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Today, June 5, is World Environment Day, one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.

The World Environment Day theme selected for 2006 is Deserts and Desertification and the slogan is Don’t Desert Drylands! The slogan emphasizes the importance of protecting drylands, which cover more than 40% of the planet’s surface. This ecosystem is home to one-third of the world’s people who are more vulnerable members of society.The main international celebrations of the World Environment Day 2006 will be held in Algeria. UNEP is honoured that the City of Algiers will be hosting this United Nations day.

The day’s agenda is to give a human face to environmental issues; empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development; promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues; and advocate partnership which will ensure all nations and peoples enjoy a safer and more prosperous future. World Environment Day is a people’s event with colourful activities such as street rallies, bicycle parades, green concerts, essays and poster competitions in schools, tree planting, as well as recycling and clean-up campaigns.

World Environment Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Another resolution, adopted by the General Assembly the same day, led to the creation of UNEP.

How can you celebrate World Environment Day?

World Environment Day can be celebrated in many ways, including street rallies, bicycles parades, green concerts, essay and poster competitions in schools, tree planting, recycling efforts, clean-up campaigns and much more. In many countries, this annual event is used to enhance political attention and action.

Heads of State, Prime Ministers and Ministers of Environment deliver statements and commit themselves to care for the Earth. More serious pledges are made which lead to the establishment of permanent governmental structures dealing with environmental management and economic planning. This observance also provides an opportunity to sign or ratify international environmental conventions.

On this World Environment Day, let us examine the state of our environment. Let us consider carefully the actions which each of us must take, and then address ourselves to our common task of preserving all life on earth in a mood of sober resolution and quiet confidence.

[via www.nmwild.org]

Remembered Earth | PBS

REMEMBERED EARTH is a captivating journey through a storied landscape of the American West, featuring spectacular landscape photography and a thoughtful interpretation of land ethics by Pulitzer Prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday. Noted Indian actor Irene Bedard (Smoke Signals, Pocahontas) narrates the film. The haunting original orchestral score was written by Academy Award-winner Todd Boekelheide.

REMEMBERED EARTH explores the relationships between people and the land, “exemplified by the ingenious use of clips of Hollywood Westerns that helped mythologize not just the Southwest but America itself.” (Washington Post)

The stark landscape of the desert southwest, at once beckoning and alienating, has left many of us at a loss for words. REMEMBERED EARTH provides an impression of this gorgeous corner of Northwestern New Mexico through stunning imagery and poetic descriptions.

From the transcript:

N. SCOTT MOMADAY (VOICEOVER)
Once in our lives we ought to concentrate our minds upon the Remembered Earth. We ought to give ourselves up to a particular landscape in our experience, to look at it from as many angles as we can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. We ought to imagine that we touch it with our hands at every season and listen to the sounds that are made upon it. We ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. We ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk. …

MOMADAY (V.O.)
It is here that I can concentrate my mind upon the Remembered Earth. It is here that I am most conscious of being, here that wonder comes upon my blood, here I want to live forever; and it is no matter that I must die.

[mjh: This is a beautiful show with countless familar sights of northeast New Mexico.]

Sale of oil leases worries Utahans Associated Press
In two days this month, the BLM sold oil and gas leases on more than a half-million acres in Utah and Colorado. It was the largest quarterly lease sale in Utah’s history.

Those leases could lead to drilling rigs showing up on the doorstep of Capitol Reef National Park, near popular rafting areas on the Green and San Juan rivers and adjacent to world-renowned Indian ruins and rock art in Nine Mile Canyon, all areas in rural Utah. …

The lease sales in Utah on May 16 covered 361,692 acres; those in Colorado on May 11 covered 154,903 acres. Together, they netted almost $61 million for the government. The dozens of energy companies buying the leases must still apply for drilling permits before production can begin. …

In Colorado, nine of the 148 parcels that were leased in May – about 14,000 acres out of nearly 155,000 acres – include areas where state and federal wildlife agencies are trying to reintroduce the black-footed ferret.

National Parks To Stay Ad-Free — Associated Press

The national parks will not become a new frontier for American advertisers anytime soon.

Park Service Director Fran P. Mainella upheld tight restrictions on advertising and marketing in the parks this month when she issued new guidelines that did not include changes that would have permitted some employees to solicit donations and give donors the right to slap their names on rooms, benches and bricks.

Another change proposed last year, and recently rejected by Mainella, would have allowed the Park Service to accept alcohol and tobacco company donations for the first time.

“Some level of donor recognition, if tastefully done, is a good idea,” Deputy Park Service Director Stephen P. Martin said. “Too much of it, and it can go downhill really fast.”

About $100 million in donations and $150 million in entrance fees augment the taxpayer funds that support the national park system, which has an annual budget of about $2.2 billion.

ABQjournal: Wilderness: Economic, Environmental Sense By Dolores Connor, Las Cruces city councilor, mayor pro-tem

The Las Cruces City Council voted unanimously for wilderness designation of eight existing wilderness study areas in our county, as well as Broad Canyon and the East Potrillo Mountains. The Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners and the municipalities of Sunland Park, Hatch and Mesilla all passed similar resolutions. Clearly, there is broad and growing support for protection of these spectacular areas, as well as a significant National Conservation Area (NCA) in and around the Organ Mountains. A recent poll of Doña Ana County voters found that fully 55 percent of respondents favored this conservation and wilderness plan for our community.

5,000 acres in Catron County protected
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 16, 2006

RESERVE, N.M. (AP) – Some 5,000 acres of the Horse Springs Ranch in Catron County and a vital wildlife corridor that it provides are being protected under a new conservation easement.

The easement was arranged by The Trust for Public Land and will protect property at the heart of the 16,000-acre ranch in southern New Mexico, the trust and its partners announced Tuesday.

The easement will let rancher Jay Platt and his family work the land, but will protect it from development in the future.

The easement was funded with $2.7 million from the state-administered, federally funded Forest Legacy Program and a $900,000 grant from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish.

“Some of the things that made this ranch desirable to the Forest Legacy Program the wildlife, the water, the forests are the things that make me love ranching it, and make me proud to one day pass it on to my sons,” Platt said.

The legacy program’s administrator, Bob Sivinski, said the ranch was chosen because it includes crucial water and a vital wildlife corridor between the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest to the west and the Bureau of Land Management’s Horse Mountain area of critical environmental concern to the east.

The trust’s state director, Jenny Parks, said the transaction “preserves a way of life, it promotes smart growth and it provides a vital wildlife corridor between two federally owned land tracts.”

The easement project was supported by government and nonprofit groups, including the forest on the Arizona-New Mexico border, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the state Land Office, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.

The Trust for Public Land, founded in 1972, is a national nonprofit conservation group dedicated to conserving land for parks, gardens and other natural places. Its Working Lands Initiative protects farms, ranches and forests that support rural ways of life.

___

On The Net:

The Trust for Public Land: http://www.tpl.org

The Center for Desert Archaeology – Southwest Preservation Archaeology

The Center for Desert Archaeology, a private nonprofit organization, promotes the stewardship of southwestern archaeology and historic resources in the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest through active research, preservation, and public education.

Otero Mesa: Future of Endangered Aplomado Falcon Habitat Under Consideration

Do you care about preserving the grand landscape and wildlife habitat that characterizes Otero Mesa? If so, please attend the US District Courts evidentiary hearing on May 17th in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Perhaps you’ve never attended a hearing of this nature before. Don’t worry. You will not be asked to speak, but rather, simply show your support by attending.

Details

What: U.S District Court for the District of New Mexico evidentiary hearing on the Bureau of Land Management public land known as Otero Mesa.

When: Wednesday, May 17, 2006, 9:00 a.m.

Where: The Honorable Bruce D. Black’s Chambers
United States District Court
333 Lomas Blvd. N.W., Ste 640
Albuquerque, NM 87102

What’s At Stake

Otero Mesa is home to the Chihuahuan Desert, which extends southward from New Mexico, Texas and Arizona into the Mexican Plateau and covers an area of 250,000 square miles and is considered to be among the most biologically rich and diverse desert eco-regions in the world. This vast and complex grassland is home to many species of wildlife, native plants and independent cattle ranches that have been in operation for generations. Otero Mesa is also a recreationist’s dream. Hiking, camping, birding, hunting, rock climbing, photography and horseback riding are a few popular activities.

Otero Mesa is not currently designated as Wilderness. However, the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance has surveyed the Greater Otero Mesa Area and identified over 520,000 acres suitable for Wilderness designation. But if it is turned into a full-scale oil and gas field, Wilderness and much of the wildlife that live there will be lost forever.

ABQjournal: Study: Wilderness Protection Good for Economy By Tania Soussan, Of the Journal

DOWN TO EARTH: Permanently protecting the Organ Mountains and other special lands in Doña Ana County is likely to give the region an economic boost, according to a new study from the Tucson-based nonprofit Sonoran Institute.
Environmentalists, local elected leaders and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., have been touting the benefits of designating thousands of acres of wilderness.
The institute’s study found Western counties that are similar to Doña Ana and have wilderness outperform those that don’t in employment and wages.
In addition, entrepreneurs who create high-wage jobs tend to pick areas with a high quality of life, including protected lands and outdoor recreation, the study says.

‘Ruins’ brings Puebloan culture to life By Dave Gagon, Deseret Morning News

“PUEBLOAN RUINS OF THE SOUTHWEST,” Arthur H. Rohn and William M. Ferguson, University of New Mexico Press, $34.95, softcover, 320 pages with drawings, maps and 327 color photographs

The most arresting aspect of “Puebloan Ruins of the Southwest,” by the University of New Mexico Press, is the drawings, charts, maps and photographs employed by anthropologists Arthur H. Rohn and William M. Ferguson in their quest to paint a complete picture of the Puebloan culture.

Rohn and Ferguson cover southwestern Colorado’s Northern San Juan River region in which the popular tourist destination Mesa Verde lies, as well as the Kayenta Region, which is home to Canyon de Chelly and the Grand Canyon ruins. The civilization from the Pithouse period to modern-day villages is laid out before the reader in an easy to read textbook fashion.

Chapter one covers the ancient peoples, the chronology of their building, physical appearance and disease, food and clothing, water management, and much, much more. The remaining chapters consider the various regions and their remaining ruins.

The book offers a section on Chaco Canyon culture, including the architecture and ceremonial significance of Pueblo Bonito. The book also covers the Zuni and Hopi ancestry of the Little Colorado River region and the ruins in the Northern Rio Grande Valley.

While other books have compiled similar material, it is Rohn and Ferguson’s mix of historical commentary and myriad added graphic elements that make it unique.

One of the more fascinating subjects in the book is the kiva. Every Puebloan site has them, and the illustrations, photographs (many of them aerial) and explanations help readers’ picture and understand the importance of these ceremonial structures.

The sections on government and society, spiritual concepts and rituals, and celestial observations are enlightening while not being heavy-handed or too scholarly, which is, again, a tribute to Rohn and Ferguson.

“Puebloan Ruins of the Southwest” is the type of book that families will want to leave sitting on the coffee table; even if perused for only a minute, interesting information will be quickly garnered.

ABQJOURNAL: 5 Wolves To Be Released in Gila Area

Five endangered Mexican gray wolves will be released in the Gila National Forest over the next few months.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began releasing wolves into the wild on the Arizona-New Mexico border in 1998 to re-establish the species in part of its historic range.

A male and a pregnant female are to be turned loose on the eastern side of the Blue Range Recovery Area in late April, just prior to the female giving birth. Program officials said that would increase the likelihood that the pair will remain in the area.

The site was chosen because the owners of the closest private land and the grazing permit-holder said the release was acceptable. The area also is a considerable distance from the San Carlos Reservation. The wolves were removed from the reservation last year over boundary issues.

Two females and one male will be released in June in one of four approved sites in the Gila Wilderness. The exact site will be determined after other wolf packs in the area have established dens, so the distance between the existing packs and the new wolves can be maximized.

The female wolves were captured in the Gila National Forest in 2005 as pups when their pack was removed from the area because of livestock killings. The male was captured outside its boundary in 2005.

The reintroduction program allows Mexican gray wolves to be released in New Mexico only if they previously were released in Arizona and have experience in the wild. …

As of the end of 2005, there were an estimated 35 to 49 wolves in Arizona and New Mexico.

From the Fort Lewis College Center of Southwest Studies (in Durango, CO):

Links to other museums in the Four Corners states

University of New Mexico
Maxwell Museum of Anthropology

Wednesday, March 22, 6:30 pm free

Lecture: “Pottery Mound: A Pueblo IV Village in Central New Mexico.” David Phillips, Curator of Archeology at the Maxwell Museum will describe the Pottery Mound site and current attempts to build on original research. For many years the late Frank Hibben worked at Pottery Mound, uncovering a late prehistoric village with a stunning variety of kiva murals.

Part of the People of the Southwest Lecture Series.

[mjh: Thanks to JimB.]