BLM: Stop auctioning off Chaco to oil and gas
Fracking in Greater Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico is on the increase and causing more health and public safety problems than ever. Please email the Bureau of Land Management Farmington Office at BLM_NM_FFO_Comments@blm.gov to protect these sacred and precious public lands. The BLM continues to promote oil and gas development in the Greater Chaco area, approving 365 horizontal fracking wells under an outdated Resource Management Plan for the region. But the agency is now gathering information for an overdue amendment ...
Get ready for Sierra Club and Beers this Friday, November 41! Our featured speaker is Jennifer Owen-White, who manages the Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge. Valle de Oro is the state’s newest wildlife refuge, now in its fourth year of development. It is also the first urban wildlife refuge in the Southwest and a jewel of the Albuquerque metro area. Jennifer will provide updates on how the refuge is developing and its layout and design, as well as current activities at ...
Tom Petencin, desert explorer: 1952-2016
By Carol Chamberland Chicago native Tom Petencin already loved the desert when he moved to Albuquerque circa 1992. He joined the New Mexico Mountain Club, hoping to meet fellow hikers and learn about places to explore. Eventually Tom realized there were a set number of locations this group visited, and he’d seen them all. If he wanted more variety, he’d have to take the lead. Tom scoured topological maps for wilderness areas within two hours of Albuquerque. When the Internet ...
Changing protocol for euthanizing bears
By Jody Benson,
Pajarito Group chair On a very hot June 18, during the Valles Caldera Marathon, a mother bear attacked marathoner Karen Williams, who ran too close to one of her cubs. The injuries required Williams to be transported to UNM Hospital for treatment. Reasonable people would recognize that in this encounter the mama bear was just doing her thing. She was being defensive and protective. Reasonable people understand that the single encounter would not give a predator a ...
Pajarito Group chair On a very hot June 18, during the Valles Caldera Marathon, a mother bear attacked marathoner Karen Williams, who ran too close to one of her cubs. The injuries required Williams to be transported to UNM Hospital for treatment. Reasonable people would recognize that in this encounter the mama bear was just doing her thing. She was being defensive and protective. Reasonable people understand that the single encounter would not give a predator a ...
Volunteer profile: Teresa Seamster
By Mona Blaber Seamster is chair of the Northern New Mexico Group. What is your role with Sierra Club? The chair of our group has many responsibilities: running monthly excom meetings, keeping members informed of group activities, submitting comments and writing letters of support on a wide spectrum of city-county-regional issues, attending coalition meetings, arranging volunteer activities and public outreach such as outings, tabling, and presenting at public events such as the recent “Co-Existence with Carnivores” panel. We also have ...
A Day with the Taos Water Sentinels
Teresa Seamster,
Northern New Mexico Group There is not much to top spending a day in the late-summer sunshine, wading and checking the waters of some of our northern rivers. Eric and Nora Patterson are the linchpins of the Taos Water Sentinels. Skilled at all aspects of sampling and monitoring water quality, they keep records on the rivers of Northern New Mexico, train volunteer monitors, team up with Amigos Bravos and Taos High School students to provide vital water measurements ...
Northern New Mexico Group There is not much to top spending a day in the late-summer sunshine, wading and checking the waters of some of our northern rivers. Eric and Nora Patterson are the linchpins of the Taos Water Sentinels. Skilled at all aspects of sampling and monitoring water quality, they keep records on the rivers of Northern New Mexico, train volunteer monitors, team up with Amigos Bravos and Taos High School students to provide vital water measurements ...
Victory: El Paso Electric revokes anti-solar plan
By Robert Moss,
Eco El Paso board member El Paso is again “The Sun City,” but it now has an opportunity to be “SolSmart” too. In a surprising settlement of its rate case in Texas, El Paso Electric in August completely withdrew its proposed fees on the sun. EPE had in August 2015 proposed a new rate structure that would have caused its residential customers to be separated into two residential rate classes: those with solar and those without ...
Eco El Paso board member El Paso is again “The Sun City,” but it now has an opportunity to be “SolSmart” too. In a surprising settlement of its rate case in Texas, El Paso Electric in August completely withdrew its proposed fees on the sun. EPE had in August 2015 proposed a new rate structure that would have caused its residential customers to be separated into two residential rate classes: those with solar and those without ...
Coalition renews Big Bend International Park campaign
By Rick LoBello,
El Paso Group Executive Committee The El Paso Sierra Club Group and the Greater Big Bend Coalition are petitioning U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and President Obama to establish an international park on the Rio Grande. The proposed park boundaries include Big Bend National Park and protected wildlife areas in the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Coahuila. A new website, greaterbigbend.org, contains a link to the change.org petition drafted by our coalition and additional ...
El Paso Group Executive Committee The El Paso Sierra Club Group and the Greater Big Bend Coalition are petitioning U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and President Obama to establish an international park on the Rio Grande. The proposed park boundaries include Big Bend National Park and protected wildlife areas in the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Coahuila. A new website, greaterbigbend.org, contains a link to the change.org petition drafted by our coalition and additional ...
Steering out thoughts toward ravens, wrens and trees
By Mary Katherine Ray,
Chapter Wildlife chair The challenges to nature are daunting. The climate is changing. There are forces at work trying to sow doubt about the worldwide physical evidence that humans are causing these changes or, if we are, that we need not address them by altering the way we as a species and as individuals operate. Polluting industries, in their PR campaigns of obstruction, are following the model of deception pioneered by tobacco companies denying the ...
Chapter Wildlife chair The challenges to nature are daunting. The climate is changing. There are forces at work trying to sow doubt about the worldwide physical evidence that humans are causing these changes or, if we are, that we need not address them by altering the way we as a species and as individuals operate. Polluting industries, in their PR campaigns of obstruction, are following the model of deception pioneered by tobacco companies denying the ...
Three things you can do to stop trapping
Trapping wildlife is a relic of a time when species were extirpated to supply fashion across the world. It is long past time for the state to ban trapping ...
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