Luna County Commissioners grab debate on federal lands by the horns

DEMING — “Sometimes I call this Lunatic County, because that’s how we’re acting today.”

Luna County resident Alberta Morgan expressed her frustration at the podium during an acrimonious meeting Thursday, where two non-binding proclamations jointly stirred a hornet nest’s worth of buzz and fury. The gallery seats were full as the chamber erupted at times with shouts and heckling.

The two proclamations addressed separate issues but were debated interchangeably, as if they had fused together into a single sentiment about federal management of public land and wildlife.

One proclamation backed Catron County’s recent disaster declaration over Mexican gray wolves and the other called for eliminating presidential power to designate national monuments. Both were approved after extended, rancorous debate.

Suspicions about federal authority permeated the debate. “You guys don’t like government at all,” Commissioner Ray Trejo, the lone Democrat on the commission, remarked at one point. From the back of the room, someone yelled back: “Amen to that!”

In April, Catron County commissioners declared a state of emergency based on reports of wolf sightings near residential areas and losses of cattle. The declaration complains that the federal program supporting recovery of gray wolf populations has “continually lied about the nature of Mexican wolves.”

The county called for state and federal resources to help mitigate cattlegrowers’ losses and even for the deployment of the state National Guard “to protect the county’s livestock, inhabitants and to provide wolf conflict avoidance.”

Tom Patterson, president-elect of the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association, said, “We’ve had a crisis with wolves killing our livestock.” He further claimed that a growing population of wolves whose movements are not tracked by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are becoming used to humans, enhancing the possibility of dangerous wolf-human interactions.

Trejo repeatedly asked for data corroborating claims of increased stalking of people by wolves and livestock depredation, while pushing back on speculation that Mexican wolves are present in Luna County.

State Rep. Nathan Small, D-Las Cruces, pointed out that sweeping cuts to federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture had harmed programs aiming to help livestock producers co-exist with the natural predators on public land.

The commission’s two Republicans, Chairwoman Colette Chandler and Commissioner Christie Ann Harvey, approved the proclamation over Trejo’s dissent, concurring with Catron County’s emergency declaration and echoing its requests for financial and military support in response to the wolves.

“They are in the middle of a crisis situation,” Chandler said, “and so they want to know, ‘Are people supporting us?’”

The other measure was a proclamation calling on Congress to amend the 1906 Antiquities Act so that national monuments may only be designated by Congress, with the approval of local authorities.

Catron, Otero, Hidalgo and Sierra counties have passed similar resolutions, which do not have the power to amend federal law. Matching proclamations, sometimes presenting identical language, have been approved by counties in Arizona, Utah and North Carolina.

Chandler and Harvey have pressed for a local proclamation in recent months, stoking debate across a county with a majority of its acreage held either by state or federal government. The debate unfolded as the Trump administration is mulling boundaries and protections for six national monuments, including the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in neighboring Doña Ana County.

Additionally, on Wednesday U.S. Senate Republicans introduced the proposed sale of 3.3 million acres of federal land in 11 states, including New Mexico, to a budget reconciliation bill. The move renewed a push by Western state conservatives to reduce federal ownership of lands and move them into private ownership for easier development.

Harvey, who led a recent rewrite of the proposed proclamation, emphasized that she was not seeking to eliminate any national monument designations.

“I am for amending the authority of any single president, regardless of sitting party, to make that decision,” she said. “I tried to find a common ground and what I believe is a fair way to do it.”