Daniel Salzler No. 1348
EnviroInsight.org Five Items February 27, 2026
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1. Northern Arizona Snowpack Offers Clues To Water Supply For Millions.
Arizona’s water future hinges on snowpack. Recent measurements reveal critical snow-to-water ratios, highlighting essential planning needs amid climate change.
High in the pine forests between Flagstaff and Payson, SRP hydrologists dug straight down into the snow to find out not just how deep it is, but how much water it contains.
At the Happy Jack Snow Survey Site, SRP field hydrologist Zachary Keller said the measurements are essential for water managers.
“We are out here measuring the snowpack so that we know how much water is sitting in the snowpack ready to run off and come into our reservoirs,” Keller said.
The numbers from Monday’s survey were straightforward but significant. Hydrologists measured 10 inches of snow, which held about 2 inches of water — a ratio known as snow water equivalent.
Snow water equivalent matters because not all snow contains the same amount of moisture. Some storms produce deep snow that holds relatively little water, while others pack more water into a smaller amount of snow.
“That makes a big difference for planning operations downstream,” Keller said.
What makes this snowpack especially important is what lies beneath it. After a wet fall and early winter, the soil across much of the watershed is already saturated. That means when temperatures rise and the snow melts, much of the water is expected to run off instead of soaking into the ground.
This is the first snow measurement of the year on the Verde watershed. Data collected at this site, along with information from dozens of other monitoring locations across northern Arizona, helps SRP determine when to hold water in reservoirs and when to release it.
“It’s hard to manage water if you don’t measure it,” Keller said.
So far this year, Keller said conditions are at a median average. That outlook is important for the nearly 2.5 million people who rely on water managed by SRP, and it also offers insight into how Arizona’s watersheds are responding to warmer temperatures and changing storm patterns.
“What’s going to happen over the next week is going to give us a lot of information and insight as to how our forests are responding to an example of climate change patterns,” Keller said.
Source:12 News Feb 23, 2026
2. Water Conservation Measures Implemented on Grand Canyon National Park South Rim
Michael Manny February 23, 2026 | 2:14pm Northern AZ News
Grand Canyon, Canyon National Park, Havasupai Gardens, National Park Service, Water, Water Conservation
Grand Canyon National Park is implementing water conservation measures on the South Rim, effective immediately, following a power outage that impacted the SCADA system at the Havasupai Gardens pumphouse.
As a result of this outage, water is currently unable to be pumped to the South Rim. All park visitors and residents are required to conserve and reduce water usage wherever possible in homes, hotel rooms and campgrounds. Park crews are actively working to repair the water system.
Water conservation measures include:
Reducing toilet flushing
Running dishwashers and washing machines only with full loads or in eco-mode
Shortening showers and turning off sinks while brushing teeth and shaving
Reporting and repairing drips, leaks and other sources of water loss
Using only reclaimed water to wash vehicles
3. As Arizona’s Drought Persists, Black Bears Are Abandoning Their Cubs. On a typical day, the Southwest Wildlife Conservation Center in Scottsdale reverberates with animal cries and the footfalls of gawking visitors. But in the quietest corner of the 10-acre sanctuary, away from the public’s prying eyes, a cohort of most unusual occupants sleep.
This is where Southwest Wildlife keeps its black bear cubs. Every morning, animal care manager Kim Carr stops by to prepare breakfast, scattering treats across their enclosures that are filled with fake tree trunks, log piles and hanging branches — an organic jungle gym for creatures that are born to climb and play. Shade cloth and wooden screens block off the outside world, though the cubs often tear them down out of perverse curiosity.
Two of Carr’s diners are a pair of brother-sister yearlings the size of Saint Bernards. When it’s feeding time, the male usually beelines for the tub of leftovers on the ground. His sister is an overachiever, and she likes to go for the higher stashes, her wiggling nose leading the way.
Black bears are one of Carr’s favorite animals, as their playful antics and uncanny idiosyncrasies reveal an intelligent soul behind beady eyes. Carr watches over her furry wards like a proud mother.
“How could you not love a little bear cub?” she said.
Yet as much as she loves bears, she would rather not see any at Southwest Wildlife.
The presence of bear cubs is out of the norm at the wildlife sanctuary. Carr suspects drought has something to do with it, a sign that the natural world is buckling under skyrocketing temperatures and reticent rains. As a result, its inhabitants are going hungry.
A drought for the books
Southwest Wildlife takes in all kinds of sick and starving mammals, with a goal of releasing them back into the wild. Some species, such as bobcats and coyotes, tend to show up every year. Not typically black bears.
The last time the center cared for bear cubs was in 2021, when the center took in five. Last year, however, bear cub intake surged to eight yearlings. In the fall, at a time when bears should be gearing up for winter hibernation with their offspring, the Arizona Department of Game and Fish dropped off five emaciated cubs in the span of a month. Southwest Wildlife’s staff and volunteers scrambled to repurpose old facilities into bear-suited enclosures.
Late last January, they saw one rare cub intake, but it was so malnourished that the center decided to euthanize it.
A lone cub in the wild is an unnatural thing, suggesting something tragic must have befallen its mother. Vehicle collisions on the road are a top cause of bear mortality. Poaching can also inadvertently make orphans out of cubs, though hunting a bear that’s accompanied by minors is illegal.
Carr suspects her sanctuary’s cubs aren’t orphans, but instead castoffs, victims of a drought-induced food shortage.
“Everybody was coming in so skinny,” Carr said. Mass starvation was driving mothers to jettison their babies as they could no longer save their own skin, let alone feed other mouths.
It’s not a decision that any mama bear would make lightly. “Wild mammals don’t abandon their babies,” Carr added. “They’re excellent mothers.”
Cub abandonment due to drought is plausible, said Myles Traphagen, the borderlands program coordinator at the nonprofit Wildlands Network. He has seen impacts of the drought first-hand. Across Arizona’s Sky Islands, home to many black bears, valleys and hillslopes are dotted with the rusty corpses of Emory oak, alligator juniper and manzanitas.
“I’ve never seen such intense mortalities,” Traphagen said. “I was just blown away.” The acorns and berries these tree species produce constitute important food sources for bears.
On top of low food availability, mountain springs are drying up from low winter snowfall, forcing the bears to roam farther and wider in search of drinking water. It’s a vicious cycle of expending more bodily resources to find resources in this scant age of drought.
“The bears are being hit by multiple forces,” Traphagen added. “They have to travel longer distances, which is going to expose them to more stress, more predation, more competition.”
Relocating bears moving toward towns
Other signs of starvation ring across Arizona’s black bear population. Last year, the Arizona Department of Game and Fish recorded a spike in human-bear conflicts, evidence that food scarcity was driving famished bears into human territory. In 2025, the department received 2,762 bear calls statewide, roughly a fourfold increase compared with 2024 and 2023.
“We tend to see bears moving into towns more in dry years,” said April Howard, a large-carnivore biologist at the Arizona Game and Fish Department.
When bears become regular visitors to human homes, the department has to relocate these scavengers or put them down.
Black bears aren’t the only animals struggling in the drought. Last summer, coyote pups were arriving on Southwest Wildlife’s doorstep with heatstroke. During fall hunting season, Game and Fish urged the public to go easy on the state’s quails due to their low stock numbers. The department also spent over $1 million to provide drinking water for wildlife during what was one of the state’s hottest and driest summers on record. Source: AZCentral Feb 20, 2026
4. Caterpillars Turn Into Butterflies And/Or Moths. These tiny cylindrical creatures love to burrow through the soil and/or reside on the leaves of our vegetable plants or trees eating more than their eight in leaves daily. To get around, their bodies require muscle movement.
Humans use their 639 muscles to move around, grip, chew and more. Caterpillar muscles varies with the type of caterpillar, but, do you know how many muscles the average caterpillars has?
a) 8 – 22 b) 50 – 107
c) 625 – 779 d) 1500 – 4000 Answer at the end of the newsletter
Source: www.thoughtco.com and Kneed To Know Facts.
5. Valley Fever Hits Arizona Hard And Early In 2026. Valley Fever, also known as Coccidioidomycosis has hit 1,237 people so far this year.
Valley Fever is caused by breathing in soil dust containing the fungus Coccidioides sp. into the lungs. Symptoms include fatigue, cough or shortness of breath, muscle aches and joint pain, fever or night sweats, headache and possibly a rash OR you may have no symptoms at all. Sever symptoms can result in death. Five to ten out of every 100 people develop serious symptoms.
It is not contagious but if you do contract it, it may spread to other parts of the body.
If you inhale the infected soil, it will most likely happen during a visit to Arizona or if you live here, within the first three years of your Arizona residency.
Answer to No. 4 Above: d) Some species of caterpillars have more than 4000 muscles in their tiny cylindrical bodies, with the average number being around 1500 muscles. Of these numbers, caterpillars heads consists of 248 muscles.Caterpillas have more than twice as many muscles as humans have in their bodies, despite being roughly the size of a human being’s pinky toe. Humans have 639 muscles in their bodies. Caterpillars have so many muscles because of their unique form of transportation. To move, they must contract and elongate their many muscles, slowly moving in the desired direction
Copyright: EnviroInsight 2026
