By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
LAGUNA PUEBLO — State, federal and tribal government leaders from around New Mexico gathered at Laguna Pueblo on Wednesday to celebrate the public acquisition of more than 54,000 acres east of Mt. Taylor.
The acquisition of the L Bar Ranch ultimately will bring the existing Marquez Wildlife Management Area near Grants to roughly 70,000 acres – making it the biggest WMA in the state.
Starting as soon as next fall, the new lands will offer state residents a new prime hunting territory for elk and other species.
In addition to the property’s importance for wildlife, bringing the L Bar Ranch into public lands will allow area Indian tribes to regain access to important cultural sites on the property.
The ranch acquisition adds to the protected land within the boundary of the Mt. Taylor Traditional Cultural Property (TCP). This TCP was designated by the State in 2009 and was nominated by the Pueblos of Acoma, Laguna, Zuni, the Hopi Tribe and the Navajo Nation.
Stewart Liley, chief of the Wildlife Management Division of the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, said the L Bar Ranch holds important elk migration routes and elk winter range. He said the department intends to import antelope herds from elsewhere in the state and undertake range improvement programs.
“Our goal will be a lot of habitat restoration in here,” Liley said Wednesday during a tour of the ranch. He said the agency plans to restore areas that currently hold stands of piñon and juniper trees back to grasslands.
“Because it’s now the largest wildlife management area in the state, our goal is to really make it a showcase,” Liley said of the ranch property. He said hunting could begin on the property as soon as next fall.
In addition to bordering the existing Marquez WMA, the L Bar also borders Laguna Pueblo to the east and the Cibola National Forest to the north.
Theresa Pasqual, director at the Pueblo of Acoma’s Historic Preservation Office and board president of Conservation Voters of New Mexico, has worked to access and preserve cultural resources in the area.
Pasqual addressed the crowd at Wednesday’s celebration at Laguna Pueblo. As part of the presentation, a group of middle school drummers from Laguna Middle School played and sang in their native language.
“Today’s celebration is not only about the celebration of an acquisition of lands that will now become accessible to New Mexico people, but it is restorative in nature on so many levels,” Pasqual said. “This was exemplified by the young men who sang for you just a few minutes ago. And if we had time, we could translate for you from that Keres language into English the words that song that they sung, that connected our people to place. And that is important.”
Rep. Nathan Small, D-Las Cruces, is vice chair of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee and worked to secure legislative funding for the ranch acquisition this spring.
Small said Wednesday that the acquisition represented the chance to “reopen the door” to local tribes to reestablish their connections to the land.
Although Small said there’s more work to come, he said, “the idea that we’re re-opening that door today is perhaps the most powerful of all.”
The Trust for Public Land secured the ranch property from private owners for just over $34 million this year. The New Mexico State Game Commission put up the bulk of the money from revenues from hunting and fishing licenses and excise taxes on the sale of hunting and fishing equipment.
The TPL also received support from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Walmart’s Acres for America Program. Additional support was provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s Outdoor Fund, Richard King Mellon Foundation, Little Orchard Foundation, National Wildlife Federation, and other private donors.
Diane Regas, national president and CEO of the Trust for Public Land, said at the event that her organization is proud to have led the effort to make the land accessible to the public.
“These victories are so precious, and they don’t come every day,” Regas said. She noted that New Mexico’s entire conservation community came together to support the acquisition.
“I want to give a special shout-out to the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s Jesse Deubel, who invested remarkable amounts of time, personal time and personal energy, to bring volunteers together to advocate behind the scenes to advocate for this project to happen,” Regas said.
Greg Hiner, with TPL’s Santa Fe office, worked on the L Bar acquisition along with others in his organization. He said TPL took the risk of putting significant money down to hold the property when the outcome was uncertain. Among those he credited for keeping faith in the project was Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.
Heinrich said the project came together fast and required extraordinary dedication and coordination.
“This is an unprecedented project in an unprecedented amount of time,” Heinrich said. “I was fully committed before I realized just how big his project was. And as we started to identify different pieces and parts to help with that $34-million budget, I had many national conservation leaders tell me that this project couldn’t be done. That this was a five-year project at a minimum.
“I said frankly that we don’t have five years,” Heinrich said. “We have property owners who are under pressure and want to do this in the next year, or not.”
Heinrich said that building the $34-million budget to acquire “54,000 of the most beautiful acres in the state of New Mexico in 13 months” was a testament to every person in this room.”
Heinrich particularly credited former New Mexico State Game Commission Vice Chair Jeremy Vesbach for his work on the project.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she wants to see the sort of collaborative work that the L Bar Ranch acquisition required repeated throughout the state. She noted that the state’s outdoor recreation economy amounts to $2 billion annually.
“It’s one of the most robust outdoor recreation economies per capita in the country,” Lujan Grisham said at Wednesday’s event. “And there’s no reason that it’s not going to be the best. And this effort in conservation will also benefit that green, productive, environmentally sound economic growth in areas that both sovereign nations and local governments are not only hungry for but better equipped to manage than anybody else.”
Lujan Grisham said sovereign nations don’t have sufficient access to reach their sacred lands and also lack access to “feed their families in their cultural, traditional ways of hunting, because they don’t have access.”
Deubel, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, said the federation’s mission is to protect lands and wildlife for all. “Equitable access to these outdoor, publicly owned resources is so important,” he said.
Deubel emphasized that the hunting on the Marquez Wildlife Area will be limited to New Mexico residents. In addition to hunting giving state residents the opportunity to harvest pure, organic protein, he said the acquisition will provide, “the opportunity to carry on traditions that have existed in New Mexico forever. And that’s extremely powerful.”