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Pearce says he wants to preserve land in Doña Ana County
U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
Though he has opposed Doña Ana County wilderness legislation in the past, U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., says he wants to work with New Mexico’s U.S. senators to “preserve the beautiful lands and open spaces” here.
“I am not calling for these sensitive areas to be opened to development,” Pearce said in a statement released by his office. “I believe that we need to strike the right balance between conservation and economic growth. I look forward to working with Senators Bingaman and Udall to preserve the beautiful lands and open spaces in Doña Ana County.”
Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, both Democrats, proposed a bill last year that Pearce didn’t support. It would have designated hundreds of thousands of acres in Doña Ana County as wilderness – the federal government’s most restrictive conservation designation.
Pearce wasn’t in Congress at the time, and the legislation died in the Senate without ever having gained the support of then-U.S. Rep. Harry Teague, D-N.M., who Pearce replaced in office last month.
Some wilderness proponents believe that, with Teague’s loss, they’ve missed what may have been their best chance to get a wilderness bill approved. Pearce, who served in the House from 2003 to 2008 before leaving to run unsuccessfully for Senate, has a long history of criticizing Doña Ana County wilderness proposals.
Pearce’s staff points out that he doesn’t oppose the wilderness designation entirely. He supported the New Hampshire Wilderness Act of 2006. That legislation – related to a Senate bill that later became law – added 10,800 acres to a small, existing wilderness area in a remote area of New Hampshire.
That’s much different than what has been proposed in Doña Ana County – hundreds of thousands of acres, much of it around the largest city in Pearce’s district.
Pearce’s proposal
In 2008, while he was running unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Udall, Pearce proposed an alternative to wilderness.
The legislation would have created new designations to protect the land that would be less restrictive than wilderness. Pearce’s bill would have eliminated the eight wilderness study areas in the county — comprising about 220,000 acres — and instead designated “special preservation areas” and “rangeland preservation areas” to give some protection to approximately 300,000 acres, including the Organ, Doña Ana and Robledo mountains and Picacho Peak.
The designations would have allowed grazing and some motorized- and mechanical-vehicle access. Grazing is allowed in wilderness areas. So is some motorized- and mechanical-vehicle access under a handful of exceptions to the U.S. wilderness road-less rule.
Still, proponents of the wilderness proposal said Pearce’s legislation would have downgraded the status of the land because the wilderness status comes with federal funding to ensure compliance with the law. Pearce’s new designations might not have come with such funding, they said.
Pearce’s bill, which the House never voted on, would have also required the sale of federal land in the county that the BLM identifies as available for disposal. That’s currently tens of thousands of acres.
Still concerned about wilderness
NMPolitics.net recently asked Pearce if he saw the potential for compromise between what he proposed in 2008 and what Bingaman and Udall proposed last year. In response, the congressman said he wants to preserve the land, but expressed deep concerns about wilderness.
“One of my concerns with creating a wilderness designation in Doña Ana County as it has been proposed is that wheeled vehicles are not allowed in designated wilderness areas,” Pearce said. “This would prevent Border Patrol agents from conducting the necessary operations to secure the border.”
Law enforcement agents are allowed to enter wilderness areas with motorized or mechanized vehicles if they are in pursuit of a suspect, but not for routine patrols.
To try to further address those concerns, Bingaman and Udall revised their proposal last year to free up a larger area along the border for law enforcement access. Apparently, that wasn’t enough to satisfy Pearce.
Pearce also said wilderness “limits the flexibility of use for firefighting and other emergency services, creating a safety concern for residents of the county.”
Still, Pearce didn’t say he won’t support any wilderness in Doña Ana County. Instead, he said, “no private land should be designated as wilderness,” and that there should be “extensive dialogue with state and local governments as to which pieces of their land they are willing to designate.”
“We must have all parties on board before we take such a step,” he said.
Most local governments support wilderness
As to Pearce’s point about getting government agencies on board, the City of Las Cruces, Town of Mesilla, City of Sunland Park and Doña Ana County have all passed resolutions supporting a wilderness plan similar to that proposed by Bingaman and Udall.
So did the Village of Hatch, but it later withdrew its support. The new Town of Anthony has not taken a position on the issue.
You can view a full list of groups that support the wilderness plan here. A list of those who support legislation more like what Pearce proposed in 2008 can be found here.
A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that Pearce’s 2008 bill would have required the sale of tens of thousands of acres of land that’s current in wilderness study areas.
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Just Tex:
So you counter a long (admittedly probably overly-long) list of citations, links, a documented statements with a single quote about an economic philosophy that isn’t the least bit relevant to the discussion? Seriously, get a dictionary, then try to raise the laughable spectre of communism again while maintaining a straight face.
In answer to the multiple post tirade:
“The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.” Karl Marx
In answer to the anti-wilderness tirade – Teddy Roosevelt said it best:
“Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the ‘the game belongs to the people.’ So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.”
Wholly 42 % of New Mexico is currently controlled by the will and the whim of the fickle federal government, as it stands today. And by allowing the federal government to designate this area as “Wilderness”, we’d simply be strengthening the grip the federal government already has on our state!
And although I wasn’t entirely pleased with Mr. Pearce’s 2008 proposal for this area, I had convinced myself that it could have possibly become an acceptable middle ground, just to end the fighting.
Not unexpectedly, the short sighted land grabbers who would like nothing more than to lock our land away from every practical use for us and all future generations too, (even long after they’ll be long dead and gone fairly soon, in relative terms) won’t agree right now, to any compromise whatsoever, that would immediately offer substantial protection to this land. Instead, the land grabbers want to continue to fight tooth and nail demanding that the land be assigned as no use “Wilderness”, absolutely forever.
Among the numerous negative things that these short sighted uncompromising land grabbers won’t ever fully acknowledge or attempt to account for, is that designating any land as “Wilderness” keeps all but the most healthy and physically fit from ever having an opportunity to enjoy any use of the land. Includes merely being able to be present, to observe the beauty of the land.
Consider this. Connecticut, Maryland Delaware and Rhode Island have no federally designated “Wilderness” areas within their state boundaries.
The states of New York, Indiana and Ohio have only 1 federally designated “Wilderness” area each, within their state boundaries.
The states of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, South Dakota, Nebraska, Hawaii, and Kentucky only have 2 federally designated “Wilderness” areas each, within their state boundaries.
The states of Alabama, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Oklahoma only have 3 federally designated “Wilderness” area each, within their state boundaries as well.
And, it should be carefully noted, that of the states listed above that do have federally designated “Wilderness” areas within their state boundaries, by comparison, each of those federally designated “Wilderness” areas are minuscule in size, when compared to each of the 25 federally designated “Wilderness” areas already within the boundaries of New Mexico.
With all that so I must ask, will New Mexico ever become a sovereign state? And fairly be allowed to become an equal partner and Constitutional realm, within these United States??
Or are we, and our children, and their children and theirs, be destined to just step and fetch for those that do not live here, or have any intention to have roots here, just because they have always been able to bully us into submission at their whims and will?!
I say it’s far past time to stop all the federal mandates, and stop all the federal madness too, that is stealing our rights and our sovereignty, bit by bit and day by day, away. Into the pit of the always hungry gobbling whirlwind of the federal government system.
And I say, the area in question and all future similar land areas should become New Mexico State Parks. Run for and by New Mexicans! Rather than allowing the federal government to gain an even firmer grip on the debilitating stranglehold it already has each and every one of of us held in. With it’s enormous and growing debt. It’s inconsiderate demanding stances. And the endless rules it’s already been allowed to impose on us all. That will surely be passed onto every generation to come, unless we put a stop to all of it right now!
I am so irritated by the shenanigans of Congressman Pearce. He was just unanimously elected chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus. These radical conservative Republicans are against all wilderness. Just read their website.
http://robbishop.house.gov/WesternCaucus/
One of their principles is to “protect and promote multiple use access to federal lands” The group is against any more wilderness since it violates private property rights. The group also wants legislation to “authorize Western States to select five percent of BLM and Forest Service lands within their state to be sold or leased, with the generated revenue dedicated solely to public education.” The group also wants to open wilderness study areas ” to other uses, including energy development.”
Here is the record on the New Hampshire Wilderness Act. I think the Pearce staff should do their homework:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-5059
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-5059&tab=related
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-5062
Finally Congressman Pearce’s support of the New Hampshire Wilderness Act was partisan politics all the way. Originally the act was part of the New England Wilderness Act designating wilderness in Vermont and New Hampshire. It was a bipartisan bill passed by the Senate. The Vermont bill was sponsored by a Democratic Representative running for the Senate. The New Hampshire Act was sponsored by a Republican Representative and supposedly supported by Mr. Pearce . Congressman Pearce separated the bills for a vote in a partisan maneuver. Both bills were put on a Suspension Calendar killing both bills. Congressman Pearce was chairman of the Committee that killed these bills. This is gross politics. He was not interested in any wilderness designation. Read the Congressional record below for the real story:
http://books.google.com/books?id=dBOF8Q685mAC&pg=PA386&lpg=PA386&dq=Congressman+Pearce+supports+New+Hampshire+wilderness&source=bl&ots=-jPCR_5bFX&sig=NBIn8VW0TLIgF8B8CVYO_jnpZzM&hl=en&ei=GsxSTZu9OYr0tgPJhOHaBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
In 2008 the Republicans for Environmental Protection gave Congressman Pearce a lousy rating of 4 when it came to environment and wilderness issues. I am actually ashamed to admit that he is my Congressman.
http://www.rep.org/2008_scorecard.pdf
http://www.rep.org/index.html
Teddy Roosevelt is probably rolling in his grave. President Ronald Reagan supported wilderness. As he said it is just “common sense. I just have to believe that with love for our natural heritage and a firm resolve to preserve it with wisdom and care, we can and will give the American land to our children, not impaired, but enhanced”.
As Ben Franklin said: “Half a truth is often a great lie”. Border security and wilderness has been a bogus issue. Congressman Pearce and his anti-wilderness supporters are continuing to spread half truths about the wilderness issue. “Close collaboration between the Border Patrol and the Department of the Interior on many stretches of the border, including wilderness areas, has improved border security while sustaining land protections and community livelihoods,” said Lynn Scarlett, former Interior deputy secretary under President George W. Bush, who helped craft a 2007 memorandum of understanding between the agencies that many credit with improving relations between the Border Patrol and federal land managers.
Read this recent study to confirm this matter!
http://kirk_emerson.home.mindspring.com/Interagency_Border_Cooperation.pdf
Respectfully – Congressman Pearce does not know what he is talking about – pure and simple.
Congressman Pearce wants to ensure that the Organ Mountains will NEVER be a wilderness area. Look at Congressman Pearce’s decrepit record.
Mr. Pearce has left a incredible sorry record in Congress with his anti-Wilderness stands. He pushed legislation in 2006 that would pave the way for increased use of Jet Skis, snowmobiles and off-road vehicles in National parks and wilderness areas. Commercial activities like mining and construction of cell phone towers, which would have been easier under his sponsored legislation.
Also in 2006 he sponsored legislation (H. R. 6298) for an unprecedented public lands giveaway. It sought to put thousands of new yet unnecessary, roads in pristine, undeveloped areas so that they would be disqualified for future protection under the Wilderness Act. The bill would waive environmental review and public input.
Congressman Steve Pearce is spreading inaccuracies about the proposed Wilderness Bill to prevent the preservation of our Organ Mountains. Enough is enough!
When you see how a Wilderness Area like San Pedro Parks is impacted by allowed activities like grazing the romanticism of those who think only full blown designation of certain areas in Dona Ana County as “Wilderness” will adequately preserve them from “harm” by humans comes across as wishful idealism.
For some, nothing Pearce could do on this will make any difference in how they view him. The only surprise would be not another reminder of that.
Recent temperatures indicate that hell has frozen over.
Yeah, right, and then defund the necessary maintenance and security operations so these wilderness areas turn into giant trash containers and illegal immigrant pipelines.