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Senators to hold hearing on wilderness bill today in Cruces
The Organ Mountains (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
U.S. Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, D-N.M., will be in Las Cruces today to hold an official Senate hearing on their proposal to protect more than 300,000 acres of land in Doña Ana County.
The Energy and Natural Resources Committee field hearing on the Organ Mountains – Desert Peaks Wilderness Act will be held at 2:30 p.m. in the Corbett Center ballrooms on the New Mexico State University campus.
The hearing, according to a news release from Bingaman, is an official action of the Senate during which only invited witnesses will deliver testimony. The hearing is open to the public.
The senators introduced the legislation in October. The bill would designate 259,000 acres as wilderness and 100,000 acres as national conservation areas. In addition to the Organ Mountains, land on and around the Robledo, Doña Ana and Potrillo mountains would be protected.
The bill would also release 16,350 acres currently designated as a wilderness study area along the county’s border with Mexico. That’s intended to address concerns that law enforcement patrols are hampered by rules against motorized vehicles entering the protected area.
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You have assumed that I was only concerned with the Organs. It is the Potrillos that have the danger of becoming like the Organ Pipe National Monument over run with drug runners, etc. All I have said is that we can protect any of these lands with designations less restrictive than wilderness.
It is the height of folly when anti-wilderness supporters state that the Wilderness Act will encourage “human smugglers, drug runners, and those committed to the destruction of our Country.” – how absurd. Let’s see how many of them have been arrested or even seen in the last ten years in the Organ Mountains. It is ZERO!
By the way there is nothing left of human activities in the Organ Mountains. What is there has destroyed by nature. “Freedom is an essential quality of wilderness and this quality was eloquently captured by Howard Zahniser, author of the Wilderness Act, in selection of the relatively obscure word “untrammeled” to define wilderness. Many people read the word “untrammeled” as “untrampled,” as in not stepped on. Yet the word “untrammeled” means something much different. A “trammel” is a net used for catching fish, or a device used to keep horses from walking. To trammel something is to catch, shackle or restrain it. Untrammeled means something is free or unrestrained. So, wilderness areas are to be unconstrained by humans. Zahniser defined “untrammeled” in the Wilderness Act as “not being subject to human controls and manipulations that hamper the free play of natural forces.”
A few facts for wilderness advocates and anti rancher advocates
The grazing fee is set by a formula based on scientific and economic input by the Forest Service and BLM. The ranchers have nothing to do with setting the annual grazing fee.
I never said I was against NCA, only against wilderness. Senator Bingaman passed a bill in 2006 that withdrew the lands in Valle Vidal and set aside protection for those lands. Why can’t we do that for the Organs?
How many ranches are left in the Gila Wilderness? Zero!
Border Patrol can only enter a wilderness if they are in hot pursuit and they must pay for any damages caused by their vehicles.
I have read the MOU and it has never been tested in New Mexico because we have no wilderness along the border. You need to read the letter sent by Sec. of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, October 2, 2009 to the Ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Natonal Parks, Forests and Public Lands. She wrote “While the USBP recognized the importance and value of wilderness area designations, they can have a significant impact on USBP operations…” “…along the southwest border it (the MOU) can be detrimental to the most effective accomplishment of the (USBP) mission.”
Mr. or Mrs walleaner
You are simply wrong in your statement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just trying to stop the destruction of the land along the border when it become wilderness. Currently the Border Patrol can do routine survallinece in that area, but won’t be able too after it become wilderness, because to the prohibition of moterized vehicles to include airplanes in wilderness. Go look and see what has happened in the Organ Pipe National Park in Arizona because it is managed as wilderness and does not allow the Borger Patrol to due routine patrols. It is the most dangerours National Park in the US. The bad guys love it because they dont abide by the no motor vehicles in the wilderness rule.
Only a few ranchers are stridently opposing legislation to make the Organ Mountains a Wilderness Area for a laundry list of reasons that don’t make sense. First they moan about the restrictive aspects of the Wilderness Act of 1964 and 1980. Both pieces of legislation were largely written under the supervision of the powerful ranching interests. Just recently the ranching industry pressured the Bureau of Land Management to lower the federal grazing fee to only $1.35 per unit – the lowest amount in years.
Further the Wilderness Act of 1980 entrenches livestock grazing interests in our National Wilderness Preservation System. In no uncertain terms it ratifies the grandfathering of livestock grazing in Wilderness Areas. It allows for new fences, water and other developments. It even allows for an increase in livestock, and there is no reasonable regulation in any designated Wilderness Area. Now we have to listen to a few ranchers offering no compromise and total opposition to the Organ Mountains Wilderness Area.
These ranchers need to realize that the Wilderness Area will benefit all Dona Ana County and as well as New Mexico residents. There is no way the ranchers will be greatly affected by Wilderness despite their exaggerated clamors. It is in the common interests of all parties to conserve the Organ Mountains for the unborn generations.
Rancher Teddy Roosevelt would be appalled by the views of former Congressman Steve Pearce and his anti-wilderness cohorts. We need good stewards for our public lands. Poor Teddy is rolling in his grave.
I also am bewildered by the comments of the anti-Wilderness opponents about Wilderness and border security. The statements of a LONG retired patrol agent are totally misleading and misinformed. Wilderness designation for the Organ Mountains will actually increase border security by preserving its rugged landscape as a barrier against illegal cross-border activity. Also Border Patrol agents have total access to Wilderness areas to conduct motorized off-road pursuit of suspected cross-border violators.
These anti-Wilderness advocates should read the Border Patrol’s own procedures as authorized by the Department of Homeland Security in 2006 “to ensure they can continue to aggressively pursue and capture illegal immigrants and drug smugglers in wilderness areas.” The procedures are described in detail in the inter-agency Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) of March 24, 2006 titled “Regarding Cooperative National Security and Counter terrorism Efforts on Federal Lands along the United States’ Borders” between the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Agriculture . This MOU shows the procedures to be followed on federally-managed public lands, and specifically in designated wilderness areas, including the following: Section IV, B, 4: “Nothing in this MOU is intended to prevent CBP-BP agents from exercising existing exigent/emergency authorities to access lands, including authority to conduct motorized off-road pursuit of suspected CBVs [cross-border violators] at any time, including in areas designated or recommended as wilderness…”
It is clear that Wilderness designation for Organ Mountains including Sierra de Las Uvas, Broad Canyon, Robledos and Greater Potrillo Mountain Areas will be a great benefit not only to the community but to the Border Patrol despite the silly comments of a former border agent.
Hemingway sounds like he likes the destruction of our countryside.
I’m not against Federal wilderness, but these areas do not qualify as wilderness under the 1964 Wilderness Act. Even the Bureau of Land Management who studied the areas recommended that most of the area not be considered for wilderness designation. Trying to include areas that don’t meet the criteria only waters down the concept of wilderness. The Organs can be protected by Congressional withdrawal to exclude them from sale, trade,mineral and oil exploration without placing them in wilderness catagory that eliminates access except by walking or horseback. Open space does not mean federal wilderness, protect the open space, but dont designate it federal wilderness.
I know there will be anti-wilderness people trying to destroy this bill. You have former Congressman Steve Pearce and avid anti-wilderness advocate spreading misinformation and inaccuracies about the proposed Wilderness Bill to preserve the Organ Mountains. This is wrong.
Senator Udall and Bingaman – Thank you for the well-written legislation!!!! There is an absolute consensus on Wilderness. It was a rancher, President Teddy Roosevelt, who stated succinctly: “There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country”. This is the great issue in Dona Ana County.
Not much of a public hearing with only invited speakers and no question and answer. Feels like Bingaman wanting to do a slam dunk in spite of opposition.
I hear the anti–everything Tea Party members are going to protest the Wilderness Act. It was pointed out to me that I was ignorant because wilderness does not appeared in the Constitution – not anywhere. I flunked their literary test.
Hopefully they won’t bring guns like in Alamogordo.