Over 2 decades, BLM’s stance evolves on 2 proposed NM wilderness areas

By J.R. Logan

TAOS — In 2013, Jamie Connell, acting deputy director for the federal Bureau of Land Management, testified before a House committee on a bill to establish the Rio San Antonio and Cerro del Yuta wilderness areas in Northern New Mexico. Connell described the dramatic landscapes and “outstanding opportunities for solitude” in the two areas, which lie within a freshly designated national monument. “The department supports the designation of these two new wilderness areas,” Connell told the committee. But that’s not what the agency was saying two decades years earlier. In 1991, during the first Bush administration, the BLM seemed underwhelmed by San Antonio, and it concluded that some of the area’s wilderness characteristics were “less than outstanding.” It questioned whether the area merited inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System. In other words: San Antonio was a little ho-hum. But today, that little piece of high desert is getting another look. Rio San Antonio is half of the Cerros del Norte Conservation Act — a bill sponsored by New Mexico’s senators, Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall. The legislation would create the 8,000-acre Rio San Antonio Wilderness and the 13,420-acre Cerro del Yuta (Ute Mountain) Wilderness at the far northern ends of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. The bill made it out of committee and goes before the full Senate. While the BLM’s about-face on whether the Rio San Antonio is worthy of protection may seem like a contradiction, the explanation is a little more complex. While the stark landscape at San Antonio hasn’t changed much in thousands of years, the political landscape that could grant it wilderness status is constantly shifting. And so is the interpretation of what “wilderness” is and why it’s important. “Everything about wilderness designation is politics, and frankly, it always has been,” said Craig Allin, a professor of political science at Cornell College in Iowa and author of The Politics of Wilderness Preservation...more

Let's see, in 1991 a New Mexican, Manuel Lujan, was the Secretary of Interior (1989-1993). But what would the 20-year Congressman (1969-1989) know about NM lands?  Apparently not as much as the great gringos Udall & Heinrich.