Tagged: Fire

High fire danger has prompted officials to close the wooded area along the Rio Grande in Sandoval, Valencia and Socorro counties.

The closure will take effect Friday morning. The area will remain closed until further notice.

With a full closure, all paths and ditch roads near the bosque will be off limits.

Officials with the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District say law enforcement and fire agencies in the three counties will be working to enforce the closure order.

The sentencing hearing for two cousins charged with accidentally causing the largest wildfire in Arizona history has been reset.

Caleb Malboeuf and David Malboeuf were scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in Flagstaff.

Defense attorneys say they need more time to prepare arguments in support of probation with substantial community service.

The Malboeufs each face up to a year in jail and a $10,000 fine. The new sentencing date is Aug. 22.

Biologists are trying to save a threatened trout species in southwestern New Mexico, even as crews around the West struggle to contain blazes that have charred hundreds of square miles of forested countryside.

The concern is that after the fires, summer rains could choke waterways with ash, soil and charred debris. A team is using electroshocking devices to temporarily stun the Gila (HEE'-luh) trout. The fish are then scooped up and ferried to a hatchery in northern New Mexico for safe keeping.

The Government Accountability Office has released a report showing that only a fraction of human-caused fires in Arizona were investigated in the past five years. Of those, illegal border crossers may have started almost half.

But as Michel Marizco reports for the Fronteras Changing America Desk,  the author of the report says the data she used for the study is far from complete.

There's a proposal in a U.S. Senate committee to cut funding for a program which helps reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires in places like New Mexico, California, Arizona, and Texas. Ruxandra Guidi reports from the Fronteras Changing America Desk.