By Ben Neary
NMWF Conservation Director
Edward Garcia has resigned from the New Mexico State Game Commission.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham had appointed Garcia to the commission in March 2023.
At the time of Garcia’s appointment, the governor’s office stated that he was executive chairman of Garcia Automotive Family Dealerships and co-owner of dealerships in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and El Paso. His family owns land along the Pecos River.
An attempt to reach Garcia for comment on Friday wasn’t immediately successful. His resignation, effective Aug. 6, brought the seven-member commission down to six current members.
Garcia’s departure from the commission continues a pattern of game commissioners resigning before the end of their appointed terms during Lujan Grisham’s tenure. Only Commissioner Tirzio Lopez remains on the commission from the original slate of commissioners the governor appointed in her first term.
In Lujan Grisham’s first term, she forced out former commission Chair Joanna Prukop and former Vice Chair Jeremy Vesbach – both conservationists with impeccable credentials. Many other commissioners have quit in recent years, citing personal reasons.
Both Prukop and Vesbach have said the governor removed them from the commission because she was unhappy that they didn’t try to preserve a commission regulation that purported to allow landowners to exclude the public from rivers and streams that cross private lands.
In response to a legal challenge brought by the New Mexico Wildlife Federation and its partner organizations, the NM Supreme Court in early 2022 ruled that the game commission regulation purporting to allow the commission to declare waters that flow over private property to be “private water” closed to the public was unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court of the United States later declined to hear a challenge from some landowners unhappy with the state court ruling.
Since the court rulings, NM Attorney General Raúl Torrez has sued several landowners who have blocked public access to the Pecos River. He has said those cases should stand as a warning to landowners on rivers and streams around the state.
“The New Mexico Supreme Court recently affirmed the constitutional right of every citizen to access public waters for recreational purposes and put private landowners on notice that they are not entitled to exclude others from those waters by fencing off New Mexico’s rivers and streams,” Torrez said last year. “These waters belong to the people of this state and we stand ready to use every available tool to ensure public access to these natural resources.”
This March, Lujan Grisham announced the appointment of Richard Stump to the game commission. He now serves as commission chair.
Stump is hunt manager on the Troutstaler Ranch on the Chama River. The ranch is owned by Dan Perry, a lawyer with Texas roots who was one of those who unsuccessfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on the river access issue.
Perry and his relatives have made substantial contributions to Lujan Grisham’s political campaigns.
A bill passed both houses of the NM State Legislature in 2023 that would have given game commissioners protection against being removed at will by any governor. The bill died when Lujan Grisham failed to act on it. A similar proposal appears likely to return in the legislative session that starts early next year.