"Green" Group Extends Agenda
With Massive "Wildlands" Plan

SANTA FE, N.M. — Opponents of a radical activist group which has nibbled away at grazing and timber production in the Southwest have long argued that the organization’s real agenda is much broader than it has ever admitted — nothing short of driving all productive activity off millions of acres of land.

Now the activists are gradually letting that agenda out of the closet.

The Santa Fe group, calling itself Forest Guardians, is demanding that 7.6 million acres in the southern Rockies be "protected" for the sole benefit of wildlife — including species such as grizzly bears and wolves that no longer live there.

The proposal would require steep reductions in logging and grazing between Santa Fe and Durango, Colo., and would double the amount of land set aside as wilderness in New Mexico and Colorado to nearly 4.5 million acres.

The group's "State of the Southern Rockies" report would lock away 38 percent of what it calls the "San Juan-Sangre de Cristo Bioregion." The report is one of 16 similar plans environmental activist groups are preparing that together will form the "Southwestern Wildlands Initiative."

The plan doesn't call for taking over private land — yet — but its promoters doubtless have calculated that prohibiting most productive activity on the vast stretches of public lands surrounding private parcels would render them useless.

The report was sent to more than 60 governmental agencies, Indian tribes and land grant organizations.

A few who had seen the plan by last week had mixed reactions, but mostly negative.

Bud Eppers of Roswell, president of the New Mexico Public Lands Council, said reintroducing wolves and grizzly bears would create tremendous problems for ranchers. He also said any reduction in livestock numbers means a reduction of income for ranchers.

"The livestock industry has promoted and increased habitat for numerous species of wildlife, especially the game animals that have been hunted over the years," Eppers said. "We created habitat far in excess of anything that existed 50 or 75 years ago."

The council represents about 4500 ranchers operating on federal and state trust lands in New Mexico.

The New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau in general opposes new wilderness areas and reintroducing large predators, said Erik Ness, a spokesman for the Las Cruces-based organization.

"I can pretty much assure you that whatever it says in that report, we don't agree with it," Ness said. "We still want to read it, and if there's some common ground maybe we can talk about it."

Reggie Fletcher, a veteran ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service's Southwest Region, said whether people agree with Forest Guardians or not, "we need to think about managing (the environment) at large scales. This is a good starting point."

The Forest Service has been adopting management for ecosystem health rather than for piecemeal protection of endangered species.

Fletcher opposes the sweeping call for millions of additional acres of "wilderness" setasides, arguing that it would actually defeat the group’s stated goals.

Bringing ecosystems back, Fletcher explained, could be harder if they're protected as wilderness.

"With the tools I have today, it's far easier to change that system closer to sustainability if it were not put into a hands-off area like a wilderness area," he said.

John Talberth and Bryan Bird, two authors of the plan, said they hope it will prompt government officials and others to widen their horizons in considering land management decisions.

"If you're going to protect biodiversity, you have to plan at a scale to protect a whole range of species," Talberth said.

Talberth and Bird said it would take a consensus of residents that protecting a range of wild species is important for the plan to go into effect.