central New Mexico and the UNM Chapter of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society

Supported by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State.

This week, Bill McKibben was at the book launch for Paul Miller’s (DJ Spooky) “The Book of Ice.” I was joking that a collaboration between those two made me feel giddy. But it’s no joke.

Amazing things are happening right now.

And this is one of them:

Terra Nova Trailer Edit from DJ Spooky on Vimeo.