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.

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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.