After fire, Cal-Wood seeks donations
The Cal-Wood Education Center has used the ponderosa pine forests outside Jamestown as an outdoor classroom. In the recent wildfire named after the center, those ponderosa pine forests were severely damaged, and the group is hoping the community can help support its efforts to rebuild.
“We were struggling to survive the pandemic, and now a fire. 2020 has been truly devastating,” Rafael Salgado, Cal-Wood executive director, said in a statement.
The group says it needs to reseed grasses, plant trees, remove hazardous/damaged trees, rebuild trails and bridges, and perform soil and erosion control. Cal-Wood reports that its revenue has been reduced by 70% this year due to program cancellations caused by the pandemic.
It was Cal-Wood staff that reported the fire on Oct. 17. The group manages about 1,200 acres in the area for fire mitigation; about 600 of those acres have been damaged, it reports. The fire is currently at more than 10,000 acres, but thanks to some cooperating weather and efforts by firefighting teams, it is over 75% contained as of Oct. 28. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Go to calwood.org if you’re interested in helping the rebuild efforts.
Varied groups demand ICE release people in detention, citing increase in confirmed
COVID-19 cases
Colorado state legislators, activists, medical professionals and more called on the Colorado Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office Oct. 26 to release everyone in the GEO detention facility in Aurora amid rising COVID-19 cases among those detained and staff members.
There were 34 new cases among detainees in the week before Oct. 21, while two GEO staff members tested positive, according to a report from ICE officials to Rep. Jason Crow’s office. That brings the total number of positive cases among those detained to 111 since March 30. Activists said they suspect the number of COVID-19 cases may be higher than what was reported due to a lack of testing in the facility.
“GEO has put the lives of all of those detained in the Aurora facility and all of those who work there in jeopardy with their inexcusable safety practices. As health care workers ,we know that the only safe way to stop the spread of COVID-19 in ICE detention is to release all people detained. We cannot stand by as people die in detention,” said Danielle Loeb, a primary care physician at UC Health, in a press release.
48 Colorado state legislators signed and submitted a letter on Oct. 25 asking the ICE field office “to release on humanitarian parole all individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 and all individuals with underlying health conditions that put them at a greater risk of complications with COVID-19, so that they may isolate at a community isolation center, at home with loved ones, or given a voucher to isolate safely at a hotel.”
The lawmakers also cited an ongoing inspection of the GEO facility by state health inspectors, prompted by reports of “moldy food, lack of medical care, lack of sanitary living conditions, and previous disease outbreaks” from those within the facility. The results of that inspection will be submitted to the General Assembly in January, but those who signed onto the letter wrote, “We cannot wait until January to hold GEO accountable to prevent further cases in the facility and save lives from this deadly disease.”
For more information, visit coloradopeoplesalliance.org and afsc.org.
CU researchers find ice on the moon… maybe
Water could be prevalent on the surface of the moon, hiding in tiny ice patches in permanent shadows. That’s the big news from a study by CU researchers published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy.
“If you can imagine standing on the surface of the moon near one of its poles, you would see shadows all over the place,” Paul Hayne, assistant professor in the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU-Boulder, said in a press release. “Many of those tiny shadows could be full of ice.”
In some cases, researchers found, the shadows could be no bigger than a penny, but because those shadows exist in perpetual darkness, “cold traps,” as they put them, they can permanently hold ice. The ice would behave like a rock, Hayne said; that is, it wouldn’t go anywhere.
Researchers, using data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, suggest the moon could have as much as 15,000 square miles of permanent shadows, which have never been touched by a single ray of sunlight for billions of years, potentially.
“If we’re right, water is going to be more accessible for drinking water, for rocket fuel, everything that NASA needs water for,” Hayne said.
It should be noted, though, that the researchers can’t yet prove that ice exists in these shadows — future researchers and rovers will have to dig in the shadows to find out for sure.
