![]() Native musicians and mariachis will provide a live soundtrack, and an Aldo Leopold impersonator will be on hand to teach kids about the history of wilderness. Held in Albuquerque’s Civic Plaza, the family-oriented fair highlights the recreational side of wilderness with a fishing pond, archery, storytelling, and other camp favorites. The big draw, however, is the free Get Wild Festival, on Saturday, October 18. ![]() Conference-goers looking for a breath of fresh air can take field trips to bike or paddle along the Río Grande, and downtown Albuquerque’s art deco KiMo Theatre will host two screenings of the People’s Wilderness Film Gala, whose documentary lineup (including The Color of Wilderness, by Hopi filmmaker Victor Masayesva, and The Wildest Act, a retrospective) captures conservationist history along with abundant natural beauty. The program is divided into six areas of interest, including science, history, and “experience”-a track whose subjects range from the economic benefits of wilderness to storytelling and wilderness photography classes. Though this year’s conference offers a rare chance for national wilderness luminaries to gather, there’s plenty to attract casual outdoorsy folk. “Leopold was a great writer and thinker,” said Las Cruces City Councilman Nathan Small, who was part of the effort to create Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks and will participate in a panel at the conference alongside UNM professor Gregory Cajete. (To read more, see July’s “In Leopold’s Foot-steps,” /leopold100). The choice of state is significant: In 1924, long before a national wilderness system was created, an undeveloped swath of the Gila National Forest became the world’s first protected wilderness, thanks to Aldo Leopold, a Forest Service employee who had once fished for trout in its spruce-shaded mountain streams. This fall marks the gold standard’s golden anniversary, when naturalists nationwide will once again turn their attention to New Mexico-this time to Albuquerque, where the National Wilderness Conference, October 15–19, celebrates the Wilderness Act’s 50th year. “It’s the gold standard of land conservation,” Allison said. Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks contains eight wilderness study areas vying for congressional protection under the Wilderness Act of 1964, which would permanently render them, in the law’s poetic language, land “untrammeled by man, in which man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” If approved, explained Mark Allison, executive director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, the study areas would join some 1.65 million acres of designated wilderness across New Mexico- 2 percent of the state’s total land-“where there aren’t roads, where there’s not motorized travel, where there’s not oil wells.” He noted that the monument would help to preserve a wealth of archaeological sites-as did last year’s creation of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, at the state’s northern extreme.Įven as they cheered the announcement, however, many conservationists hoped to press further. There are even plant species that don’t grow anywhere else in the world.” ![]() “Deer and antelope roam,” the president said. Forming an arc around Las Cruces and the Mesilla Valley, the monument is the newest and largest to be designated under President Obama, who nearly broke into “Home on the Range” while singing southern New Mexico’s praises. In May, nearly half a million acres on the northern fringe of the Chihuahuan Desert, ribbed with granite peaks, alpine woodlands, and volcanic cinder cones, were brought together as the Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks National Monument.
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