Reward offered for information on damage to petroglyphs site – Associated Press
A New Mexico nonprofit wilderness group is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever was responsible for spray-painted graffiti and other damage to petroglyphs dating back thousands of years at a site west of Santa Fe.
Anyone with information about the damage to La Cieneguilla Petroglyphs should call the Bureau of Land Management's dispatch center, the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance said Friday.
The BLM said last month the damage likely occurred Jan. 18 and that it was under investigation.
According to a BLM news release, those convicted of damaging cultural sites face penalties of up to two years in prison and a $20,000 fine per charge under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.
New Mexico voting bill stalls in Democratic-led Legislature – By Morgan Lee, Associated Press
A state Senate panel delayed action Friday for a second time on a Democrat-backed bill to expand voting access in New Mexico with provisions to further automate voter registration, streamline mail-in voting, turn Election Day into a state holiday and more.
A nine-hour legislative hearing was marked by fiery public comments and a marathon debate on components of the bill that offer voter registration as people leave prison without completing probation or parole, automate voter registration at state motor vehicle offices and distribute mail-in ballots year-after-year to people who prefer them. Currently absentee ballots are available by request only for each election.
A provision that would have allowed 16-year-olds to participate in local elections including school boards was stripped from the bill on a 6-5 committee vote.
Republican legislators sought to derail other major provisions of the bill with amendments that were voted down. Democratic Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto of Albuquerque objected to new automated voter registration provisions, noting that New Mexico already offers same-day registration at voting locations.
Ivey-Soto, chairman to Friday's committee hearing and a consultant to local governments on election administration, adjourned the meeting abruptly without a vote, leaving the bill in limbo.
Amid a 30-day legislative session, lawmakers have until Feb. 17 to send the bill to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who backs the initiative along with Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver and leading Democrats in the legislative majority.
"It's a big bill. The fight for voting rights is long and hard," said Toulouse Oliver. "It would be nice to move it forward."
GOP Senate Minority Leader Greg Baca of Belen warned that the bill would restore voting rights to felons before their debts are fully paid to society.
Republican Sens. Mark Moores of Albuquerque and Cliff Pirtle of Roswell slammed the proposal to automate voter registration with transactions at motor vehicle offices, arguing it would infringe upon rights of privacy and freedom of religion in select instances.
Toulouse Oliver offered assurances that people could opt out of the registration process at motor vehicle offices or by returning a follow-up post card with postage pre-paid. The state also allows people who are under threat to keep their address confidential while still receiving voting related mail.
During a public comment period, a long list of advocates for greater access to voting urged legislators to advance the bill to reduce logistical and economic barriers to voting. They included youth advocates for climate justice; advocates for Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ communities; and people with disabilities who find in-person voting arduous or impossible.
Dozens of people criticized the bill, arguing it would invite tampering with registration rolls and undermine confidence in election results. They included several Republicans running for public office, along with an advocate for the outside review of voting records by private contractors.
At least 19 states have enacted voting restrictions since the 2020 election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The national GOP campaign to tighten voting laws has been partly driven by former President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Northeast grapples with icy roads as storm blows out to sea – By David Sharp, Kathleen Foody, Jill Bleed, Associated Press
Northeast residents were urged to stay off the roads with temperatures beginning to drop Friday evening as a major winter storm turned already slippery roads and sidewalks into ice-covered hazards.
The storm spread misery from the Deep South, where tree limbs snapped and a tornado claimed a life, to the nation's northeastern tip where snow and ice made travel treacherous Friday.
Massachusetts State Police responded to more than 200 crashes with property damage or injuries, including one fatal crash, starting Thursday evening, officials said. New Hampshire State Police reported at least 70 crashes Friday morning.
"This number is most definitely low because reports are still being written and entered," state police in Massachusetts tweeted.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned residents as the snow blows out to sea late Friday and Saturday to stay home if possible to avoid ice-coated roadways and the threat of falling tree limbs in the Hudson Valley and Capital regions.
"We're not out of the danger zone yet," Hochul said. "The weather is wildly unpredictable."
More than a foot (30 centimeters) of snow fell in parts of Pennsylvania, New York and New England. Utility crews were making progress in an area stretching from Texas to Ohio after about 350,000 homes and businesses were in the dark at one point.
One of the hardest-hit places was Memphis, where more than 100,000 customers remained without power Friday night in Shelby County alone, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports.
Memphis resident Michael LaRosa described cracking and banging as the tree limbs fell, and the dull hum and pop of transformers blowing out in his tree-lined Midtown neighborhood. A fire started at the end of his street, caused by a live wire on Thursday.
"It was pretty surreal for a little while," LaRosa, a professor at Rhodes College and a book editor, said Friday. "There were people walking in the streets, and I was worried that limbs were going to fall on them. The neighborhood sort of collapsed pretty quickly and pretty spectacularly."
Crews worked to remove trees and downed power lines from city streets, while those who lost electricity spent a cold night at home, or sought refuge at hotels or homes of friends and family. Utility officials said it could take days for power to be restored.
It's also going to take days to clear 225 downed trees on city streets, and crews were working 16-hour shifts to get it done, Robert Knecht, Memphis' public works director, said Thursday night.
In Oklahoma, police in the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow said they were investigating a hit-and-run crash that killed a 12-year-old boy who was struck while sledding.
Tragedy also struck western Alabama, where a tornado on Thursday killed one person and critically injured three others, Hale County Emergency Management Director Russell Weeden told local news outlets.
The storm represented a "highly energized system" with waves of low pressure riding along like a train from Texas, where there was snowfall and subfreezing temperatures, to Maine and the Canadian Maritimes, said Hunter Tubbs, meteorologist from the National Weather Service in Maine.
Airlines scrubbed about 3,400 flights by midday Friday, with the highest numbers of cancellations at Dallas-Fort Worth and airports in the New York City area and Boston, according to tracking service FlightAware.
Slippery roads caused scores of vehicles to slide off roads, even before anticipated deteriorating conditions during the evening rush hour.
In Tennessee, a man was killed when his truck crashed into a tree that had fallen on a highway, causing the vehicle to spin into a ditch Thursday night in Haywood County, the highway patrol said.
In the Pittsburgh area, commuter rail service was halted when a power line went down, trapping cars at a Port Authority of Allegheny County rail yard.
In New York's Hudson Valley, the Catskill Animal Sanctuary was relying on generators for power Friday after the overnight ice storm.
"We had trees down all over the property and trees down on our road," said Kathy Stevens, founder of the refuge for rescued farm animals.
But the roughly 250 animals in Saugerties were OK, she said. Large animals took shelter in barns and smaller animals were taken to offices, the infirmary and other places to keep safe from falling trees.
In Texas, the return of subfreezing weather brought heightened anxiety nearly a year after February 2021's catastrophic freeze that buckled the state's power grid for days, leading to hundreds of deaths in one of the worst blackouts in U.S. history.
But Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday's power outages were due to high winds or downed power lines, not grid failures. About 13,000 homes and businesses in Texas remained without power Friday afternoon.
In New England, some places welcomed the winter weather, which was a boon for skiers and snowmobilers.
In Vermont, no one was complaining at the Stowe Mountain Resort where skiers and snowboarders reported some of the best conditions of the season, with more than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of snow overnight, and snow continuing to fall.
"We're just having a blast, the sauce is flowing," said Jared Marshall, of Denmark, Maine, a member of the ski team of New Hampshire's Colby Sawyer College in town for a ski meet.
Plan to gun down feral cattle spurs concern among ranchers – By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
A plan by U.S. Forest Service officials to put a dent in the population of feral cattle on national forest land near the New Mexico-Arizona border is drawing fire from ranchers who say gunning down the animals from helicopters is a violation of federal law and won't help to solve the problem.
The New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association is concerned about the ability of the wildlife agents to delineate branded from unbranded livestock, saying mistakenly killing cows with brands would amount to the taking of private property.
Environmentalists also have long voiced concerns that leaving cow carcasses on the landscape will only help condition Mexican gray wolves to prey on livestock. Ranchers worry the upcoming aerial gunning operation on the Gila National Forest could exacerbate conflicts with the endangered species.
Forest officials said Friday they are working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services to remove all unbranded and unauthorized cattle from the Gila Wilderness, saying the animals pose a significant threat to sensitive habitat along streams and wetlands. A previous effort by a contractor to catch and remove wild cattle from the area netted about 20 animals.
Citing the rugged terrain, forest officials said it's difficult to say how many feral cattle are in the wilderness, but they believe there could be as many as 250.
The Cattle Growers' Association argues that since the exact number is unknown, there is no way to hold federal officials accountable or determine if progress is being made in reducing the population.
Loren Patterson, president of the ranchers group, said the situation is the result of "many years of mismanagement by the Forest Service."
"New Mexico Cattle Growers' members understand that estray cattle are not good for the multi-use doctrine embraced by our federally administered lands," Patterson said in a statement. "This situation took years to create, and a final solution may take years to achieve."
Regional forest service officials said in a statement Friday that the most efficient way to deal with this issue is "with the responsible removal of the cattle" and the agency's primary mission is to protect the sustainable use of the forest.
The association contends there is no federal statute or regulation that allows for the Forest Service to gun down livestock and that rounding up and impounding livestock is allowed only after certain conditions are met. The group said government agencies should provide adequate notice and allow public comment before "imposing their will to proceed as they deem equitable."
A similar proposal was floated by forest officials last year. That prompted a notice of intent to sue by ranchers, a coalition of Arizona and New Mexico counties and others. The New Mexico Livestock Board also rejected any discussion of aerial gunning.
Some ranchers pointed out that the planned operation follows a series of recent settlements between the federal government and environmentalists that aim to keep livestock out of riparian areas on forest lands in the Southwest. They questioned why federal officials are resorting to lethal means with cattle despite the push by environmentalists and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to handle problem wolves with nonlethal methods such as hazing.
Nelson Shirley with Spur Lake Cattle Co. said persistent efforts by environmentalists to get the federal government to retire more grazing allotments have resulted in more feral cattle on the landscape.
"There's nobody to keep the fences up and nobody there to brand these cattle and do something with them," he said. "The Forest Service is to blame for leaving so many permits vacant. Getting ranchers back on these allotments to fix fences and gather cattle would help to solve the problem."
Federal wildlife officials also are in the midst of conducting an annual survey of Mexican gray wolves along the New Mexico-Arizona border. The results are expected in the coming weeks.
The survey done last year showed at least 186 Mexican gray wolves in the two states. That marks the fifth straight year that the endangered species increased its numbers.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday in a statement that it does not think the operation will have an effect on wolves "due to the short-term nature of the carcasses and the limited utilization of the area by Mexican wolves."
