Cleanup effort targets encampments and fire hazards in the bosque around Albuquerque

A city and county collaboration to sweep encampments and remove trash from the Rio Grande bosque officially launched Friday morning.

Operation Bosque Guardian is an initiative to address safety concerns in the riverside forest that stretches along Albuquerque and through Bernalillo County. After a series of fires sparked along the river in June, the collaboration is another campaign to safeguard the bosque.

“In the recent past, we’ve had a number of fires down here in the bosque,” said Chris Starr, Open Space supervisor for the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office. “Homelessness is obviously an issue in the city and the county, and the problem is growing considerably … so the sheriff said Operation Bosque Guardian needs to take effect.”

BSCO and other project partners took media outlets along for their first day of the cleanup operation Friday morning.

Roughly 25 personnel — including uniformed deputies, behavioral health professionals, Albuquerque firefighters and city and county workers — gathered at the Durand Open Space along Isleta, south of Rio Bravo. The crew donned gloves on their hands and an abundance of trash bags, prepared to survey a mile-long stretch of the bosque.

The cleanup area was chosen based on aerial flyovers done by BCSO that identified camps in the bosque, BCSO said. Deputies then use an app on their phones to locate the encampments on the ground.

“The bosque runs the entire length of the county from south to north, and there’s a considerable amount of unauthorized campers out here and evidence of previous unauthorized camping,” Starr said. “We want to not only make sure that the area is safe, but also clean it up a little bit because we don’t need our park looking like a trash dump.”

The crew split into several small groups and found remnants of numerous encampments, including tarps, four shopping carts, a burned outdoor heater, two broken toilets and even a broken basketball hoop. But no people were found inhabiting the camps.

The primary focus of the operation was on fire prevention, but BSCO also brought their behavioral health unit to support unhoused people who may want help or resources. Starr said that while there have been arrests for encampments in the past, they’re “not very frequently” done.

“The law supports me saying ‘Leave now and if you don’t want to leave, jail,’” Starr said. “I can do that, but we’re not trying to make their difficult circumstances exponentially worse.”

During a similar cleanup operation done in the past, Starr said, over four tons of trash were removed from the bosque in one day.

As the operation continues, personnel will be sent based on the magnitude of encampments that have been identified, said Bernalillo County Solid Waste manager, Gabriel Villescas.

“Deputies assigned to our Open Space Unit are in the bosque multiple times per week,” BCSO spokesperson Jayme Gonzales said.

“While the formal operation is expected to conclude by the end of summer, our presence and enforcement efforts will continue year-round. There is no permanent solution to prevent camps from returning, but continued patrol and enforcement remain our most effective strategy to limit reoccurrence.”