Past News Items

On July 10, all Branch of Wildland Fire Management staff attended a Stress Management and Resilience Training (SMART) in Boise, ID. The training was designed to give staff a deeper understanding into how to support regions and agencies with dealing with serious incidents while giving staff skills to manage stressful work environments.

Indian children in three Bureau of Indian Affairs schools will be given special education services and assistance next school year with the help of funding by the Office of Education.

Schools in which the programs will be initiated include Wahpeton Indian School, Wahpeton, N.D.; Phoenix Indian School in Phoenix, Ariz. and Intermountain School, Brigham City, Utah.

The three programs are intended to establish guidelines for Similar, future operations in other Bureau schools, where they are applicable.

Robert Abbey will hold a news media teleconference regarding domestic oil and gas production on public and Tribal lands.

Credentialed media may also participate in the teleconference media roundtable by telephone by dialing 1-888-972-9240 and entering the access code INTERIOR.

The Dog Head Fire was first reported on June 14, 2016 in the Manzano Mountains on the Cibola National Forest in New Mexico. The fire burned for six days, had an extended six-mile crown fire, and threatened residences around the community of Chilili, New Mexico, and Pueblo of Isleta Tribal lands in central New Mexico that are adjacent to the forest. More than 11,000 acres of Federal lands and 6,600 acres of private lands were ravaged, along with 12 residences and 44 minor structures that were damaged or destroyed. However, the Pueblo of Isleta experienced limited damage to their Tribal lands as a result of a combination of fuels management treatments that had been completed more than a decade earlier.

Award of four contracts totaling $269,949.50 for surfacing work on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservation roads in South Dakota was announced today by the Department of the Interior.

Santa Clara Day School in the Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico, will play host as the featured site in the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Net Day 1999. Santa Clara Day School and18 other BIA funded schools from eastern Maine to Washington's Olympic Peninsula will celebrate their accomplishments, as well as their connection to each other through the Internet, as part of the Four Directions Project.

The North Star Fire started on the Colville Reservation August 13. Prolonged hot weather, dry conditions and sustained winds created perfect conditions for large fire growth. Over the course of the 57-day fire, only one minor structure was burned, despite frequent evacuations, road closures and severe fire behavior. While just over 28,000 acres of the Colville Reservation burned, the total size of the fire was over 217,000 acres and cost roughly $48 million to put out. It was Washington State’s largest fire in 2015.

The Department of the Interior today announced the selection of Robert D. Holtz, Indian Bureau area director at Minneapolis since 1955, to head the Bureau's area office at Portland, Oregon, effective May 1. He replaces Don C. Foster who retires April 14 after 26 years with the Bureau and seven years as area director at Portland.

In his new post Holtz will supervise all Indian Bureau operations in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. His successor at Minneapolis has not yet been named.

After several hearings about the need for more police on Tribal lands and the severe need for school construction and repair funds in Indian Country, the Senate Subcommittee on Interior Appropriations cut the President Clinton's request to fund the needs of the American Indian people for law enforcement and school construction by more than $140 million.

The Department of the Interior today announced a change in the schedule of meetings to be held in March and April by the five-man task force on Indian affairs at key western points.

The locale of the March 24 and 25 meetings has been shifted from Prescott, Ariz., to Phoenix. Otherwise the schedule remain3 as announced in the Department's press release of March 10.