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A sound question about wilderness designations
Michael Swickard
The Senator Bingaman’s Organ Mountains – Desert Peaks Wilderness Act is in the news. I would like to say a word in support of wilderness planning: It is obvious that if permanent structures are built, they are very difficult to unbuild.
Likewise, if a city desires to a construct a park, it is very unlikely a park can be built upon land already occupied with houses. The open land must be set aside, and that can only happen if the powers-that-be plan for the future needs of the city.
I am in support of planning both for city parks and for wilderness designations. This is where the details get difficult. The core wilderness idea is that by not allowing any human contact with the land it will be made or will remain pristine. That is the wilderness standard for the designation. But there is one aspect not being discussed by anyone.
Auditory pollution
At my family’s ranch an hour north of Alamogordo some years ago I was fixing fence at the northeast pasture. It was a lovely warm spring day, about 10 in the morning. I had been working on that section of fence for a couple of hours with only the sounds of birds singing. There I stood half asleep as I was dreamily tightening the barbed wire many miles from the nearest other human being.
Then it happened. Suddenly four Air Force fighter airplanes flying at an altitude of about 100 feet passed over me. The Air Force jets were doing contour Earth flight training. It galvanized me to action in one instant. I ran three ways at once including through the fence. Looking up I saw the tails of the planes and then they were gone, as suddenly as they came. It had gotten noisy and then it was quiet again, other than the beating of my heart.
This experience makes me wonder: The current wilderness standard is no human tracks equals pristine. How soon will it be that noise also destroys the pristine nature of wilderness? Can land be wilderness with the sound of a nearby freeway or jets taking off from an airport? We must consider the sounds ever present in our area of Southern New Mexico. Besides the jets in the commercial lanes we have several military facilities. Do they not destroy the wilderness?
Now our country has plenty of wildernesses for our descendants to see. Go to Alaska and there will not be over-flights of jets, and certainly no freeway noise. That is the wilderness of our dreams. That wilderness does deserve protection.
I am concerned that attempts to designate places in Doña Ana County wilderness where people can still hear trucks on the highway is a sham. No one except the deaf can enjoy the wilderness designated “solitude” with the sonic booms from Holloman AFB and being on a major east-west commercial airliner corridor. Planes are taking off and landing nearby. That is not to say hiking and biking and those activities are not still very pleasant.
A different goal?
Our quality of life would not be enhanced with houses all the way up to the top of the Organ Mountains. We can protect against that happening without the extra wilderness designations. Hiking Baylor Canyon is still great for us with or without the extra wilderness legislation.
That is visual protection that works fine. But let us return to the question of auditory pollution inherent in a populated area next to a national military range. I wonder: Is it the goal of the wilderness folks to use the wilderness act to force the closing of the White Sands Missile Range, Holloman and the spaceport to boot because of the auditory 21st century pollution?
Some people may think it cannot happen. But look what is happening in one of the most fertile growing areas of California, which has become desolate and dry because of the extension of endangered species rules to cover the Delta Smelt. No one years ago could believe anyone would want to destroy all of those livelihoods, but they were destroyed.
Most people have never been far enough from city lights to see the magnificence of the night sky. I grew up with that night sky and still see it much the same. I still walk the remote areas of Southern New Mexico where you may not see another person on the trail all day.
The land around my family’s ranch looks much as it has for my lifetime. New Mexico is full of this kind of land, and there is no chance it will be filled with houses and condos ever. Yes, it has sound above it occasionally. I can stand it. Real desolation would be the result of closing the Southern New Mexico military facilities. I pray they are not the target.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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This is the silliest column I have ever seen on this blog. I am a member of the National Governing Council of the Wilderness Society and a founder of the NM Wilderness Alliance. I can tell you I have never heard this harebrained theory before nor has anyone ever discussed it anywhere I have been. Why would anyone want to close these facilities for wilderness reasons? There simply is something else here at work. It is called fear mongering.
thorlo thinks that the people who were here from a long time back should be relegated to the trash bin and the environment should be locked up.
The Yellowstone was locked up and presided over by the Federal Parks and look at the mess they made of it. It was in better condition before it became a national park. To lock up land for the future is not the answer. The answer is to regulate the usage of the land at the local and state level. There is too much interference in our lives from the federal government as it is, regardless of the reason for crating a locked environment.
I fully agree that the lands can be protected by other designations and don’t need almost total exclusion of people by a federal wilderness designation. The 1964 wilderness act intent was to designate land where there was solitude and the sight and sound of man was minimal. Since that time the wilderness act gets water down. Example: S.1689 includes language that allows low-level over flights of military aircraft that can be seen or heard in the wilderness area, designation of military flight training routes over the wilderness and new units of special air-space. We can protect the land in other ways, but why degrade the wilderness concept of solitude and open space by trying to call it wilderness under the old gold standards of wilderness. Give it a new designation, maybe wilderness with a small “w”.
Whether or not the closing of certain facilities is the goal of the majority of wilderness proponents, anyone familiar with the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) knows that the designation of wildeness adjacent to a military facility (for example) can create potential obstacles to continued and future use, “Significant Impacts” are not always well defined and the increase in the type and volume of objections that could be raised due to the presence of a wilderness area next to an installation like White Sands Missile Range (as oppossed to BLM land) has to realistically be included in these discussions.
Its naive to just consider the great things coming from making the Organ Mountains (and as much land as possible everywhere) “wilderness” and protected from harm without also considering the entire spectrum of impacts including economc ones. Lots of jobs and a huge contribution to the tax base.
No Thorlo, its not the stated goal of wilderness supporters but that doesn’t mean its not a valid concern.
No, the closing of Holloman, White Sands and the spaceport is not the goal of wilderness supporters. I know you have to come up with something every week to write about, but this column is really a stretch.