Conservationists Ask Lawmakers to Scrutinize New Mexico Game Commission Actions

New Mexico conservation groups are calling on state lawmakers to look into recent actions taken by the New Mexico Game Commission. In a letter [attached] sent to members of the Senate Rules Committee, the Sierra Club and Southwest Environmental Center said they were concerned that actions taken by the Game Commission over the past year “do not appear to be fiscally sound, responsive to the public, based on good science or in the best interests of New Mexicans.” The groups specifically cited the Commission’s rejection of a plan to conserve the state’s most vulnerable species, its dismissal of public concerns on controversial topics such as cougar trapping, its failure to base decisions on good science, and its jeopardizing of a longstanding partnership with Ted Turner in which the media mogul has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in conservation of New Mexico’s wildlife. “By rejecting the revised 10-year State Wildlife Action Plan, the Game Commission not only threw away $800,000 in annual federal funding for conservation of New Mexico’s most vulnerable species, it made it more likely that some of those species will end up on the federal endangered species list,” said Kevin Bixby, executive director of the Southwest Environmental Center...more