BorderWest

Wilderness, Wilderness Everywhere

By Rebecca Powell, 7-21-08

	Sabinoso Wilderness Look Likely

Part of an ongoing series about the Doña Ana County Wilderness Debate. For more on the debate and the proposals, see A Biased Observer of the Doña Ana County Wilderness Debate, For Some, Wilderness is Simple, Pearce Submits People’s Proposal to the House, and More Than a Yes or No to Wilderness.

President Bush says he’ll sign any wilderness bill that hits his desk and that is where the Sabinoso bill may end up.

Proposed by U.S.Representative Tom Udall (D-NM), the bill would bring New Mexico’s wilderness acreage to 1,641,443 acres. Udall also authored the Valle Vidal Protection Act of 2005, which withdrew 101,794 acres in the Sangro De Cristo Mountains from mineral leasing.

HR 6300, proposed by U.S. Representative Steve Pearce (R-NM) was inspired by the Valle Vidal Protection Act. Tom Mobley, a Doña Ana County rancher, took his grandson fishing in the Valle Vidal. The fishing trip inspired a school research report that the grandson later shared with Mobley. As Mobley looked over the report, he noticed the few paragraphs of legislation forever withdrawing the Valle Vidal from mineral leasing Mobley thought if a few paragraphs could protect a place as unique and beautiful as the Valle Vidal, surely the same could work for lands in Doña Ana County.

Those few paragraphs turned into much more, new designations called Rangeland Preservation Areas and Special Preservation Areas.  However, the initial inspiration came from a young boy’s research project.

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