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.
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map of wilderness areas in New Mexico