{"id":4465,"date":"2009-04-15T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-15T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/04\/bingaman-wants-protection-for-the-organ-mountains\/"},"modified":"2009-04-15T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T18:00:00","slug":"bingaman-wants-protection-for-the-organ-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/04\/bingaman-wants-protection-for-the-organ-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"Bingaman wants protection for the Organ Mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman<\/a>, D-N.M., says he wants to provide permanent wilderness protection for land in Do\u00f1a Ana County — at least the Organ Mountains — and he hopes to get such a bill approved this year or next.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think it\u2019s important to protect the Organ Mountains, and perhaps some other areas too,\u201d Bingaman said during an interview in Las Cruces earlier this week.<\/p>\n

Many who want wilderness in the county believe the new, all-Democratic congressional delegation increases the chances<\/a> that new wilderness areas will be approved. Congress recently OK\u2019d, and the president just signed, a Bingaman-sponsored land-protection bill<\/a> that included the creation of a national monument in the Robledo Mountains, located in Do\u00f1a Ana County, to protect fossilized, prehistoric trackways that are 290 million years old.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> has sparred with a group led by some ranchers and four-wheeling enthusiasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., says he wants to provide permanent wilderness protection for land in Do\u00f1a Ana County — at least the Organ Mountains — and he hopes to get such a bill approved this year or next. \u201cI do think it\u2019s important to protect the Organ Mountains, and perhaps some other areas too,\u201d […]<\/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-4465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4465","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=4465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}