Early fire season showing NM needs to douse flames

This week a dozen wildfires were burning more than 75,000 acres in New Mexico, with the hottest and driest days of summer yet to come. While the majority of those fires were caused by lightning, the 1,412-acre Cajete Fire in the Jemez Mountains was caused June 15 by careless campers who failed to put out their campfire, and the cause of the 1,514-acre fire that burned grasslands west of Rio Rancho, dubbed the Encino Fire, was still under investigation Friday.

The Bonita Fire near El Rito, which had consumed more than 7,300 acres by Friday, was the only nearby fire caused naturally via lightning.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, we’re just getting into this year’s fire season — and some people don’t seem to be paying attention.

Last Sunday, Santa Fe National Forest officers responded to at least three more abandoned campfire calls. Fortunately, none of those set the forest on fire. Forest officials say it costs more than $250,000 day to fight the Cajete Fire — a tab we taxpayers pick up.

Meanwhile, the National Interagency Coordination Center in Boise, Idaho — the national headquarters responsible for coordinating resources to fight wildfires and respond to other incidents throughout the U.S. — listed seven “active” forest fires in the Gila National Wilderness, and one each in the Carson and Lincoln national forests.

Despite ongoing efforts to conduct “controlled burns” throughout the year to reduce the amount of vegetation — i.e., fuel — there is to burn in our forests, the nation remains behind the curve in reducing the number of catastrophic fires occurring annually. In 2016, the federal government spent $1.9 billion on fire suppression — that’s compared to $240 million in 1985.

While some of the blame lies with decades of wrongheaded policy that sought to knock out all forest fires — even if they didn’t threaten people or property and would actually have benefitted the health of forests by reducing fuel loads — carelessness by forest visitors has also taken a toll.

Recall, for instance, that last year’s 17,912-acre Dog Head Fire in the Manzano Mountains west of Albuquerque was caused, ironically, by sparks from machinery being used to clear forest debris.

As a public service, we’ll put on our Smokey Bear hat and remind everyone that, despite a fairly wet winter and a good snowpack that is keeping our streams and rivers flowing, our forests are being dried by seasonal winds and hot weather — so they can burn pretty easily.

Seriously, how difficult is it to either forego a campfire or make absolutely certain that it is, as Smokey would say, dead out?

If the ashes are too hot to touch, your campfire is a potential ignition source for a horrific forest fire.

And for the fools seen shooting Roman candles from their car along I-40 near Moriarty on June 13 — and starting a sizable grass fire on rangeland — we sure hope they get caught. That’s stupidity with a capital S.

New Mexico’s forests and grasslands are resources that need to be protected — by all of us — so we can continue to enjoy them. Make sure you’re not the one who creates the spark that starts the fire, and report those who do to law enforcement.

As the past few days’ sizzling temperatures have shown us, summer is hot enough without careless wildfires.