BorderWest/Part Two: A Conversation with Nathan Small

For Some, Wilderness is Simple

By Rebecca Powell, 6-19-08

	Organ Mountains

I have been talking to an assortment of people about the Doña Ana County Wilderness Debate. Kind, passionate people have sat with me, told me stories, explained viewpoints and histories. I’ll be presenting their stories and viewpoints over the next few days, weeks and months. For more on the debate and the proposals, see A Biased Observer of the Doña Ana County Wilderness Debate.

He is tall. My first thought as I sit down to lunch with Nathan Small, Las Cruces City Councilor and wilderness organizer, to discuss the two preservation proposals for Doña Ana County. 

Nathan Small was elected to the District 4 council position in November 2007. The 25-year-old is the youngest City Councilor in Las Cruces’ history. He graciously agreed to meet me for lunch to discuss the Citizen’s and People’s Proposals.

I first heard of Small when he was running for District 4’s seat. An established, older district and a young, wilderness organizer seemed an unlikely pair. People talked of a young, polished speaker with progressive ideas.  Some talked with fear and others with admiration. Those in the fear category said he worked for a “radical” organization (New Mexico Wilderness Alliance),and he was part of a well-funded, out-of-town campaign to institute radical environmental policies in Las Cruces. Those in the camp of admiration pointed to his ability to work with diverse groups of people and his grasp of the issues. He handily won the election by over 111 votes. His term on City Council has seen the addition of bike lanes and a work day on renewable energy.

I am nervous.  In the four days before the interview I read the 1960 Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act, Wilderness Act of 1964, the Congressional Grazing Guidelines, the National Conservation Area Enabling Legislation, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Valle Vidal Legislation, and a definition of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern.  Once you establish residency west of the sixth meridian, a primer of the who, how, what, and why of public lands should appear in your mailbox.  My ignorance is vast and my knowledge feels surface deep. We meet at Ono Grindz, a Hawaiian restaurant in downtown Las Cruces. He stands when I come to the table. I register his height and order the first thing on the menu.  I cannot tell you its name. I remember that I am here to hear his story, not show off my knowledge. I relax, smile and listen.

He tells a good story. His answers are measured and even. He calls himself a pragmatist. He chats with the waitress, the restaurant owner. His eyes roam the room. I bet the City Council seat is not the only election I will see him win.

First, how does a philosophy and English major from the College of Wooster, a $40,000 a year private college in Ohio, end up working for the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance? He points to his grandfather’s ranch in Grants, New Mexico, which bordered the Gila.  He grew up riding horses, establishing a connection to the land. He jokes that his time in Ohio on academic scholarship, a state with very little public land, showed him what he loved about New Mexico.  He starts to tell a story about meeting an Ohioan on a river, talking about growing up in the West, and the man’s puzzlement. The idea of open land set aside for the public to enjoy was foreign to the Ohioan. Nathan knew then he wanted to come home. And come back he did. First to Albuquerque, where he worked with New Mexico Wilderness Alliance (NMWA) and then to Las Cruces where his official NMWA title is Wilderness Protection Organizer. 

I ask for the back history of the Citizen’s Proposal and the reasoning behind floating the proposal at this time. Small details a decade long history of concern for open space in Doña Ana County, starting with League of Women’s Voters and the Citizen’s Task Force for Open Space, both of which have done considerable preservation work for years. On the issue of timing, he points to politics. Wilderness is a political designation made by Congress. To designate an area wilderness requires precision timing. There has to be consensus in a community and in Congress. Coincidentally, the year NMWA floated its first Doña Ana County proposal is the same year House Resource Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, (CA-R) a committed opponent of wilderness, lost his seat. Add to that an influx of new people to Las Cruces and conservative Senator Pete Domenici’s pending retirement, and indeed the sun and stars appear to be aligning for a new wilderness designation.

Las Cruces is surprisingly diverse. Academics, ranchers, farmers, retirees, military personnel, technocrats, all call it home. Bringing this many different types of people in the name of any cause would be tough.  In a name as controversial as wilderness, even tougher. So, he did what he knew best. He took them to see the land, to see what he thought needed protecting.  He planned hikes and invited those he needed to reach. A coalition of unlikely comrades was formed: the League of Women’s Voters and sportsmen, the backcountry horsemen and the home builders association. Concessions were made, lines were adjusted, but a coalition had formed behind the Citizen’s Proposal.

And then there were the ranchers. Eighteen ranchers are directly affected by the Citizen’s Proposal, yet none of them were contacted about the proposal until after it had been endorsed by the City of Las Cruces. Small now sees that as a mistake, saying the delay may have produced feelings of exclusion and a pattern of mistrust.  Throughout my lunch with Small he repeatedly called wilderness a multiple use designation, implying ranchers do not need to worry about grazing rights. The message of multiple use is hard to hear over the history of the Gila Wilderness, where presently not a single cow grazes.

Small said the ranchers were invited to attend a forum explaining how the lands were chosen for wilderness designation. One showed up. Small attended talks with the ranchers at Tom Cooper’s accounting office, a local rancher and accountant. The talks all came down to “you (Nathan, NMWA) say that grazing will be protected, that not much will change, but we don’t trust you.” I asked him how do you combat that statement. How do you overcome a fear that is rooted in who you are? A wilderness organizer by his very title appears to have a vested interest in designating land wilderness, regardless of whose livelihood it impacts. After all, wilderness is Small’s livelihood. He calls trust a two way street and does not feel the need to prove NMWA trustworthiness. The ranchers can decide to trust, decide to work with NMWA or not. They have decided to go another route—the People’s Proposal.

A route Small sees as unprecedented and full of pitfalls. He questions how the BLM employees will know how to run the Rangeland Preservation Areas (RPA) and Special Preservation Areas (SPA) called for in the People’s Proposal, the only designations of their kind. BLM managers can attend the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center or observe other wilderness designations to learn how to run a wilderness. Where will they go to learn about RPAs and SPAs?  He also sees the People’s Proposal as elevating ranching, while down-grading and removing status from the already protected lands. He states that BLM managers move all over the U.S., and while wilderness has a proven record, established procedures and even its own school, the People’s Proposal would be starting from scratch.

He also worries about Section 402 of the People’s Proposal, titled Disposal of Federal Land for Community Growth. Section 402 is based on the BLM’s current plan to dispose of 60,000 acres in the Organs. The section calls for a board to oversee the disposal and for the bulk of the money from the disposal to go to Doña Ana County and the maintenance of the RPAs and SPAs. Section 402 of the People’s Proposal was originally adopted from the draft circulated by Senator Pete Domenici’s office in 2005. Small sees this as an unnecessary trade-off, though a similar action was taken in Nevada.

More of Small’s concerns are outlined in a June 13, 2008, guest column in the Las Cruces Bulletin. Small, and cowriter Don Patterson, call wilderness the “gold standard protection.” Small and others see wilderness as an economic force, writing, “Communities with designated wilderness nearby become tourism meccas, while at the same time attracting quality businesses whose employees look for quality of life and keeping young families nearby with their outdoor opportunities ensured for future generations.” That the lands would remain open to the public under the People’s Proposal is not mentioned. The column states that the People’s Proposal would “reverse and eliminate all wilderness protections in Doña Ana County” and would “eliminate wilderness in Doña Ana County, for example denying the same level of protection for the Organ Mountains that the Sandia Mountains outside of Albuquerque currently enjoy.” Those statements ignore provisions in the People’s Proposal calling for the same level of protection as wilderness.

The guest column makes the differences between the two proposals sound vast and insurmountable, while in my reading the differences are quite small.  They both call for setting aside the lands from future development, mining, and oil and gas.  They differ in the upkeep and use of roads and vehicles. The Citizen’s Proposal is traditional wilderness—limited roads and very limited off highway use.  The People’s Proposal allows motorized vehicles on roads designated by the BLM’s land use plan.  Off highway use would be allowed for range improvements, flood control projects, and law enforcement activities. The Citizen’s Proposals offers the name-brand designation of “Wilderness,” while the People’s Proposal offers the same protections with a few alterations. No one mentions the common ground, the ground that is most sacred to my thinking—the preservation of the lands.

At the end of our lunch I mused that the more people I spoke to about the two proposals, the more complicated the issues seemed. He replied, “It is simple.” And for him, I believe it is. Wilderness is the best way he knows to protect the land.

He bought me lunch.

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