Foto Friday: Western roaming
Also: The wolves are coming! Interior gets stupider.
🦫 Wildlife Watch 🦅
Nearly a century after being extirpated from the region, it appears as if the wolf is returning to the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. Colorado Parks and Wildlife just released its latest map showing watersheds into which radio-collared wolves have roamed, and it includes the San Miguel and Upper Animas watersheds in the San Juans.
It appears as if a wolf or wolves made a huge loop throughout western Colorado, perhaps scoping out future denning areas, or maybe just sightseeing: After all, they passed through some of the most scenic parts of the nation.
🤯 Trump Ticker 😱
‘When will the stupid stop!?! National Parks Traveler reports that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is urging the public to report suspicious interpretive materials in the national park system that “disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times).” The idea is to then replace those materials with ones that “instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.”
What he is targeting, obviously, are factual accounts of the violent colonialism and land-theft that are very real and significant elements of this nation’s history, and that have only recently been included in some interpretive materials. National parks and monuments are appropriate places for these histories, since the establishment of many of those parks involved displacing Indigenous people.
If Burgum’s really worried about disparaging or detracting from the beauty and grandeur of the American landscape, maybe his department should start taking care of the lands it is tasked with overseeing rather than parceling them out to his corporate cronies.
📸 Foto Friday 🎞️
I’ve been roaming around a bit over the last few weeks, starting out in the arid Four Corners Country before, due to an unexpected family matter, flying to the lush hills of coastal Oregon. I’ve seen hydromower-ravaged piñon-juniper forests teeming with grazing cattle, and whole hillsides clearcut for timber in the northwest. And, of course, stunning beauty in between.
Here are a handful of images from my travels.
While NPS can't "disparage Americans," I seem to recall that during the Indian Wars some of the Cavalry officers had bad things to say about the "New Mexicans." And some of the WASPish founders spoke ill of "Papists." Both of which might be subjects at some widely-separated historical sites. I guess we'll need a follow up to precisely define "Americans."
Anyway, away we go with one facet of the broad "cultural revolution" from the pseudo-patriotic right.
Whatever their settler/colonialist flaws I'm pretty sure our founders would, at a minimum, "disparage" the group of techno-feudalists and deluded wing nuts running DC these days. Ben Franklin would probably get banned from Xitter, or at least "the algorithm" would try to cancel him.
Report suspicious interpretive materials? Spies, hootin’ in the pines.