As Bernalillo County works to expand its behavioral health services, it’s looking into how to better tap Medicaid as a funding source. The county manager said her team isn’t there yet, but is committed to making it happen.

A hundred years ago this month, the forester Aldo Leopold proposed to the Forest Service that the federal government create the first ever wilderness area in the Gila National Forest, in New Mexico

A little over three months ago, a working group began meeting weekly to hash out where New Mexico’s largest county is faltering in its support of residents’ behavioral health and how it could improve. The Bernalillo County Behavioral Health Initiative Working Group recommended Wednesday that the county start by building an actual system of care.

Some Northern New Mexico ranchers are feeling left out of the loop on federal legislation proposed by U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich that could cut down on grazing allotments on federal land in New Mexico. The Northern New Mexico Stockman’s Association is holding a meeting Saturday in Taos to discuss the bill and other pertinent issues to the agricultural community.

In less than four months, temporary pay raises given to federal wildland firefighters are set to end just as the season typically starts winding down. This week a group of Western senators, including one Republican, sent a letter to leaders of the Homeland Security Committee urging “swift consideration of legislation that authorizes a long-term solution to increase wildland firefighter recruitment and retention.” Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat, said that “failure is not an option” when it comes to addressing the pay issue.

One element of the BLM’s proposed Public Lands Rule would allow for so-called conservation leasing, which would enable public and private entities to carry out restoration work or compensatory mitigation to offset the impacts of projects. The Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, says that such leases could speed the development of clean energy on public lands, an important prospect given the Biden administration’s ambitious goal of permitting 25 gigawatts of such projects by 2025.