Central New Mexico Group

Brian Johnson, longtime Sierra Club member and once a local backpack-outings leader, has launched a new venture, Less Traveled Trails, to initiate a new series of backpacking courses.

The venture, in conjunction with Santa Fe Community College, Ghost Ranch Conference Center and the U.S. Forest Service, will consist of classroom sessions and backpack trips that will be beneficial for both novice and experienced backpackers. Either learn for the first time about being self-sufficient on overnight trips or put into practice new techniques for ultra-light backpacking.

By Mary Katherine Ray, Chapter Wildlife Chair

Trapping season began in New Mexico on November 1 and will not end until March 15. This is the season when fur is its thickest and most valuable, so trappers are out to make a profit by killing wildlife such as bobcats, foxes, coyotes and badgers.

They can set their traps on public lands where the rest of us go to enjoy these same animals and their habitats. No warning signs are required, and the distance a trap can be set from roads and trails is a mere 25 yards. How much trapping occurs depends on current fur prices. The more money pelts are bringing, the more traps there will be.
In order to protect your dog and yourself while hiking, please take a look at these photos of traps that could be encountered and note how to open them if your dog is caught.

By Eliza Kretzmann, Resilient Habitats Associate Organizing Representative

The last time the U.S. Forest Service updated the National Planning Rule that affects management of forests across the nation, Ronald Reagan was president, hot-pink legwarmers were all the rage, and I sat in a second-grade classroom. The year was 1985. My, how the world has changed since then! The world of forest planning has changed immensely as well. The new plan will focus more on sustainable, healthy forests and less on the “board feet, red meat” extraction of the old rule.

By Laurence Gibson, El Paso Group chair

What follows is the story of the El Paso Group’s fight to contain sprawl in Northwest El Paso, sprawl that will severely impact our magnificent Franklin Mountains State Park and destroy our last remaining greenway, turning it into a superhighway with freeway interchanges. This was an exhausting fight, straining both the physical, emotional and financial resources of our group. It may be too early to assess the lessons we learned. However, some conclusions seem obvious.

By Mona Blaber and John Buchser

In the previous Sierran, we reported to you that the state of New Mexico had proposed closing the two smallest units at Northern New Mexico’s coal-fired San Juan Generating Station as an alternative to EPA-required pollution controls on all four units of the plant.

By Walter Szymanski, Rio Grande Chapter member

At the invitation of New Mexico’s Southwestern County Commission Alliance (SWCCA) and the Council of Border Conservation Districts, a fast-talking lawyer and Republican state representative from Utah named Ken Ivory made a presentation to about 60 attendees at a meeting in Deming on Dec. 3, 2012, urging them to follow his state’s lead and push for legislation in New Mexico to “take back” national public lands.

By Chapter chair John Buchser

Climate change is certainly giving us a slap in the face this year. My relatives in northern New Jersey were directly in the path of Sandy, reminding me of my childhood memories of a very frightening, noisy night followed by the sight of toppled trees along our street in the early ’60s before my family moved to New Mexico.

By Dan Lorimier, Chapter Conservation Coordinator and Lobbyist

After almost three years of wrangling with New Mexico’s dairy industry, calling themselves the Dairy Industry Group for a Cleaner Environment (DIGCE), and the New Mexico Environment Department’s Groundwater Quality Bureau, the Rio Grande Chapter saw the Water Quality Control Commission (WQCC) implement new regulations specific to the dairy industry early in 2012.

By Mary Katherine Ray, Chapter Wildlife Chair

Coyotes, our native wild song dogs, are the most persecuted animal in New Mexico. They can be shot on sight, trapped or poisoned all year long in unlimited numbers. And now we know that shooters compete with each other in organized events to see who can kill the most in a weekend to win a prize.

The December 2012 issue of the Environmental Flows Bulletin, produced by the Utton Center at the UNM School of Law , has several highly relevant stories on the ongoing drought in the southwest.
Environmental Flows Bulletin December 2012 issue