{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.heinrich.senate.gov/newsroom/in-the-news/albuquerque-journal-three-takeaways-from-sen-martin-heinrichs-roundtable-with-public-land-experts", "Albuquerque Journal: Three takeaways from Sen. Martin Heinrich\u2019s roundtable with public land experts", "2025-11-26", "2025", "2025-11", "Democrat", "Senate", "NM", "Martin Heinrich", "H001046", "www.heinrich.senate.gov", "heinrich", "https://www.heinrich.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases", "scraper", "The 2026 fire season, staffing levels at national parks and monuments, and the long-term public land employee pipeline were top of mind for public land advocates and experts at a roundtable with Sen. Martin Heinrich on Friday.\n\nPublic lands have been a priority for the New Mexico Democrat, who has long touted his identity as a hunter and led some of the opposition to Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee\u2019s proposal to make it easier to sell public land earlier this year. Here are three takeaways from his conversation with public land experts and advocates.\n\n1. The 2026 fire season is keeping New Mexico\u2019s state forester up at night\n\nState Forester Laura McCarthy is concerned about a plan to combine federal firefighting teams next year in what she believes may be a bad fire season. The predictions for winter snowpack are not promising, part of why McCarthy is losing sleep over next year\u2019s fire season.\n\nPresident Donald Trump ordered the nation\u2019s wildland firefighting forces underneath the Interior and Agriculture departments to combine. In September, the federal agencies announced a plan for implementing the order in January 2026.\n\nMcCarthy would like them to postpone implementation to January 2027.\n\n\u201cWith the six-week shutdown, we\u2019ve not heard what progress they\u2019ve made on that,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cAnd our fire season, given the snowpack and the forecast, we\u2019re going to be cranking in February.\u201d\n\nThe Interior Department\u2019s effort to modernize the wildland fire response is on track, according to Interior spokeswoman Elizabeth Peace.\n\n\u201cThe transition is being implemented in deliberate phases to ensure continuity of operations and readiness for the 2026 fire season,\u201d Peace said in a statement. \u201cCurrent firefighting capability remains fully in place, and there will be no gap in response capacity.\u201d\n\nThe plan includes creating a joint federal firefighting aircraft service, modernizing training, streamlining cooperative agreements and integrating pre- and post-fire activities.\n\n\u201cUnder President Trump\u2019s leadership, we are cutting through the bureaucracy and building a unified, modern wildfire response system that works as fast and as fearlessly as the men and women on the front lines,\u201d Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a September statement.\n\nHeinrich said he would be willing to work with McCarthy on a letter asking Burgum to consider delaying combining federal firefighting forces. Based on conversations he\u2019s had in Senate committees, the plan \u201cis an idea with no detail in the actual implementation, and we cannot afford to have a single fire season where we don\u2019t actually understand who\u2019s in charge,\u201d Heinrich said.\n\n\u201cRight now, we have a system, and it\u2019s not perfect, but it pulls resources from all over the country, and it follows the fire season. \u2026 We have to make sure that rhythm is fully functional through any organizational changes,\u201d he said.\n\nAccording to Peace, the phased approach allows Interior to align personnel, systems and support functions while maintaining coordination with USDA, state and local partners, and the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group.\n\nImplementation will continue throughout 2026 with oversight and support from the Agriculture and Interior departments and in coordination with Congress, Peace said.\n\n2. Staffing levels are down at Bosque del Apache and beyond\n\nBosque del Apache, a national wildlife refuge in Socorro County known as a winter hotspot for sandhill cranes, has almost half the staff it did a decade ago, according to Deb Caldwell, Friends of the Bosque del Apache executive director. She\u2019s expecting the wildlife refuge\u2019s budget to be cut further.\n\n\u201cSo we lost staff, we\u2019ve lost funding, and so the Friends have really had to step up,\u201d Caldwell said, by helping with machine repairs, buying fuel and putting in wells and bridges.\n\nThe refuge is an economic boon to the area, with an economic impact between $15 million and $17 million annually, Caldwell said. That impact may be blunted this year, as the annual Festival of the Cranes was canceled due to the government shutdown.\n\nMore broadly, the 15 national parks and monuments in New Mexico bring in 2.4 million visitors a year, according to Dennis Vasquez, a retired National Park Service superintendent. Vasquez has heard from former colleagues at parks around New Mexico that \u201cthe staffing shortage is the No. 1 issue,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cI think in this current climate, there\u2019s just a lack of security, maybe, in taking on a job in federal lands or public lands anymore,\u201d Vasquez said.\n\n3. Advocates are concerned about future employee shortages\n\nThe 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided an influx of money into federal agencies, meaning there were many recently hired employees within federal land management agencies like the U.S. Forest Service when probationary employees were laid off earlier this year, according to McCarthy.\n\n\u201cA lot of young people with master\u2019s degrees and really specialized, important experience, scientifically \u2014 fire ecology for example, or conservation biology \u2014 that were going to really help the agency instead got let go,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cThe loss of science capacity within the land management agencies is really distressing.\u201d\n\nOutdoor recreation is a huge part of the Taos economy, according to Nick Streit, Friends of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument president and Taos Fly Shop owner. But he\u2019s concerned that young people considering careers in public land management will be deterred from seeking those specialized degrees after seeing the federal layoffs and government shutdown this year.\n\n\u201cIt really scares me about what\u2019s down the road,\u201d Streit said.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:52:45Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.heinrich.senate.gov/newsroom/in-the-news/albuquerque-journal-three-takeaways-from-sen-martin-heinrichs-roundtable-with-public-land-experts"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.702713780105114, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}