'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
From the air, the smoke from a massive wildfire stretches as far as the eye can see, spreading across the rugged country in southwestern New Mexico where the nation's wilderness movement was born nearly a century ago.
And as for those unburned pockets within the fire's boundaries, Rollins said he believes many of those spots have experienced low-intensity fire numerous times over the last century to make them more resilient.
"The opportunity exists to look at how this fire has behaved differently in terms of vegetation mortality, effects on wildlife and fish habitat and water quality," Rollins said. "We can study how it burned in the wilderness relative to areas with other types of fire management strategies and other types of ignition patterns."
