A Great Victory for the Wild and Scenic Rio Grande!

U.S. Senator Tom Udall shares the victory aqui in Taos.

Cheers!

Cisco Guevara, river runner, congratulates Taoseños.

Monday, March 25, 2013 marks a great victory for those who love the Rio Grande. After years of unrelenting effort involving many groups and individuals, President Obama signed a proclamation to designate Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument. The courtroom at the Taos County Courthouse was packed to the walls with those who came to celebrate and applaud U.S. Senator Tom Udall who sponsored legislation in Congress to protect BLM land along the northern stretch of the Rio Grande. He also thanked retired U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman for his support and organizations such as Rivers and Birds and the Rio Grande del Norte Coalition, created by the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.

Individuals who make their living along the river also had a chance to express their gratitude. Cisco Guevara, called by The Taos News, “the poster child” for conservationists, is a sturdy man with a white beard who wears a big floppy hat. Udall introduced him as a man whose roots in the community go back 400 years. Guevara says that he listens to the water day after day, and “the water is thirsty.” He should know. As one of the owners of Los Rios River Runners, he spends most of his days rafting in the Rio Grande Gorge, so he is well aware of problems with the flow of the Rio Grande due to growing demands for water and drought in New Mexico.

The proposal for the National Monument was designed to protect a quarter of a million remote acres in Taos and Rio Arriba counties. When Congress gridlocked over the bill, Senator Udall, retired Senator Bingaman, Representative Ben Ray Lujan and Senator-elect Martin Heinrich urged President Obama to use his special powers to make the designation under the Antiquity Act.

Udall said, “Taos is usually contentious, but on this issue, everyone united.” He was happy to see a diversity of cultures represented in the audience and joined in the prayer offered by War Chief Samuel Gomez from Taos Pueblo. Traditional uses such as woodcutting and grazing and already established mining will be allowed to continue, but no new roads may be built within the area and no future growth will be allowed on public lands. According to the Albuquerque Journal, “ . . . monument designation will ensure that development such as oil and gas or mining will not occur.”

Thanks, +President Obama!

 

Wild Horses near the Colorado/New Mexico line

Slow Down!

Open Range

Mare and Colt

Slaughtering Wild Horses?

I first became aware of the beauty of wild mustangs when I saw small herds of them standing beside the road near the Colorado/New Mexico state line. As I watched them graze close to the edge of the road, I saw cars, trucks and RVs passing at 75 or 80 mph as if the horses were invisible. No one slowed down. The horses didn’t seem to notice the cars, either. A weird disconnect. A couple of days later, one of the fillies I had admired was hit and killed as she stood in the middle of the road where her mother had died before her.

That was about six months ago. Since then the issues around wild horses have escalated  from cars killing horses in open range to drunken hunters shooting into the herds with shotguns, to whole herds being rounded up and sent to slaughter in Mexico. And now a legislative panel has unanimously approved a $20,000 study to determine the feasibility of an equine slaughterhouse in New Mexico. What’s wrong with this picture?

Humans don’t have many domestic animal friends. Cats, dogs and horses. Dogs need us. Cats, not so much. For centuries we have bonded with gentle, intelligent  horses. Why can’t we allow wild horses to live in peace on Wild Horse Mesa in Colorado and in other designated areas? Why doesn’t the BLM intervene when wild horses are rounded up for slaughter? Right now, so I’m told, forty baby horses from a month to a year old, are captured in a pen in the Costilla area, most likely waiting to be sent to slaughter. What can we do about it? Better hurry!