U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., says he wants to provide permanent wilderness protection for land in Doña Ana County — at least the Organ Mountains — and he hopes to get such a bill approved this year or next.
“I do think it’s important to protect the Organ Mountains, and perhaps some other areas too,” Bingaman said during an interview in Las Cruces earlier this week.
Many who want wilderness in the county believe the new, all-Democratic congressional delegation increases the chances that new wilderness areas will be approved. Congress recently OK’d, and the president just signed, a Bingaman-sponsored land-protection bill that included the creation of a national monument in the Robledo Mountains, located in Doña Ana County, to protect fossilized, prehistoric trackways that are 290 million years old.
That monument has been a big part of the fight that has raged for years over protection of land in the county as a coalition led by the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance has sparred with a group led by some ranchers and four-wheeling enthusiasts.
The wilderness coalition wants to designate about 300,000 acres in the county as wilderness and another 96,000 as a national conservation area. The ranchers’ group wants no wilderness at all and proposes new, less-restrictive designations for the land, in addition to requiring the sale of 65,000 acres of the land owned by the Bureau of Land Management.