The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, founded in 1997, is a grassroots conservation organization dedicated to the protection of New Mexico's wildlands and wilderness areas so that these special places will always be around for people to use and enjoy. Now nearly 6,000 members strong, NMWA works to ensure the protection and restoration of all remaining wild lands in New Mexico through administrative designations, federal wilderness designation, and ongoing advocacy.
The “land of enchantment” has a long and proud tradition of wilderness protection, beginning with the designation of the Gila Wilderness in 1924 – the first permanently protected wilderness in America. And for more than a decade, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (NMWA) staff and members have worked tirelessly to protect some of the state’s most beloved wild treasures. The nonprofit group, headed by executive director Stephen Capra, led the successful campaign to win designation in 2005 for the Ojito wilderness — blush-colored desert canyon lands marked by steep sided mesas, remote box canyons, deep arroyos and historic religious sites of the Zia and Santa Ana Pueblos — just 90 minutes northwest of downtown Albuquerque.
One of NMWA’s priorities over the past eight years of the Bush administration has been protection of south-central New Mexico’s Otero Mesa — the largest and wildest Chihuahuan desert grassland left in America. The group has built a key coalition of ranchers, sportsmen, home owners, local elected officials, business leaders, and area conservation organizations to fight industry attempts to drill for oil and gas in this sensitive landscape. Last October, NMWA associate director, Nathan Newcomer, used a visit to Albuquerque by presidential candidate Barack Obama as the opportunity to raise Otero Mesa’s visibility. Hoping to show now President-elect Obama the value of this place, Newcomer gave congressional candidate (now U.S Representative) Martin Heinrich a copy of a new book, “Otero Mesa: Preserving America’s Wildest Grassland” to share with Mr. Obama. To date, no new drilling has occurred in Otero Mesa, and there is hope with new leadership in Washington that permanent protection for this area can be attained.
NMWA also spearheaded the successful effort to prevent mineral leasing in the state’s spectacular Valle Vidal, building a strong and diverse coalition of individuals and groups to advocate for Representative Tom Udall’s (now Senator Udall) Valle Vidal Protection Act, ultimately winning the support of two Republican members of Congress from New Mexico. President Bush signed this bill on December 12, 2006, ensuring there will never be the type of coalbed methane (natural gas) drilling in this natural treasure that has scarred much of the San Juan Basin.
With offices in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Las Cruces and Carlsbad, the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance is working across the state to preserve more of its wild lands. From organizing hikes to getting people out into the proposed wilderness areas, to tabling at public events to spread the word about the importance of protecting our natural areas, to bringing activists to Washington, DC to meet with lawmakers, to writing commentary and providing testimony before Congress, the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance walks the walk to ensure that future generations, too, will be able to enjoy the state’s wild treasures.
Over the last ten years, NMWA has conducted an ongoing field inventory of public wildlands throughout the state of New Mexico, to assess the suitability of these lands for wilderness designation and to identify illegal activities or impacts (such as mining scars, roads, powerlines, etc). within wilderness or wilderness study areas. NMWA staff and trained volunteers surveyed some seven million acres of public land administered by the Bureau of Land Management and found that three and a half million acres qualified for wilderness designation, based on criteria such as the opportunity for solitude and various types of unconfined and primitive recreation such as hiking, backpacking, horseback riding, hunting and wildlife watching, as well as their archeological, ecological, scientific and educational values.
The new year could be the best yet for NMWA. A bill to designate more than 15,000 acres in San Miguel County as the Sabinoso wilderness, which was wrapped into the large Senate omnibus lands package in the 110th Congress, has been reintroduced, and should move fairly quickly. And the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance hopes to soon see the fruits of its years of work to protect other special places in the state, including the Organ Mountains and Broad Canyon outside of Las Cruces, and the Ute Mountain area near Taos. In both communities, NMWA has worked diligently to bring together diverse interests and constituencies to work together. It’s not often that homebuilders, hunters, and conservationists can agree — so it’s testament to the commitment of the staff and leadership of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance that these groups have found common ground on wilderness designation.
For more information about NMWA or to get involved, visit www.nmwild.org.
