By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office is seeking $230,000 from a private landowner to recover the state’s costs of pressing a lawsuit to open roads leading to popular hunting areas near White Peak.
Judge Sarah C. Backus in January granted a request from the AG’s Office to order landowner David Stanley to remove barriers on five roads crossing his ranch in northeastern New Mexico. The judge gave Stanley 60 days to comply.
Backus’s January order followed her ruling last year that portions of 11 roads that cross Stanley’s property remained public. In her ruling, she cited a 19th century federal law that says routes that crossed federal government property remain public after the property passes into private hands.
Backus filed her final judgment in the case on April 15. Stanley would have 30 days from that date to file any appeal. The clerk’s office at the New Mexico Court of Appeals reported there was no appeal pending as of Mon., May 6.
At a court hearing in January, Backus denied a request from Donald A. Walcott, Stanley’s lawyer, to put her ruling that the roads are public on hold while Stanley appealed.
Recent attempts to reach Walcott for comment were unsuccessful.
In papers filed with Backus in December, the AG’s Office stated that, despite the judge’s ruling last year that the 11 roads were public, hunters had been unable to use five of the roads on Stanley’s property because of locked gates and other obstructions.
The AG’s Office asked the judge in December to order Stanley to remove the obstructions and also to pay for the cost of the legal action and the cost of having officers with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish document that the roads were closed.
“Mr. Stanley was caught red-handed,” Assistant Attorney General Ari Biernoff told Backus at a January court hearing.
Biernoff said in court that the state’s investigation documented repeated instances where the roads were closed last year. The state filed statements in court from hunters who were unable to use the roads.
Walcott argued in court that the state’s lawyers should have informed Stanley of any concerns about the roads before going back to court.
“We were in communication with counsel and they never said one thing to us,” Walcott said at the January hearing. He said Stanley opened closed gates as soon as he was informed about them and said they weren’t aware of any hunters being prevented from accessing state lands.
Stanley had initiated the litigation in 2011 by filing suit against Mora County seeking a judicial declaration that the roads on his ranch were private.
David Carl, spokesman for the AG’s Office, said May 1 that the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish is in the process of verifying that all obstructions have been removed from the roads.
Carl said that if Stanley files an objection to the state’s cost bill seeking to recover $230,687.83 in litigation costs from Stanley, Judge Backus will hold a hearing to determine the amount of costs that the state, as the prevailing party, will recover.
The White Peak area has been a popular hunting area for generations. The New Mexico Wildlife Federation has long supported keeping roads to the area open for public access.
Frank Maestas, chairman of the Mora County Commission, attended the January court hearing.
Speaking after the hearing, Maestas said his grandfather, born in 1895, had hunted in the White Peak area. Maestas said generations of his family have hunted there ever since and said he has taken his own grandson hunting there.
“To deny access to something that we have a right to do is just beyond our comprehension as a community,” Maestas said.
