Andrew Gulliford

Jan 10, 2025 | durangoherald.com | Andrew Gulliford

Utah, politicians seek to ignore the U.S. Constitution by claiming 18.5 million acres of your federal public land – most of it administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Utahans have often been cantankerous, but this latest piece of legislative legerdemain is especially threatening. Historically, Utah’s relationship to the rest of the United States has been complicated.

Oct 11, 2024 | durangoherald.com | Andrew Gulliford

In 1924, forester Aldo Leopold convinced his superiors in the regional office of the U.S. Forest Service to set aside thousands of acres in the Gila National Forest in southwest New Mexico as wilderness to remain roadless forever. That was a revolutionary idea in his time as well as ours. Forty years later in 1964, Congress passed, and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed The Wilderness Act, creating the National Wilderness Preservation System which now embraces 111 million acres.

Jun 9, 2024 | durangoherald.com | Andrew Gulliford

There is a style of petroglyphs or rock writing that is not Native American. Neither is it historic inscriptions left by Westward-moving pioneers. It is a coded set of symbols called Western Messaging, but what it means, who made it, and when the author or authors engraved the symbols on boulders and 81 rock walls across the West remains an unsolved mystery. Similar messaging panels have been found in eight western states including on public land within Durango city limits.

Apr 15, 2024 | durangoherald.com | Andrew Gulliford

I can think of no better legacy than to protect a landscape in perpetuity for wild species, but the politics of preservation are never easy. Near Boise, Idaho, Morlan “Morley” Nelson sought to protect the basalt cliffs of the Snake River Canyon for birds of prey at the same time eagles and raptors were being poisoned and shot by stockmen fearful of losing lambs. Nelson had to prove that raptors had their place in the natural world, but in the 1960s the environmental movement was just beginning.

Mar 11, 2024 | durangoherald.com | Andrew Gulliford

Billy the Kid is alive and well in New Mexico, or at least it seems that way. He’s doing much better than Sheriff Pat Garrett who shot him in the back and thus violated the Code of the West. Everyone has forgotten Pat. Billy the Kid lives on. And his last words in Spanish? Quien es? Quien es? Who’s there? But the cowardly sheriff never answered. Many a New Mexico town claims the Kid. Silver City is where the boy William H.