Smokey Bear Turns 80
“SMOKEY BEAR’S ‘GOTCHA DAY’ is in May,” says Smokey Bear Historical Park manager Mary Lavin, using the modern term for pet adoption anniversaries. The real-life orphan cub, who’d been badly burned in…
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Tag: Animals & Wildlife
Guardian of the Gila
PERCHED IN A STEEL LOOKOUT tower on Mogollon Baldy, Sara Irving has kept eyes on the Gila Wilderness for 42 summers. A hike along the Continental Divide Trail in 1980 prompted her to apply for a…
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Find These Birds in the Gila
LOCATED AT THE NORTHERNMOST end of some birds’ range and the southernmost of others, the Gila Wilderness climbs from cactus-filled desert to steep, pine-covered peaks. Those features, combined with…
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Pinyon Jays Flourish in the Gila Forest
PINYON JAYS LIKE TO ANNOUNCE THEMSELVES with a chuckling kind of call, sung out while they fly overhead or settle into chatty flocks, often perched in the branches of the pine tree with which they…
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Quick Facts about the Gila Wilderness
755,000. Acres of the Gila National Forest administratively labeled as wilderness on June 3, 1924 1933. Year the original wilderness area was divided into the Gila and Aldo Leopold wildernesses, which…
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Editor's Letter: Wild Times
ON JUNE 3, 1924, THE GILA WILDERNESS became the first-of-its-kind wilderness area—a federally designated place with no roads, no cabins, no vehicles. Or, as Aldo Leopold—the Forest Service employee…
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Meet Conservationist Luke Koenig
LUKE KOENIG’S CIRCUITOUS ROUTE from Maryland to Silver City included stops in several western states. While working with Wild Arizona, he regularly tuned in to the Gila Mimbres Community Radio Station…
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Explore the Gila Wilderness in These Books
First and Wildest: The Gila Wilderness at 100, edited by Elizabeth High-tower Allen (Torrey House Press, 2022) Local artists, conservationists, and writers including Michael P. Berman, Martha Schumann…
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The Gila Wilderness At 100
LESS THAN FIVE MILES into the nation’s first designated wilderness area, I scan the muddy banks of New Mexico’s last free-flowing river for animal tracks, wondering who else is here. Low sunlight…
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The 23rd Annual New Mexico Magazine Photos of the Year: Animals
1 st PLACE Fire and Ice, Pam Dorner " A sandhill crane does his best dragon impersonation a cold January morning in central New Mexico. I spent the first months of the year hoping to photograph…
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