Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
March 14. 2025
🌵 Public Lands 🌲
It just keeps getting weirder. Last week, the National Park Service finalized visitor numbers for 2024, finding that nearly 332 million people visited the nation’s national parks, monuments, recreation areas, and historic sites, a new record. Yet instead of trumpeting the burgeoning popularity of “America’s best idea,” the Trump administration urged NPS units and their employees to keep it quiet.
A March 5 communications guidance tells the staff that there will be “no external communications rollout for 2024 visitation data” and individual park units should not issue press releases or other “proactive communications, including social media posts.” They are also given a template to follow if any reporters ask questions.
I reckon this has something to do with the fact that even as visitor numbers — and their impacts — rise, the number of staff tasked with mitigating those impacts is decreasing. The service’s full-time equivalent staffing fell by 15% between 2010 and 2024, even as visitation numbers soared, and that was before DOGE’s mass-termination event, which reduced staffing by as much as another 5%.
The Utah parks the Land Desk regularly tracks did not record record numbers last year, though visitation was still high. Most parks hit all-time highs in 2019, then had a serious drop in 2020 (because the parks were closed during the first wave of COVID), before seeing a huge COVID bump in 2021. Since then things have mellowed out a bit, but Utah’s Mighty Five are still teeming with mighty crowds.
I reckon this has something to do with the fact that even as visitor numbers — and their impacts — rise, the number of staff tasked with mitigating those impacts is decreasing. The service’s full-time equivalent staffing fell by 15% between 2010 and 2024, even as visitation numbers soared, and that was before DOGE’s mass-termination event, which reduced staffing by as much as another 5%.
The Utah parks the Land Desk regularly tracks did not record record numbers last year, though visitation was still high. Most parks hit all-time highs in 2019, then had a serious drop in 2020 (because the parks were closed during the first wave of COVID), before seeing a huge COVID bump in 2021. Since then things have mellowed out a bit, but Utah’s Mighty Five are still teeming with mighty crowds.
Not that they’re going to listen to me, but I really think it’s time the Blue Ribbon Coalition acknowledged the impacts motorized vehicles have on the public lands and those who rely on them, and learn to compromise just a bit. Yes, the motorized vehicle lobby is once again suing the Bureau of Land Management over a travel plan, this time for the San Rafael Swell in Utah.
The BLM released its decision on the plan in December, following years of analysis and public input. The Environmental Impact Statement presented four alternatives, all of which favored motorized use over quiet recreation and environmental protection, albeit to differing degrees. In the end, the agency chose a plan that opened 1,355 miles of roads and trails to all motorized vehicles year-round, left 141 miles open with limits, and kept 665 miles of routes closed to OHVs.
It was a clear victory for the motorized crowd, and a disappointment to environmentalists. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance attorney Laura Peterson criticized the BLM for once again prioritizing motorized recreation over natural and cultural resource protection, adding that the Swell should “be known for its spectacular views, cultural sites, and opportunities for solitude, not off-road vehicle damage.”
And yet, it was not SUWA that challenged the plan in court, but the Blue Ribbon Coalition, which filed a lawsuit this month spuriously claiming the plan represents a de facto wilderness expansion and denies access to historical sites and state land.
In fact, it doesn’t deny access to anything. Nor does it create a wilderness area or even a “buffer” zone around one. It merely prohibits motorized travel in a relatively small fraction of the planning area.
A little over a year ago I wrote about the BRC’s lawsuit challenging a similar compromise at the Labyrinth Canyon-Gemini Bridges area. The same thoughts apply to this latest move:
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
The snowpack in the Colorado River watershed typically peaks in early April, and the big melt begins. That date’s coming up, and snowpacks in the Southwest are still lagging way behind normal, almost ensuring that stream runoff will also be below normal this spring, and that could mean a dire year for some irrigators.
Down in Farmington, New Mexico, for example, the Farmers Irrigation District is already expecting to face water restrictions this year, according to a TriCity Record report.
The district fills its ditches with Animas River water, where the watershed’s snowpack levels are at about 72% of normal for this date, and are even weaker than in 2021, when many ditches were shut down altogether. Officials indicated that ditches might be put on a two-days-on, two-days-off schedule. One of the main canals, the Farmer’s Ditch, also feeds Farmington Lake, which is the city’s water supply, so if the ditch gets less water, so will the reservoir, forcing Farmington to pump directly from the Animas River. That uses a lot of electricity and lowers the river’s water levels further, taking it away from downstream ditches.
Officials also said they could boost streamflows by calling for a release of Farmington’s water from Lake Nighthorse, near Durango. This has only happened on rare occasions: A test release in 2021 saw about 11% of the water lost to seepage and evaporation before it even reached the Animas River, and another 5% lost on its way to Farmington.
***
Meanwhile, things are getting even testier on the Colorado River, where the watersheds that feed Lake Powell also are recording a below normal snowpack. Representatives from the Lower Basin states (California, Arizona, and Nevada) sent what Great Basin Water Network called an “eye-opening” letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. In it they bash the Biden administration’s proposed alternatives for operating Glen Canyon Dam, and asks Burgum to retract the plan and issue a new one that includes their proposals.
The big issue with the dam is that the river outlet tubes, which are below the penstocks (or the openings that send water through the hydropower-generating turbines) are structurally unsound, and therefore may not stand up to continuous use. This is a problem because if the lake level were to drop below the minimum power pool — or below the level at which water can be released via the penstocks — then it would leave only the river outlet tubes for downstream releases.
The Biden administration wanted to avoid this by doing everything possible to keep lake levels above the minimum power pool, including reducing downstream releases — even if it might violate the Colorado River Compact — so they can avoid having to rely on the lower river outlets. That means less water running into Lake Mead, which means less water for the Lower Basin states.
The Lower Basin wants the Bureau of Reclamation to try to maintain Lake Powell levels in other ways, such as reducing Upper Colorado River consumption or changing operations at upstream reservoirs, while also repairing the lower river outlets so they can be functional if needed. The letter’s authors state:
One can’t help feeling that the letter is seeking to play on the new administration’s animosity towards Biden in order to get the feds on the Lower Basin’s side of their long-running tussle with the Upper Basin.
You want the real deep dive into Glen Canyon Dam’s infrastructure problems? Then become a paid subscriber and break down the paywall on “The Challenge at Glen Canyon” and all of the rest of the Land Desk archives.
Challenge at Glen Canyon: What’s at stake in a shrinking Lake Powell — Jonathan P. Thompson:
https://www.landdesk.org/p/challenge-at-glen-canyon
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
This is just kinda cool and interesting: The San Juan Basin is well known for the fossil fuel extraction that happens there, but it’s also slightly less famous for the actual fossils uncovered from its shales and sandstones. The latest such find is a the most complete skeleton yet recovered of Mixodectes pungens, a large-for-its-time tree-climbing mammal that roamed these parts some 62 million years ago following the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction.
Details can be found in “New remarkably complete skeleton of Mixodectes reveals arboreality in a large Paleocene primatomorphan mammal following the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction,” by Stephen G.B. Chester et al.
