Heinrich to make Bandelier and White Sands monuments into national parks; emphasizes outdoor recreation

Here are excerpts from Senator Heinrich's address to the NM legislature:

...But we need to do more to promote our rich landscapes and create new outdoor recreation opportunities--both to attract visitors and to improve our own quality of life. That's why I have championed new public access and recreation opportunities on our public lands.  Despite obstacles from an administration that has shown hostility to conservation and our public lands, we have achieved some major victories in the last couple years. We finalized a plan--many years in the making--to build a new mountain biking trail system in the Zuni Mountains outside Gallup and Grants. We opened up public access and added thousands of acres to the Sabinoso Wilderness Area outside of Las Vegas. And we fought back against threats to shrink protections for our two newest national monuments-Rio Grande del Norte and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks. And we're just getting started. This year, I will be introducing legislation to make Bandelier National Monument a full-fledged national park. I will do the same for White Sands in southern New Mexico. Both of these iconic places are rich with the history, culture, and scenic beauty that make our state so unique. And they are each more than deserving of the international recognition, the higher visitation numbers, and the millions of dollars of new spending that can come along with national park status.  I look forward to working with the gateway communities around both of these treasured places to create two new national parks in our state.

...New Mexico is already a national leader in energy production. But decisions we make today could make us the leader in the next century and beyond. The energy landscape is shifting and we have the greatest opportunity in a generation to create new jobs and attract private capital to our state. Although our oil and gas industry in the Permian Basin is booming right now, we must also set ambitious and achievable goals to make New Mexico the best place in America to produce clean energy. We have some of the richest wind and solar resources on Earth. We are home to some of the world's leading energy researchers. If we make the right decisions today, there is no reason we can't become a world leader in clean energy. That will mean thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars of private investment in our economy. We're already seeing what this can mean in the new billion-dollar wind farms going up in eastern New Mexico.

We can look forward to more bike paths, wilderness, national parks and wind farms. Get yourself a bike, some hiking boots for wilderness (you can't ride a bike in a wilderness area) and get ready for the most anti-multiple use federal land agency to gain additional control over NM. 

New Mexico already has the national parks and monuments depicted above. Plus we have the following wilderness areas:

And yet we are such a poor state. We were ranked 48th overall in the U.S. News & World Report 2018 Best States study. We are 47th in per capita income. Heinrich's answer is we just need more parks, monuments and wilderness areas. Our problem is we just don't have enough of these federal designations.

Me? I'm still trying to figure out how all those private lands states beat us out in so many categories.