Public Lands Issues of importance
Public Lands Rule
In 2026 the Trump administration removed the 2024 Public Lands Rule, which directed the Bureau of Land Management to prioritize conservation, wildlife habitat, clean water, cultural resources and Indigenous Knowledge alongside development across 250 million acres of land. The rule’s removal by the Trump administration is a gift to extractive industries and puts these lands at risk. Learn what we’re doing to protect them.
Chaco Canyon
Chaco Canyon, one of the most historically significant regions in New Mexico, is a World Heritage site and is sacred to generations of native peoples who live here today. But the Trump administration is planning on rolling back a ban against oil and gas drilling there, which could put Chaco at risk as well as harm air and water quality and damage precious cultural resources. Learn how we can help our allies to protect this irreplaceable piece of living history.
Rio Grande Bosque
The Bosque Action Team was formed to define a healthy vision for the Bosque. Our healthier vision includes opposing development between the levees and encouraging alternatives, such as improving access points to the Bosque and funding programs that provide education for students about the Bosque.
Generic
This is a place to write a short description. It’s at the top, so it gets attention right away.
What the Sierra Club is doing to protect our public lands
The Rio Grande Chapter Public Lands Team are stewards of the more than SIZE square miles of New Mexico, eastern Arizona and west Texas. Sierra Club is involved in numerous aspects of protecting public lands from extraction, abuse, neglect for the health of our environment and our communities. Land based advocacy is important because it protects our homes and communities from loss of life and livelihood, and the spiraling costs of climate change. We can best protect ourselves and future generations by caring for where we live today. We’ve celebrated several major victories in just the last few years:
- Permanent protection for Rio Grande del Norte in Northern New Mexico and Organ Mountains Desert Peaks in Southern New Mexico with their designations as national monuments in 2013 and 2014
- Transfer of Valles Caldera to National Parks Service management, which has better resources to manage it than its current structure in 2015
- Federal designation of Columbine Hondo in Northern New Mexico as a Wilderness in 2015
Our advocacy efforts focus mostly on federal lands under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management, but it also can include state and local jurisdiction land as well. We work in coalition with other environmental organizations on:
- Reviewing and commenting on updates to U.S. Forest Service and BLM Resource Management Plans.
- Working to protect wilderness on all public lands and helping identify Lands With Wilderness Characteristics for further inclusion.
- Identifying and opposing projects that are harmful to the land, water and wildlife on public lands and do not support sustainability or address effects of climate change.
- Coordinating with other organizations to promote the designation of lands suitable for national monuments.
What you can do to protect our public lands
Join the Bosque Action Team
Come to the monthly meetings and help strategize about how we can preserve and protect the Bosque. Contact Richard Barish at richard.barish@gmail.com to learn more and get involved.
Become a Bosque Sentinel
To help protect what makes our Bosque so special, we’re forming a Bosque Sentinels Program. If you are interested, you can select a part of the Bosque that you’d like to monitor. You’ll get to know the terrain and be able to report to Open Space if there are litter, fire or vandalism problems. You’ll get to know the different projects that the Army Corps of Engineers, Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District or the city are carrying out and be able to interpret those projects to other users. You also might become a trained outings leader and take people to visit the area. If you’d like to get involved please email savethebosque@gmail.com.
Join our Organ Mountains Desert Peaks Action Team
To help protect our national monuments, Contact Camilla Feibelman at camilla.feibelman@sierraclub.org.
Have a voice in land management
To get involved in affecting land management decisions at Rio Grande del Norte, contact Tom Gorman at gormantd@gmail.com or 505.438.3932
Join the Otero Mesa Action Team
The Otero Mesa Action Team, from our El Paso Group territory, is actively participating with the BLM’s Las Cruces District Office in the development of the Resource Management Plan’s Supplement that deals with gas and oil as well as identifying Lands with Wilderness Characteristics on the Mesa. Contact Jerry Kurtyka for more information on Action Team meetings and events at jerrykurtyka@hotmail.com.
Visit our Act on the Issues Page here to find out about how you can act on urgent and other environmental issues.