Las Cruces leaders vow to defend national monument

LAS CRUCES — Reports that the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument is on a short list of designations under target by the Trump administration have riled New Mexico’s congressional delegation as well as Las Cruces leaders involved in the monument’s designation by President Barack Obama nearly 11 years ago.

“I don’t think it can be overstated how strong a connection there is between our community and our mountains,” state Sen. Jeff Steinborn, a Las Cruces Democrat who was among the monument’s original proponents, told the Journal. “It’s really beloved.”

Sarah Silva, who was among the early community advocates for the monument, was recently elected as a Democrat to the New Mexico Legislature representing House District 53, where OMDP sits on nearly 500,000 acres encompassing mountain ranges with petroglyphs and other archeological sites, wildlife areas and popular spaces for horseback riding, camping and hiking.

Silva said she would defend the monument “with whatever power I have.”

Since President Donald Trump began his second term in January, rumors have swirled in Washington that the president was contemplating new executive orders targeting some national monuments. Such a move would echo his 2017 order, during his first term, to drastically shrink two national monuments in Utah: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. The order was later reversed by President Joe Biden.

The OMDP, as well as the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument near Taos, were also considered for reduction, prompting a visit from then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke that summer to meet with political leaders, ranchers, sportsmen and other members of the community. Ultimately, the boundaries for both monuments were left unchanged.

This week, New Mexico’s all-Democratic delegation signed on to a letter, with Sen. Martin Heinrich the lead author, calling on the White House to leave New Mexico’s monuments as they are, calling them “culturally valuable, archeologically and geologically unique.” They also pointed to a $3.2 billion outdoor recreation economy for New Mexico, with visitation surpassing initial projections by more than half.

But on Thursday, reporting from The Washington Post and Public Domain indicated that the OMDP was on a list of six national monuments that might be reviewed by the new administration. A leaked draft of a strategic plan set out priorities at the Interior under Secretary Doug Burgum, emphasizing fossil fuel and mineral extraction and easing costs of grazing on public land.

Patrick Nolan, director of the nonprofit Friends of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, which advocates for conservation, education and economic development based around the monument, doubted there was much potential for resource production within the monument.

“The mining and energy extraction narrative is, I think, a distraction,” Nolan said. “I think the true intention here is to dismantle the public lands system and signal this administration’s intention to roll back conservation lands.”

Instead, Nolan argued that changes to the monument would upset efforts over a decade to cultivate an outdoor recreation economy that has helped define Las Cruces and Doña Ana County.

“In 10 years, it has shown to be an economically successful story. Visitation has almost tripled,” he said. “We would strongly prefer to keep the boundaries as is.”

“Any president that would seek to undermine any national monument anywhere in America shows a lack of appreciation for the value that those protected lands have for those communities,” Steinborn said.

He also argued that a decision to change the monument’s boundaries would be illegal under the Antiquities Act of 1906, the law enabling national monument designations but not — according to Steinborn and some legal experts — provide for reducing or revoking them.

The administration’s military deployment at the U.S.-Mexico border was an additional factor Silva suggested might motivate actions targeting the monument’s boundaries. A U.S. Army camp located in Doña Ana County near Chaparral, previously used to shelter Afghan refugees, might be repurposed to house migrants as part of the administration’s mass deportation policy, she suggested, given its proximity to Fort Bliss in El Paso.

“This national monument has support across party lines and ideologies,” Silva said. “These are lands that we all enjoy. I hunt and forage and hike in them. I’ve hiked the Potrillos since I was a kid. … What I’m ideologically opposed to is the federal government coming in and telling us that we cannot protect our public lands in the way we see fit.”

Steinborn said any move to change the OMDP’s boundaries would be met with opposition, whether it was through a public process through the Interior Department or a legal challenge to an executive order.

“Our community will rally, as they always have, for our public lands,” he said.