WASHINGTON - Great Outdoors America Week, held recently in Washington, D.C., brought outdoor enthusiasts together to celebrate America's public lands and to lobby Congress on behalf of the country's natural heritage. The New Mexico regional director for the Wilderness Society, Michael Casaus, was there. He said New Mexico was the only state to have both of its U.S. Senators recognized as America's Great Outdoors Congressional Champions for their work to preserve and protect public lands.

"Our two U.S. Senators, Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, have done a tremendous job over the years to protect iconic places like the Ojito Wilderness, the Valle Vidal, the Sabinoso Wilderness," Casaus said. "And most recently, they successfully advocated that President Obama designate the Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument."

Casaus noted that conservation advocates supporting public lands are diverse, including Native American leaders, Hispanic leaders, small business owners, mountain bikers, hunters, anglers and military members and veterans. He said this broad support gives him renewed enthusiasm in his efforts to get a national monument designation for the Organ Mountains Desert Peaks region in Doña Ana County.

Max Trujillo, who also attended the event, is a hunter and sportsmen's coordinator for Northern New Mexico for the New Mexico Wildlife Federation. Even though the last Congress was the first since World War II that did not act to protect a single new acre of public land, he said he is optimistic that will change.

"I believe there's a growing trend in bipartisanship when it comes to public lands," Trujillo said. "We just had a public lands bill with regard to Valles Caldera National Preserve changing management to the National Park Service, and it was passed by a bipartisan vote in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee."

Trujillo is particularly interested in seeing protection for the Columbine Hondo Wilderness between Questa and Red River. He said it will protect a vital Rio Grande watershed. Ultimately, he added, public lands are a safeguard against ever-expanding growth.

"As we have urban sprawl and development and a new mandate for drilling for oil and mining and coal, these pieces of land that we're able to preserve, these are the places where everybody will come to recreate and get their dose of fresh air and clean water," he predicted.

Great Outdoors America Week attracted nearly 200 activists this year.






get more stories like this via email

Conservation groups are rejoicing over the decision Friday by the Biden administration to reject a proposed mining road in Alaska.

The 211-mile Ambler Road would have sliced through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, severing the migration route for a Western Arctic Caribou herd.

Alex Johnson, interior Alaska director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said it was important for the feds to take a stand in Alaska so mining interests do not start eyeing other national parks.

"This is a very expensive, destructive and just highly speculative project that does not in any way support our clean energy goals as a country," Johnson contended. "And ultimately would permanently threaten the health and well-being of local communities and the tribes."

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski slammed the decision, warning it could limit jobs and tax revenues for Alaska by preventing exploration for minerals she said are important to national security, like copper, cobalt, gallium and germanium.

Jayme Dittmar, a photographer and filmmaker from Fairbanks, said the road would have been very disruptive to the 66 Native American villages along the proposed route.

"That'd be 168 trucks passing through close vicinity to the villages," Dittmar pointed out. "There would be hundreds of bridges built. It would dismantle a subsistence livelihood that's been in place for thousands and thousands of years."

The road was seen as a negative for tourism to the Brooks Range area. According to the Alaska Travel Industry Association, Californians make up 9% of visitors to Alaska.

Arizona conservation groups and sportsmen alike say they're pleased the Bureau of Land Management will now recognize conservation as an integral part of public lands management.

The agency's new rule puts protecting the environment on par with other land-use priorities.

Scott Garlid, executive director of the Arizona Wildlife Federation, said historically the BLM has done what he termed a "pretty good job," not only managing about 12 million acres of public lands in Arizona, but also protecting natural resources.

"They've got a tough job," Garlid acknowledged. "I think this rule helps make their job a little bit easier because it gives them some tools to balance those different demands on the 12 million acres that they manage."

Garlid predicted the rule will raise what he terms "harder-to-quantify conservation values" to the same level of importance as more extractive land uses like oil and gas exploration and mining. He thinks most Arizonans will recognize the new rule as a positive. A solid majority of Arizona voters across party lines say they are conservationists and use public lands for recreation.

To Garlid, the rule makes it clear the BLM is recognizing certain parts of federal lands, in Arizona and around the West, have been degraded. He contended restoration leases will be a good tool, allowing the BLM to lease acres to groups specifically to improve the conditions on a given landscape. He noted opponents of the new rule might see the leases as a way to "lock up" land but he argued it is not true.

"One example could be a nonprofit, like the Arizona Wildlife Federation," Garlid pointed out. "We could get a conservation lease from the Bureau of Land Management to do riparian restoration work, or work to remove invasive species along a creek bank."

According to the BLM, while a restoration or mitigation lease is in place, casual uses of the leased lands like recreation, hunting, fishing and research activities would generally continue.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

State and federal agencies are collaborating to increase the use of prescribed fires in the Northwest.

Prescribed fire is the controlled use of burns to minimize the larger risks of wildfires and smoke. It is seen as an increasingly important strategy as wildfire seasons pose greater threats to the Northwest.

Casey Sixkiller, Northwest regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said authorities want to work together to maintain forest habitats.

"Prescribed burn is one of the best tools we have for making our forests more resilient against catastrophic wildfires and they help to manage and target hazardous fuels and make for healthier forests," Sixkiller explained.

Sixkiller pointed out the EPA is involved because wildfire smoke poses risks to people's health. The collaboration is between federal agencies, departments in Oregon and Washington, and tribal governments.

Sixkiller noted the collaboration needed a formal agreement to move forward.

"That is what we've been able to do here with this agreement," Sixkiller emphasized. "To get federal land managers and states and us all in the same room, making sure that we're all on the same page about what success looks like."

Sixkiller added the collaboration has another advantage: It helps drive engagement with communities potentially in the path of prescribed burns.

"They have the confidence that the effort that's gone into planning that activity has been thought out from soup to nuts," Sixkiller acknowledged. "And that they have a seat at the table and are being engaged and their concerns are being addressed as we go forward with that activity."


get more stories like this via email