Thursday, November 07, 2013

Conservation Groups Urge BLM To Increase Wildlife & Wild Places Protections In Southern New Mexico

A coalition of conservation, hunting, and outdoor recreation groups is calling on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to beef up protections for wildlife and wild places in a proposed 20-year management plan for 2.82 million acres of federal public lands in Dona Ana, Otero and Sierra Counties. The groups submitted their comments (attached) in response to the BLM’s Tri-County Draft Resource Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement. The groups believe that management actions proposed by BLM in the plan are not up to the task of protecting the area’s important resources against threats such as off-road vehicle use, oil and gas drilling, and climate change. In addition, they say that the BLM’s plan is handicapped by a lack of basic information about important resources under its control needed to make sound long-term management decisions. The groups pointed to Otero Mesa as an example of where the BLM’s plan falls short. In 2008, many of the same groups urged BLM to establish a 583,837 acre Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) to protect the unique wildlife, grasslands and wilderness of the greater Otero Mesa ecosystem. To protect those values, they recommended that the entire area be put off-limits to incompatible activities such as off-road vehicles, oil and gas development and mining. Instead, BLM proposed to set aside less than 200,000 acres as a new ACEC, with few new protections. The groups also criticized BLM’s handling of lands with wilderness characteristics in the plan. By law, the agency is required to maintain an inventory of blocks of land under its management that are fairly large, don’t have permanent roads, and hence might qualify for protection as wilderness. These areas are particularly important as wildlife habitat and for the opportunities they provide for outdoor recreation. NMWA identified more than 365,000 such acres in the three counties and provided that information to BLM. In its Tri-County plan, however, BLM claimed to find only 11,500 acres of land with wilderness characteristics in the entire planning area, and recommended that less than 1000 acres be managed to protect those qualities. Conservationists later learned that BLM lacks an up-to-date inventory of wilderness quality lands in the three counties. In addition to the comments submitted by the groups, more than 1200 New Mexicans submitted individual comments asking the BLM to strengthen the Resource Management Plan to protect Otero Mesa and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks...more

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