Welcome to NMHPA, New Mexico Heritage Preservation Alliance

2004 Most Endangered Places in New Mexico

* Aztec Ruins National Monument
San Juan County
* Mesa Prieta
Rio Arriba County
* Hoyle House
Lincoln County
* Lake Valley Ghost Town
Sierra County
* St. John’s Methodist Episcopal Church
Colfax County
* Motel Blvd, Lordsburg
Hidalgo County
* Marked and Unmarked Cemeteries
Statewide
* Traditional Village of Agua Fria
Santa Fe County
* Valle Vidal Unit
Colfax County
* Folsom Hotel
Union County

October Lunar Eclipse

On Wednesday night, Oct. 27th, North Americans can see a total eclipse of the moon.

According to folklore, October’s full moon is called the “Hunter’s Moon” or sometimes the “Blood Moon.” It gets its name from hunters who tracked and killed their prey by autumn moonlight, stockpiling food for the winter ahead. You can picture them: silent figures padding through the forest, the moon overhead, pale as a corpse, its cold light betraying the creatures of the wood.

see captionThe Blood Moon rises this year on Wednesday, Oct. 27th. At first it will seem pale and cold, as usual. And then … blood red.

It’s a lunar eclipse. Beginning at 9:14 p.m. EDT (6:14 p.m. PDT), the moon will glide through Earth’s shadow for more than three hours. Observers on every continent except Australia can see the event: The pale-white moon will turn pumpkin orange as it plunges into shadow, becoming eerie red during totality.

Remarks by Ed Zahniser at the Wilderness Week Rally 2004

What a wild bunch you are. What a crucial role you play for our day, our time, in this our wild and deep tradition.

Let’s have a show of hands: how many of you are here today because you went to the jobs fair at your high school, college, or university, and a nattily dressed recruiter promised you big bucks and great benefits as an entry level wilderness advocate? . . . What, no hands raised? . . . This is a self-selecting calling. …

You and I here today enjoy living contacts clear back to our Transcendentalist roots.

Be consistent. Be persistent. Be actively patient. … This day is as ripe for realization as any day the world has ever known. I adjure you, sons and daughters of our lineage. This is your day. Go forth. Do good. Tell the stories. And keep it wild.

Moose wander from Colorado to Heron Lake

Moose had wandered down into Colorado from Wyoming herds for years, according to the agency’s Web site. In 1978, Colorado’s Division of Wildlife decided to introduce the moose formally, transplanting 12 Utah moose to an area near Walden, Colo. The next year, a dozen more moose from Wyoming were put in the Laramie River Valley.

The moose did so well the state began offering limited hunts and Walden was dubbed the moose-watching capital of Colorado.

In the early 1990s, about 100 moose were released in the upper Rio Grande region of southern Colorado near Creede, according to a history of the moose program on the wildlife division Web site.

Colorado’s moose are called the Shiras moose or Alces alces shirasi, and are the state’s largest big-game animal. It is one of three sub-species of North American moose. Adults weigh as much as a medium-size horse, between 800 to 1,200 pounds. A mature bull measures up to 6 feet at the shoulder. The moose rut or breeding season runs mid-September through October.

The last wayward moose to appear in New Mexico was in the mid-1990s near Taos, according to Mower. It was captured and taken north.

BLM – Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument – Visitor Information

American Southwest — A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary

List of Sites–American Southwest–A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary

TheStar.com – Utah canyon held ancient secrets

The Fremont people, named for a Spanish explorer who never met them, remain a poorly understood collection of scattered archaic groups, but a tenuous link to North America’s earliest inhabitants, believed to have arrived via the Bering Strait more than 10,000 years ago.

Their style of basket weaving, animal-claw moccasins and farming and hunting skills distinguish the Fremont from other early peoples.

Fremont tools and pottery differed from the farming-dependent Anasazi south of the Colorado River, even as they shared a similar fate.

New Mexico | Public Lands Information Center | Recreation Search

# Campgrounds
# Parks & monuments
# Historical-Cultural sites
# Lakes & reservoirs
# Wilderness areas
# Wildlife refuges & fish hatcheries
# National & historic trails
# Scenic Drives

ABQjournal: N.M. Bestows a Wealth of Locales Ripe for Exploration By Tania Soussan, Of the Journal

This month, the nation is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, which was approved Sept. 3, 1964. But wilderness in New Mexico goes back much farther, to 1924 when Aldo Leopold pushed the U.S. Forest Service to establish the Gila Wilderness, the first in the country.

Leopold, who started seeing roads and vehicles in the forest in the 1920s, initially thought wilderness should be protected so people would have a place for primitive travel. By the 1930s, however, he saw a need to protect the land for ecological reasons as well.

Both ideas are reflected in the Wilderness Act. …

When it comes to wilderness, New Mexico is home to many firsts— not just the first wilderness in the nation, but also the first wild and scenic river (the Rio Grande) and the first Bureau of Land Management wilderness areas (the Bisti and De-na-zin).

“The irony to it is we are second to last in the West with designated wilderness,” said [Stephen Capra, executive director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance]. “We are a long way behind the curve.”

Two percent of New Mexico’s public lands are wilderness compared with 8 percent in Arizona and 14 percent in California, he said.

ABQjournal: U.S. Plans to Limit Off-Highway Vehicles in National Forests By Tania Soussan, Journal Staff Writer

New Mexico’s five national forests have almost 22,500 miles of roads and more than 2,200 miles of trails, according to the Forest Service.

Sixteen law enforcement officers are responsible for patrolling the roughly 9.4 million acres of national forest in the state.
—
map of wilderness areas in New Mexico

Saturday, September 25th

Want to help protect wild places across New Mexico? Want to better understand how the BLM or Forest Service works? How about the history of wilderness in New Mexico and across the West. These and many more topics surrounding the protection of wildlands will be covered in a fun and informative workshop, the forth held by the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance since our inception in 1997. It will be held on Saturday September 25th, from 9:00a.m. to 4 p.m. at the historic La Posada Hotel in downtown Albuquerque.

Registration is filling up quickly, so if you plan on attending sign up soon! To Register, call 505-843-8696

New Mexico Wilderness Alliance – Home

The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance is a grassroots environmental organization dedicated to the protection, restoration, and continued enjoyment of New Mexico’s wildlands and Wilderness Areas. The primary goal of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance is to ensure the protection and restoration of all remaining wild lands in New Mexico through administrative designations, federal Wilderness designation, and on-going advocacy.

mjh’s Blog: Happy Birthday, Wilderness Act!

I have started a small collection of photos of my wilderness encounters. mjh

The Wilderness of My Soul — Photos

Wilderness.net

Wilderness.net is an Internet-based tool connecting the natural resource workforce, scientists, educators, and the public to their wilderness heritage through ready access to wilderness information. Through Wilderness.net and its partners, you’ll find access to general information about wilderness, stewardship and educational resources, scientific information, agency policies, relevant legislation, communication tools to connect you with others in the wilderness community and more.

Column:Animal trapping brutal,legal in New Mexico by Richard “Bugman” Fagerlund and Holly Kern, Daily Lobo guest columnists

Eight states – Washington, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Arizona, New Jersey, Florida and Rhode Island – have banned the use of leghold traps, but New Mexico, of course, is not one of them. It is unconscionable that less than 1 percent of the population traps and approximately 75 percent of the population opposes trapping. Yet this barbarism is still legal.

The only justification for trapping animals is to skin them, process the skin and then make them into coats and stoles for narcissistic little twits to wear when they go out on Saturday night. All of the fur coats in the world are not worth the bone-wrenching screams of a single animal caught in these mindless traps.

Trappers can kill and skin a coyote and sell the hide for $2. What do they do with coyote skins? Have you ever seen anyone walking around wearing a coyote coat? They can sell skunk and raccoon skins for about $5, but they will get close to $30 for a bobcat kitten. Who on earth would want to wear the skins of kittens? …

Trappers like to lump themselves in with hunters because they know without hunters, they cannot win. But hunting is fundamentally different from trapping. The hunter must be present throughout the stalk.

The trapper can be home drinking beer while the trap is destroying the heart and soul of a helpless animal.

In New Mexico, it is illegal to shoot an animal at night – even a coyote. Traps do their job all night long. It is illegal for hunters to sell the meat of the animals they kill. The purpose of trapping is the sale of the skin.

It is illegal for hunters to use a scent attractant to get an unfair advantage over their prey. Trappers use these to attract the animals to their traps.

Hunters have bag limits. Trappers can kill and kill and kill without a limit of any kind on any species. Hunters, if they are ethical, will identify their target and take careful aim to insure a quick and clean death. Trapping is indiscriminate and anything but quick and clean. A helpless animal in excruciating pain will get his skull bashed in, usually with a pipe or shovel. Then the trapper stands on his chest to be sure he is dead.

The American Southwest – New Mexico National Parks and Tourist Guide

This compact page offers lots of links to articles, photos, maps of New Mexico (plus Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, and Utah). mjh

American West Travelogue

This is a very interesting site with a much broader reach than the Four Corners. Lots of nice photos and other info. Thanks to PikaB. mjh