Archive of entries posted by jfleck
Bob and I got our pictures in the paper!
Going through our chaotic collection of old maps at the H-F house, I found a treasure: 2003 BLM map of Albuquerque and vicinity that I’d used to mark a bunch of bike rides with highlighter. Pre-GPS era. I’ve been at this for a long time. My favorite social media response to the announcement of our …
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2026-05-19: Federal managers increase release for the silvery minnow
Federal water managers yesterday (May 18, 2026) began pushing a pulse of water through New Mexico’s rapidly drying Middle Rio Grande to try to encourage the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow to spawn. From a note sent ’round to the Bureau’s water management list yesterday by Carolyn Donnelly, water operations supervisor for the bureau’s Albuquerque …
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Why our ribbons are still green, but with a dry river at their heart
The Farmers Almanac Says We’re Gonna Have a Wet Summer
Quoting Matt Webb
Incidentally GTA6 is coming out in November and apparently it cost $1 billion to make. Gonna play the heck out of it not just for the music but because of its status as a cultural artefact: the final big game built before LLMs. No-one will ever invest that much in a game again, no software …
June 2, Bookworks
I was sitting on the front porch early this afternoon with my eyes on the street when the postman come up the front walk holding a book-shaped package. I walked up to him, reached out, and held it in my hands. The kind folks at Bookworks and the Leopold Writing Program, with some help from …
The Utility of Operationally Neutral and Flexible Conservation Pools in the Colorado River Basin
Nota bene: A guest post from friends of Inkstain John Berggren and Kevin Wheeler John Berggren (Regional Policy Manager, Western Resource Advocates) Kevin Wheeler (Principle, Water Balance Consulting) 5/5/2026 As everyone is well aware, the snowpack and associated runoff this year are truly awful. It will be one of the worst, if not worst, on record. …
“Birding Toward Hope”
Tucker Davidson of Audubon wrote a lovely piece about slowing down and listening to, and looking for, the birds: Birding requires us to be present in the moment. It also allows us to shift our focus from our own worries and ruminations to another subject, breaking anxious thought patterns. Birds hold our attention without overwhelming it. For …
Quoting Sonya Ziaja
Think of law as software. State agency budgets and staff are hardware. We have been stripping the copper for the past forty years, making software updates questionably useful, without durable fixes to the hardware. For constitutional environmental rights to make a difference, state natural resource departments need to be adequately funded and staffed. – Sonya …