U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
Though he has opposed Doña Ana County wilderness legislation in the past, U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., says he wants to work with New Mexico’s U.S. senators to “preserve the beautiful lands and open spaces” here.
“I am not calling for these sensitive areas to be opened to development,” Pearce said in a statement released by his office. “I believe that we need to strike the right balance between conservation and economic growth. I look forward to working with Senators Bingaman and Udall to preserve the beautiful lands and open spaces in Doña Ana County.”
Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, both Democrats, proposed a bill last year that Pearce didn’t support. It would have designated hundreds of thousands of acres in Doña Ana County as wilderness – the federal government’s most restrictive conservation designation.
Pearce wasn’t in Congress at the time, and the legislation died in the Senate without ever having gained the support of then-U.S. Rep. Harry Teague, D-N.M., who Pearce replaced in office last month.
Some wilderness proponents believe that, with Teague’s loss, they’ve missed what may have been their best chance to get a wilderness bill approved. Pearce, who served in the House from 2003 to 2008 before leaving to run unsuccessfully for Senate, has a long history of criticizing Doña Ana County wilderness proposals.
Pearce’s staff points out that he doesn’t oppose the wilderness designation entirely. He supported the New Hampshire Wilderness Act of 2006. That legislation – related to a Senate bill that later became law – added 10,800 acres to a small, existing wilderness area in a remote area of New Hampshire.
That’s much different than what has been proposed in Doña Ana County – hundreds of thousands of acres, much of it around the largest city in Pearce’s district.
Pearce’s proposal
In 2008, while he was running unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Udall, Pearce proposed an alternative to wilderness.
The legislation would have created new designations to protect the land that would be less restrictive than wilderness. Pearce’s bill would have eliminated the eight wilderness study areas in the county — comprising about 220,000 acres — and instead designated “special preservation areas” and “rangeland preservation areas” to give some protection to approximately 300,000 acres, including the Organ, Doña Ana and Robledo mountains and Picacho Peak.
The designations would have allowed grazing and some motorized- and mechanical-vehicle access. Grazing is allowed in wilderness areas. So is some motorized- and mechanical-vehicle access under a handful of exceptions to the U.S. wilderness road-less rule.
Still, proponents of the wilderness proposal said Pearce’s legislation would have downgraded the status of the land because the wilderness status comes with federal funding to ensure compliance with the law. Pearce’s new designations might not have come with such funding, they said.
Pearce’s bill, which the House never voted on, would have also required the sale of federal land in the county that the BLM identifies as available for disposal. That’s currently tens of thousands of acres.
Still concerned about wilderness
NMPolitics.net recently asked Pearce if he saw the potential for compromise between what he proposed in 2008 and what Bingaman and Udall proposed last year. In response, the congressman said he wants to preserve the land, but expressed deep concerns about wilderness.
“One of my concerns with creating a wilderness designation in Doña Ana County as it has been proposed is that wheeled vehicles are not allowed in designated wilderness areas,” Pearce said. “This would prevent Border Patrol agents from conducting the necessary operations to secure the border.”
Law enforcement agents are allowed to enter wilderness areas with motorized or mechanized vehicles if they are in pursuit of a suspect, but not for routine patrols.
To try to further address those concerns, Bingaman and Udall revised their proposal last year to free up a larger area along the border for law enforcement access. Apparently, that wasn’t enough to satisfy Pearce.
Pearce also said wilderness “limits the flexibility of use for firefighting and other emergency services, creating a safety concern for residents of the county.”
Still, Pearce didn’t say he won’t support any wilderness in Doña Ana County. Instead, he said, “no private land should be designated as wilderness,” and that there should be “extensive dialogue with state and local governments as to which pieces of their land they are willing to designate.”
“We must have all parties on board before we take such a step,” he said.
Most local governments support wilderness
As to Pearce’s point about getting government agencies on board, the City of Las Cruces, Town of Mesilla, City of Sunland Park and Doña Ana County have all passed resolutions supporting a wilderness plan similar to that proposed by Bingaman and Udall.
So did the Village of Hatch, but it later withdrew its support. The new Town of Anthony has not taken a position on the issue.
You can view a full list of groups that support the wilderness plan here. A list of those who support legislation more like what Pearce proposed in 2008 can be found here.
A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that Pearce’s 2008 bill would have required the sale of tens of thousands of acres of land that’s current in wilderness study areas.