By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
FARMINGTON — The New Mexico State Game Commission voted Friday to reconsider a rule that purports to give the state’s blessing to private landowners who close certain rivers and streams to public access.
The commission also voted Friday to rescind a rule under which the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish routinely has issued extra licenses for bighorn sheep and other high-demand species to outfitted hunters and nonresidents while failing to give the required percentage of licenses to resident hunters.
Getting the game commission to address the stream-access issue and the improper allocation of hunting licenses both have been top priorities of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation this year.
“We’re pleased to see the commission respond and address the concerns of our thousands of members — New Mexico anglers and sportsmen who rely on our public lands and who need a fair shake from the game department,” said NMWF Director Jesse Deubel.
Deubel credited Commission Chair Joanna Prukop in particular for heeding public concerns over the onerous wildlife policies enacted by the previous game commission during the administration of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez.
Deubel encouraged New Mexico hunters and anglers who support the commission’s new direction under Prukop to contact Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and make themselves heard.
“Chair Prukop is clearly the most competent and responsive leader the commission has had in many, many years,” Deubel said. “It’s critical that New Mexicans rally around her to support our common goals.”
Before taking over as the first woman to chair the game commission, Prukop served as the secretary of the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department. Before that, she worked for 25 years at the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. After leaving state government, she served in President Barack Obama’s administration as a three-term appointee to the Wildlife and Hunting Heritage Conservation Council. She holds a master’s degree in wildlife biology from Colorado State University.
STREAM ACCESS
On the stream-access issue, Deubel and John Crenshaw, NMWF board president, wrote to the game commission this summer urging it to roll back the rule that previous commissioners enacted two years ago.
That 2017 rule purports to allow landowners to petition the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish to certify streams and other waters on private property as “non-navigable” and accordingly closed to public access without the owner’s written permission.
The 2017 rule followed a state law enacted in 2015 that purportedly enabled landowners to post non-navigable streams and their streambeds against trespass. The Game and Fish website shows the department has accepted five applications from landowners requesting the department certify waters as “non-navigable.” Two other such applications are currently pending.
Deubel and Crenshaw emphasized that a 1945 ruling by the New Mexico Supreme Court found that the public — meaning anglers, boaters or others — may fish, float or otherwise use streams and streambeds where they run through private property as long as the public doesn’t trespass across private land to access the waters, or trespass from the stream onto private land. They noted that several New Mexico attorneys general have issued opinions upholding the high court’s interpretation in the intervening years.
Representatives of several organizations had urged the commission to act on the stream-access issue earlier in Friday’s day-long meeting.
Warren Unsicker, director of economic development for the City of Farmington, told the commission that designating waterways that cross private property as non-navigable would harm the city’s economic development activities.
Hattie Johnson, Southern Rockies stewardship director for American Whitewater, said her organization’s thousands of members have a keen interest in protecting the public’s right to float on rivers that go through public and private land.
“The rule implemented by the 2017 commission was in the interests of rich outsiders and blocked public access,” Johnson said.
Marcel Gaztambide, Animas riverkeeper at San Juan Citizens Alliance, said his organization has been promoting public use of the river. He said he hoped the commission would recognize the value of protecting public access.
Just before it adjourned on Friday evening, the commission unanimously agreed with Prukop’s suggestion that it start the process of reconsidering the stream-access rule. The commission will start working on the issue at its next meeting, Nov. 21 in Roswell.
The rule-changing process involves taking public comment and holding public hearings over a span of several months. Prukop said the commission is prepared to take all the time necessary to address the issue and said she couldn’t say in advance whether the process would result in rescinding the current rule, amending it or perhaps keeping it in place.
Commission Vice-Chair Roberta Salazar Henry said she and other commissioners are being inundated with emails from people around the state about the stream-access issue.
Commissioner Jeremy Vesbach said he agreed that the commission needs to address the stream-access issue. He said they have to move forward in a very deliberate way, which he said was not the way the rule was adopted originally.
HUNTING LICENSES
On the issue of changing the allocation of hunting licenses, the commission voted unanimously to drop its rule that has allowed the issuance of so-called “round-up tags.” The rule has allowed the game department to issue more licenses than advertised in the annual big game hunting proclamation.
The NMWF published an analysis of the game department’s license allocation process in April that found the department routinely failed to meet the requirement in state law that “a minimum of 84 percent of the licenses shall be issued to residents of New Mexico.”
Albuquerque resident Brandon Wynn prepared the analysis. He compared the number of tags the game department advertised in the 2018 hunting proclamation that would be available to the public versus records showing the actual number the department issued.
Of 728 total hunt codes last year, Wynn found that the game department issued “round-up” licenses that hadn’t been advertised in the proclamation in 176 of them, or 24.2 percent of the hunts.
Of the 176 hunt codes in which the game department issued round-up licenses, Wynn’s analysis found that New Mexico resident hunters received less than the required 84 percent of the licenses in 166 hunt codes.
Meanwhile, the pool of outfitted hunters received less than its 10-percent quota in only 63 of the 176 hunt codes. Nonresident hunters received less than their 6-percent quota in only 33 of the hunt codes.
Stewart Liley, head of wildlife management with the game department, told the commission on Friday that it’s been mathematically impossible in many cases for the department to meet all the license-allocation requirements specified in the state law. He said the game commission in the past had enacted a rule giving the game department director authority to add one license per hunt code to try to address the issue.
In the hunts this year, Liley said there were 884 hunt codes. Of that number, he said the department added one additional license in 272 hunt codes to account for mathematical rounding.
“Our recommendation to the commission is to not allow for the rounding,” Liley said.
When biologists determine that a bighorn sheep herd can sustain the loss of five rams per year to hunting, Liley noted that rounding the number up to six equates to four more sheep over four years.
Liley said the department must follow the legal mandate of giving residents a minimum of 84 percent of tags first, before considering giving any tags to either guided hunters or nonresidents.
Outfitted hunters wouldn’t have a chance at drawing a tag until the number of permits available in a particular hunt reaches at least seven. Nonresidents wouldn’t have a chance until there are at least 13 tags available, Liley said.
It’s common that bighorn sheep hunt codes offer fewer than seven licenses while drawing hundreds of applications.
Prukop questioned Liley about the meaning of the change in regard to bighorn sheep hunts. “Will guides and outfitters with nonresident clients ever be able to draw a license?” she asked.
Liley responded that because some bighorn hunts have 25 tags, guided hunters and nonresidents still would have a chance at those tags.
Vesbach said he believes the change is the right thing for the commission to do. He said it will allow the department to stick with the population harvest limits set by its biologists.
Deubel commended the commission for bringing up the license issue. “I want to really thank you for listening to the public,” he said.
MEXICAN GRAY WOLVES
In other action, the game commission also voted to rejoin the Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Program, agreeing to work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state of Arizona toward getting the species removed from the federal Endangered Species List.
New Mexico had dropped out of the effort in 2011, during the Martinez Administration. The state at that time voted to end a trapping ban in wolf territory.
Liley said there are currently 131 wolves in the wild in New Mexico and Arizona. The goal is to have 320, which Liley said could be achieved within the next decade.
Brady McGee, Mexican Wolf Recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said he was excited about the NMGF coming back on board to work on wolf restoration issues.
Bob Ricklefs of Ute Park, representing the New Mexico Cattlegrowers, urged the commission to remember that there are ranchers who have been forced out of business by the wolf.
“The rancher suffers lower conception rates, lower weaning weights, he suffers emotionally,” Ricklefs said.
Speaking after the commission vote, Vesbach said it was a bad decision from the start for New Mexico to withdraw from the wolf recovery effort.
“That never gets you good results,” Vesbach said. “And there’s that old quote that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” he said.
“We are the state wildlife agency,” Vesbach said. “We’ve restored elk, we’ve restored bighorn sheep, we’ve restored all these species. This is another species we’re bringing back and we need to be in a leadership position on it.”
WILDLIFE FUNDING
The game commission endorsed pending federal legislation, the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, that would put up some $1.4 billion for states and American Indian tribes nationwide for programs to support non-game animals.
New Mexico would receive nearly $25 million a year under the legislation, which is pending in the U.S. House. The state would be responsible for coming up with about $8 million a year in matching funds, said Matt Wunder, chief of the NMGF Ecological and Environmental Planning Division.
“As we move forward, there are increasing threats to wildlife and their habitats across the nation and in New Mexico as well,” Wunder said. He said it’s critical to support wildlife species to keep them from falling into endangered status.
“As we move forward, the goal of this Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is to keep common species common,” Wunder said.