In January of this year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Mexican gray wolf an endangered species. In doing so, the agency sought to revive the population that had dwindled to just a few animals left in the wildlands of the southwest. On its website, the service notes, “Once common throughout portions of the southwestern US, the Mexican wolf was all but eliminated from the wild by the 1970s, when it began efforts to conserve the species.
The Wildlife Service also put the authority to issue permits to add more wolves to forest service land in the hands of states. But recently New Mexico’s Game Commission denied environmentalists’ requests to re-introduce 10 animals. This week the federal agency said it was going ahead with plans for that release anyway early next year in the Gila National Forest, and that move has the state contemplating a lawsuit; and ranchers who see the wolf as a threat to their livestock are up in arms. The Santa Fe New Mexican notes the state and federal governments had been working on the recovery program together until that relationship broke down when Governor Susana Martinez was elected.
You'll have to wait until at least New Year's Eve 2016 to see a giant chile drop at the stroke ofmidnight. Santa Fe officials tell the Albuquerque Journal that there's not enough time to design and build the giant chile for this New Year's Eve. It's designed as a spicy alternative to New York City's annual ball drop in Times Square.
Santa Fe Weather, today: Isolated showers and thunderstorms possible through tomorrow. We’ll see some sun, though, and a high near 62. Winds won’t be as gusty as they were lastnight, but breezes are expected this afternoon. Tonight: Isolated showers under mostly cloudy skies - the low around 44.