Public Lands Protections and Advocacy

Rivers & Birds has successfully advocated for the largest land and watershed protections in the history of Taos County. In 2009, after recognizing that one section of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains had been neglected for permanent protection, Rivers & Birds organized culturally diverse community support around this roadless jewel, helping local Native American and Hispanic leaders persuade the U.S. Congress to designate the 45,000-acre Columbine Hondo Wilderness in 2014. This Wilderness is a very important watershed for the Rio Grande corridor and is a source of clean air for New Mexico.

Rivers & Birds was also the local organizer who united citizens and governments to support the designation of our 242,000-acre Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in 2013 which protects a quarter-million acres of stunning landscape along the Rio Grande gorge.

In 2019, we joined our conservation partners in celebrating Northern New Mexico’s most recent collaborative land protection success with the passage of the 13,420-acre Cerro del Yuta Wilderness Area and the 8,120-acre Rio San Antonio Wilderness Area.

Thank you to everyone who helped make these a reality!

Mother Earth nourishes us and inspires peace, beauty, and wonder in all of  our lives. We believe in working proactively to honor the natural world.

Protecting our natural heritage is part of preserving Northern New Mexico’s rich geology, wildlife, natural history, cultural heritage, and threatened watersheds.

We thank all who contribute financially to empower Rivers & Birds’ successful efforts in honoring Nature and our public lands and waters.

To succeed in winning Congressional land protection bills, united community support that involves national, state, and local supporters is key. Local grassroots organizations like Rivers & Birds are invaluable for bringing this support together.

Taos Pueblo, local Acequias, Hispanic Land Grant Associations, local ranchers who have a long history of living respectfully with the natural world have consistently joined us in requesting permanent protections for our local public lands.

We applaud our New Mexico Congressional Delegation, past and present who advocate for conservation protections for New Mexico’s land and water heritage.  Former Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, Senators Martin Heinrich, and Ben Ray Luján and Congresswomen Teresa Leger Fernandez and Melanie Stansbury are our Congressional heroes consistently working with local environmental grassroots efforts to gain permanent conservation protection bills for New Mexico’s federal lands and waters.

 All local Governments including Taos Pueblo, Taos County, the Towns of Taos and Red River, and the Village of Questa as well as hundreds of local businesses routinely vote to protect the environment of our local federal lands.

We also thank the many nationwide and statewide environmental groups that collaborate with us closely to make these land protections a success.

It is a gift to unite with our greater human family in this way to see that our natural heritage is forever protected for the benefit of present and future generations.

Rivers & Birds continues to identify and monitor public lands that have potential for the higher protections.

Be sure to explore this interactive map that details all of the other designated wilderness areas in the United States: U.S. Wilderness Areas.