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SANTA FE, N.M. — Have roads been closed as a result of former President Barack Obama’s designation of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in Taos County?

Some people think so and say road closures have reduced grazing – an economic activity that Obama’s 2013 national monument proclamation for the Rio Grande del Norte specifically protected.

Ranchers who oppose the monument designation can’t cite any roads that have been shut down in the expansive national monument, which includes the Rio Grande Gorge, Ute Mountain and a total of a total of 242,500 acres, or 380 square miles.

The Taos Junction Bridge crosses the Rio Grande within the Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)

But the state Land Office said Thursday a single road that runs through state trust lands, where grazing allotments are located, has been closed because the monument was created. That conflicts with information U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., says he received from the Bureau of Land Management, which operates the Rio Grande del Norte monument.

The road issue has come up in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s review of national monuments ordered by President Donald Trump. This week, a draft of a memo from Zinke to Trump about the review was leaked.

Regarding both Rio Grande del Norte and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in southern New Mexico, Zinke recommended that their proclamations be amended “to protect objects and prioritize public access; infrastructure upgrades, repair and maintenance; traditional use; tribal cultural use; and hunting and fishing rights.”

And Zinke stated that a “significant traditional use” in Rio Grande Del Norte is grazing. “However, road closures due to monument restrictions have left many grazing permittees choosing not to renew permits,” he wrote.

A pickup truck climbs State Road 567 up the side of Rio Grande Canyon in the national monument near Pilar. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)

That part of Zinke’s report was one of the things that had Heinrich riled up during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Tuesday. He told John Ruhs, the acting deputy director for operations for the BLM, a division of the Department of Interior, that the Zinke memo was littered with errors.

“For example, there’s a claim that roads have been closed in Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument. I confirmed with BLM staff that that’s not accurate,” he said. “And that ranchers have stopped ranching there because of those non-existent road closures. Also not true.”

The senator made the point that it didn’t appear BLM staff “on the ground” and who manage the monuments were even consulted.

Responding to Heinrich’s questioning, Ruhs acknowledged that the BLM did not “fact check” the Zinke document. He said the BLM provided information and data “as requested,” but the BLM did not have a hand in writing the report.

Heinrich ended his five-minute query of Ruhs by offering to provide him with a fact sheet regarding the New Mexico monuments he could take back to Zinke.

“I have to say that my constituents are incredibly upset by the fact that the future of their monuments could be determined by people sitting in offices in Washington, D.C., who have not been out on the ground in those places, and at this point seemingly did not get their basic facts right,” he said. “And I certainly hope that before the president acts on any of these recommendations, the secretary makes sure he can get his facts straight.”

Heinrich said he had checked with the BLM office in New Mexico and was told there had been no road closures due to the national monument designations.

After being told by Ruhs the extent of the BLM’s involvement was providing requested information to Zinke, Heinrich asked, “So there’s no way for you to know the sources of inaccurate facts in that report?”

“Correct, sir,” Ruhs responded.

No D.C. response

The Journal contacted the BLM regional office asking if roads had been closed in the Rio Grande del Norte and whether ranchers were not renewing grazing leases as a result. The inquiry was routed to the bureau’s office in Washington, D.C., which did not respond to the initial request or a follow up email on Thursday.

Zinke did come to New Mexico during his monuments review and visited Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks. He didn’t go to Rio Grande del Norte, but came to northern New Mexico’s Sabinoso Wilderness east of Las Vegas with Heinrich and U.S. Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) to discuss an access issue at the wilderness area and, apparently, the national monuments.

Zinke’s memo was marked “Draft Deliberation – Not for Distribution,” but was obtained by the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post on Sunday. The leak came nearly a month after the highly anticipated memo was sent to the White House without details being publicly released.

Zinke’s memo calls for a reduction in size of four monuments under review – Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Gold Butte in Nevada and Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou – but not to the two in New Mexico. Instead, it recommends changes to their respective resource management plans and suggests amendments to the proclamations Obama signed for Rio Grande del Norte in 2013 and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks in 2014.

The roads issue may have come up in a conference room at the Las Cruces Convention Center in late July when Zinke was in New Mexico to review both monuments. He held closed meetings with local government officials, border security experts, ranchers and others.

Among them were Carlos Salazar and David Sanchez of the Northern New Mexico Stockmen’s Association, opponents of the Rio Grande del Norte designation. In separate interviews this week, they both said they had heard it said that ranchers were not renewing grazing permits due to road closures and believed it to be true, but they declined to reveal the source of the information.

“I don’t think I’m privileged to say,” Salazar, president of the association, said in a phone interview.

But Salazar himself has gone on the record to say the monument designation has closed roads and restricted access to grazing allotments.

Bighorn sheep sun on the edge of the Rio Grande Canyon near Pilar. They were among a herd of about 60 bighorn sheep resting and grazing in the Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)

In a letter dated July 7, 2017, that he submitted as part of the public comment process for Zinke’s review, Salazar wrote, “Grazing permittees have no longer renewed their grazing leases with the (state Land Office) because of the (monument) designation and their inability to access the areas where their grazing operations have been impaired by road closures. The road closures have impacted also all other traditional land uses.”

Asked to identify which roads were closed, Salazar this week said that roads may not have actually been closed – yet. He said it was a tactic of the federal government not to maintain roads, thus rendering them inoperable and preventing access to grazing allotments, water from the Rio Grande and wood gathering.

Salazar was asked if he could provide contact information for ranchers or farmers affected so they could be interviewed for this story. He did not get back to a reporter prior to the Journal’s deadline on Thursday.

Reduced grazing

State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn says grazing has been reduced by the national monument designation, but not due to road closures. In his letter providing comment on Zinke’s monument review, he wrote that more than 41,000 acres in the Rio Grande Del Norte are state trust lands.

“While all of the state trust lands were leased for grazing and other purposes prior to the monument designation, over 12,000 acres became unleaseable after the monument designation because the prior lessees are uninterested in leasing lands within that area,” he wrote, without elaborating on why the monument designation had damaged the viability of grazing allotments.

He added a footnote saying that the BLM has seen the same thing on its federal land. “BLM grazing permits with(in) the monument area have been reduced by approximately 32,683 acres because permittees are uninterested in retaining such permits after the monument designation,” wrote Dunn.

Kristin Haase, assistant commissioner for communications with the Land Office, said the 12,426 unleased acres – comprising nearly one-third of state trust assets within the monument – amounts to an approximately $15,000 annual loss in revenue to the state.

“The job of the state land commissioner and the State Land Office is to generate revenue for public education and other Trust beneficiaries, so while $15K may not seem like a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, it can make a big difference to the beneficiaries of the revenues earned on those lands,” she wrote in an email.

Haase initially said Thursday that the state Land Office has also received reports regarding road closures within Rio Grande Del Norte, but she could not immediately name the source of the reports. She later sent a map showing a road that she was told had been closed by the BLM.

A question that remains is, if there truly are factual errors in Zinke’s memo, will they be corrected in his final draft for Trump?

The BLM’s Ruhs told Heinrich on Tuesday any inaccuracies could be corrected.

“My understanding, I guess, would be our secretary (Zinke) is pretty thorough on things, so I’m sure if we identify there are any inconsistencies and I take that information back, I’m sure there would be an opportunity to fix that,” he said.