{"id":164406,"date":"2024-09-27T06:11:36","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T12:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=164406"},"modified":"2024-09-27T07:52:46","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T13:52:46","slug":"an-update-on-the-cause-of-the-willow-springs-fire-in-box-elder-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/27\/an-update-on-the-cause-of-the-willow-springs-fire-in-box-elder-county\/","title":{"rendered":"An Update On The Cause Of The Willow Springs Fire In Box Elder County"},"content":{"rendered":"

Setting the record straight.<\/p>\n

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Nine days ago I posted this photo of the fire scar of the recent Willow Springs fire in Box Elder County and I mentioned the rancher who lives near the faraway clump of trees at left center in the photo. Since the fire was human caused and the rancher lives so close to the scar, some readers apparently assumed that he was responsible for starting the fire.<\/p>\n

Since I published that post, I’ve learned some things from locals about the fire and about the area that was burned. The rancher didn’t start the fire and the area that was burned doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.<\/p>\n

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For this photo I stitched the previous photo together with another one that shows more of the fire scar. And more importantly, it shows the larger ‘mountain’ at far right.<\/p>\n

Most if not all of the area that was burned is part of DWR’s new Desert Bighorn Sheep Nursery, where desert bighorns are raised so that surplus animals can be transplanted to other parts of the state. The sheep spend most of their time on the more rugged far side of the two small mountains we see in the photo so I’ve never seen the sheep and didn’t even know they were there (since the nursery is new, they’ve only been there for a few months anyway). Bighorns can’t be confined by a ‘normal’ fence so a special high fence had to be built around the 1000 acre facility.<\/p>\n

The fire burned one nursery structure and killed three bighorn ewes.<\/p>\n

A few days ago locals told me that the fire was caused by fencing contractors working on the fence with welders in tinder-dry conditions without having water or other fire retardants available. That information, of course, was never announced by authorities. All they said was that the fire was “human caused”.<\/p>\n

The rancher had nothing to do with the cause of the fire so, based on what I learned recently, I thought I should set the record straight.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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PS – If you’re interested, here’s a link to a video about the new Desert Bighorn Sheep Nursery in Box Elder County<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Setting the record straight. (2 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,4803],"tags":[689,7637,311,904,7634],"class_list":["post-164406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-desert-bighorn-sheep","tag-box-elder-county","tag-desert-bighorn-sheep-nursery-at-promontory","tag-utah-2","tag-utah-division-of-wildlife-resources","tag-willow-springs-fire"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/willow-springs-fire-scar.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-GLI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164406"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164480,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164406\/revisions\/164480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}