{"id":2230,"date":"2007-09-12T16:59:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-12T22:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/09\/bingaman-encouraged-by-wilderness-compromise\/"},"modified":"2007-09-12T16:59:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-12T22:59:00","slug":"bingaman-encouraged-by-wilderness-compromise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/09\/bingaman-encouraged-by-wilderness-compromise\/","title":{"rendered":"Bingaman encouraged by wilderness compromise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_IabUCQmoheQ\/RuhvmBfzR0I\/AAAAAAAADXQ\/GPAg-PCBxFE\/s1600-h\/Bingaman,+Jeff.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_IabUCQmoheQ\/RuhvmBfzR0I\/AAAAAAAADXQ\/GPAg-PCBxFE\/s200\/Bingaman,+Jeff.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5109456476279359298\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>U.S. Sen. <a href=\"http:\/\/bingaman.senate.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jeff Bingaman<\/a> says he\u2019s \u201cencouraged\u201d by the compromise between the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lchba.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Las Cruces Homebuilders Association<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmwild.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">New Mexico Wilderness Alliance<\/a> on a proposal to protect almost 400,000 acres of land in Do\u00f1a Ana County.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Ultimately, only Congress can designate land as wilderness or a national conservation area. The wilderness alliance had been working for months to build additional consensus in its push for federal legislation. Its attempt got a huge boost Tuesday when a slightly reworked plan earned the endorsement of the homebuilders.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cIf we\u2019re going to get a bill passed this Congress, it\u2019s going to need widespread support in the community. I\u2019m encouraged that various groups in the county are working together to try to build consensus,\u201d Bingaman said in a statement released by his office.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The new proposal would create a national conservation area along the <st1:place st=\"on\"><st1:placename st=\"on\">Organ<\/st1:placename> <st1:placetype st=\"on\">Mountains<\/st1:placetype><\/st1:place> of more than 90,000 acres, and would also designate 300,000 acres in the county as federally protected wilderness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The proposal by the wilderness alliance quickly gained traction when it was first unveiled several months ago, earning the endorsements of all local governments, more than 200 local businesses and organizations and several newspapers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">But in early August, U.S. Rep. <a href=\"http:\/\/pearce.house.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">Steve Pearce<\/a> held a meeting on the proposal in <st1:city st=\"on\"><st1:place st=\"on\">Las Cruces<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>. He invited a number of opponents of the proposal to speak, but only invited two supporters. Pearce admittedly is skeptical about wilderness areas and was accused of giving unfair attention to opponents of the plan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Pearce\u2019s meeting did give momentum to the arguments of those opposed to the wilderness proposal, including ranchers and off-road groups. In the weeks that followed, both <st1:country-region st=\"on\">U.S.<\/st1:country-region> senators from <st1:state st=\"on\"><st1:place st=\"on\">New Mexico<\/st1:place><\/st1:state> made statements indicating that they weren\u2019t in a hurry to sponsor legislation to create the wilderness and conservation areas without consensus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The offices of Pearce and U.S. Sen. <a href=\"http:\/\/domenici.senate.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pete Domenici<\/a> have not responded to requests for comment for this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman says he\u2019s \u201cencouraged\u201d by the compromise between the Las Cruces Homebuilders Association and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance on a proposal to protect almost 400,000 acres of land in Do\u00f1a Ana County. Ultimately, only Congress can designate land as wilderness or a national conservation area. The wilderness alliance had been working [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}