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Otero Mesa is more than just a place to me. It’s a sanctuary, it’s a place of peace, understanding, reliability, not only for me, but animals of all sorts, as far as spirits go. I felt spiritually reborn; I am concerned for its spiritual well-being. Like a seed it needs care, patience, time, it needs nutrition, not only to a certain extent but for it to be completely pure it needs natural resources to be as providing as possible, it still feeds on its instinctive well-being.

Who are we to contaminate that?

My dream is to keep it pure, pure of bad spirit, pure of unwanted corruption, pure of contamination and for its natural elements to remain. It was not only a stronghold fortress but a place of spiritual renewal and visionary aspects, a place of mental sanity. I can feel it just looking at pictures and remembering the present smells, the sights, the calming sensations of the neutral atmosphere. When I first got the privilege to go visit the place for the first time, I was excited. I couldn’t wait to go, and I knew it would mean the best to go dressed in my cultural clothing, knowing that moccasins haven’t stepped foot on the natural desert terrain for generations. It was something very special to me. A feeling that goes deep into spiritual meaning, a movement that would take away any value that money could never buy. My ancestors presence and to relive the patience of the true nature of our people, my abalone shell on my chest, the buckskin fringes on my dress, the feathers in my hair and the hide under my feet. We were one and we were home, I could feel it. The crunch of rocks and sand underneath my feet, and the sight of the cliffs reaching for the sky. It was all too perfect, like a missing puzzle piece put into place or a diamond in the rough. Those are the best kind. I can see why wildlife is so isolated there, because it’s the strength that Otero Mesa provides, its security.

Dawn, and mist hold the desert, solid cold holds the cliffs. Thousands of exotic desert plants, rocks, grasses and carved-in petroglyphs in visions of our past. A place of focus, a place of spiritual understanding, a place of vision and like any other colorful canvas, a masterpiece of Apache culture. In my eyes, one of the purest in New Mexico wild land, a piece of No Man’s Land. Owned truly of Apache spirit. The consumption of its natural resources, of its maintained minerals will not be used for humanity needs. Never will I see this place be un-naturally treated. Not while I’m alive.

If you would like to learn about how you can help protect Otero Mesa e-mail: apachevoice@aol.com. Visit our beautiful and informative website: Oteromesa.org

Tribal and environmental leaders lobbied the Obama administration this week to designate a national monument on more than a million acres in southern New Mexico, a sacred land to some that contains one of the United States’ most intact and ecologically diverse desert grasslands.

Members of the Mescalero Apache Tribe in southeast New Mexico and a leader of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance met with Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation and Interior Department officials to urge protections for Otero Mesa from hardrock mining and oil and gas drilling, which they say threatens the area’s natural values and could harm drinking water.

The 1.2-million-acre area near the Texas border is believed to be the largest and most primitive Chihuahuan Desert grassland left on public lands and is home to 1,000 native species including mule deer, mountain lion, black-tailed prairie dogs and eagles, according to monument supporters.

“I go down to Otero Mesa and I get this powerful feeling that I know came from my ancestors,” said Ted Rodriguez, commissioner of the Mescalero Gaming Commission and a tribal elder. “For me it wasn’t a tourist journey. For me it was a spiritual journey.”

A coalition of environmental groups including the Wilderness Society, World Wildlife Fund and Audubon Society have joined in asking Obama to use his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate a national monument.

While Obama has yet to use the act, a leaked Bureau of Land Management memo in early 2010 indicated Otero Mesa was among roughly a dozen sites the administration believes qualify for a monument designation if it carries local support.

But while national monuments have been designated by 15 of the past 18 presidents, the act has come under attack from many Western lawmakers, who argue states and Congress should have greater say in its use. Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), who represents the area where Otero Mesa is located, is among the critics.

“When conserving our natural resources, it is important to have a balanced approach that includes local priorities, such as jobs, the economy, private property and support,” said Pearce spokesman Eric Layer in an email. “Unfortunately, Washington has proven to lack embodiment of these key principles when it comes to federal land management. Before making a determination, the federal government should seek the input of the county, cities and all local residents and stakeholders.”

But while not all officials are on board locally, including some county commissioners and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R), Otero Mesa’s unique history, abundant water resources and biologically diverse grasslands belong to all Americans, said Nathan Newcomer, associate director for the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.

“Otero Mesa is a national issue, it’s not just a New Mexico issue,” he said. “It’d be right for the president to step up and say ‘Here’s this broad local support. People have been fighting for this area locally for a very long time. Since Congress can’t get anything done, I have the authority to protect this area.’”

The group met this week with staff for Democratic New Mexico Reps. Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich, Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D) and Tom Udall (D), as well as Interior lands and minerals officials to make their case.

“They were very appreciative of our time,” Newcomer said of his meeting yesterday with Interior. “They said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing.’”

The meeting, which was the first between Interior and Mescaleros, addressed some of the potential difficulties of creating a national monument, including likely opposition from Pearce, Newcomer said.

“I told them that even with those difficulties, the positive side of this is thousands and thousands of New Mexicans who have fought for decades to stop oil and gas development,” he said. Interior “recognized that there was a lot of support.”

A land of multiple uses

While the area offers spiritual sanctuary for some, with American Indian petroglyphs and rock dwellings, a mining company believes it could also safely produce important minerals, while creating jobs, on the mesa’s highest mountain.

Denver-based Geovic Mining Inc. has staked mining claims over 5 square miles in the Otero Mesa area. Last month, conservationists like Newcomer became alarmed when they discovered that the company had more than doubled its claims.

While the area is rich in resources like uranium and lithium, Geovic is particularly interested in eudialyte, a red mineral containing zirconium and rare earths, a group of elements essential in manufacturing numerous technologies and whose demand is expected to increase in the coming years.

“If this exploration project works out the way we expect,” said company founder William Buckovic in a statement, “it will enable production of many key ingredients for materials essential to new green technology and national defense system industries, with limited impact on our environment.”

Although the 1872 mining law gives companies wide latitude to mine on federal land, declaring Otero Mesa a national monument could deal a blow to the company’s plans.

“If you create a national monument now that’s going to trigger the Bureau of Land Management to go through validity analysis, which they would have to conduct specifically for those claims,” Newcomer said. “It’s also going to force the company to go through more hoops, if you will, to try to produce those claims.”

Jack Sherborne, president of new ventures for Geovic, said company leaders are aware of the push to designate the area as a national monument.

“Any mining activity would be more difficult to do than it would be otherwise,” he said. “It may be so difficult to do that it may not be plausible to do.”

Sherborne takes pains to stress the limited nature of the company’s exploration program, he said, designed to avoid more sensitive areas, including land designated by the Bureau of Land Management as an area of critical environmental concern.

“Honestly I don’t trust them,” Newcomer said. “And what I think is going to happen, if they can prove the resource is high, they’re going to say, ‘Look, we’ve hit the jackpot.’”

Not only are American Indians concerned about protecting what they identify as an ancestral homeland, they worry mining will contaminate water resources for decades to come.

“If mining or any kind of drilling or anything like that, it’s going to contaminate the water,” Rodriguez said. “We don’t want that contaminated whatsoever.”

Political stakes

The Obama administration has come under increasing pressure from environmentalists and former Interior officials to use his national monument powers to protect threatened areas including Otero Mesa and Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a push that has met opposition from many lawmakers who say Congress and states should make those decisions.

Former Clinton administration Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt this month said the threat of a national monument alone may be enough to spur lawmakers to pass their own land conservation bills.

But while Clinton designated 19 national monuments, all but one of those were announced during his second term. His first designation of the 1.7-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah in September 1996 set off a firestorm of criticism from Utah lawmakers and some local residents that has simmered to this day.

The Otero County Commission in spring issued an ordinance expressing concern that “potential federal management plans may reduce or deny citizens of Otero County the ability to pursue historic deeds, such as grazing, native gathering, agricultural wood harvesting, natural plant harvesting.”

Protection advocates described the move as progress, signaling county openness to addressing the issue. They say local farmers and ranchers need not be worried about a monument designation affecting their livelihood.

But monument supporters concede they have very little chance of garnering the support of Martinez or Pearce, who is also a co-sponsor of H.R. 302, which would require the president to gain the consent of the state before designating a monument.

Jude McCartin, spokeswoman for Bingaman, said the senator is listening carefully to all the stakeholders who use Otero Mesa, but is not ready to endorse a monument designation.

“Senator Bingaman hopes very much that whatever the BLM does, it does nothing to degrade that watershed or that aquifer,” she said, referring to the 15 million acre-feet of drinking water believed to underlie the mesa, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

For now, Bingaman is deferring to the White House on any potential designations, McCartin said, adding that the senator has sponsored a pair of bills to designate wilderness and conservation areas in other parts of New Mexico.

By Ted Rodriguez, Alfred LaPaz, Larry Shay, Houston Murphy, and Styve Homnick / Mescalero Apache Advocates For Otero Mesa National Monument

Until a few months ago only a handful of the curious knew the importance of Otero Mesa to the Apache. Otero Mesa is one of the most sacred of places, if not the holiest, to us Apache.

From time immemorial we have had profound ties to this enchanted land.

Historically, Apache country spanned from Western Texas to Eastern Arizona and deep into Northern Mexico. We shared all of New Mexico with the Pueblos.

Otero Mesa is centrally located in the heart of all this, 40 miles south as the crow flies from the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation. Our ancestors lived here peacefully for many hundreds of years.

Our people were nomadic and we left very few traces, with Otero Mesa being the exception.

In our language, we call ourselves N’dé, “the people,” and like nowhere else, we left behind some of the most fascinating and mystical petroglyphs in America. Here rising majestically out of the Mesa floor, Alamo Mountain harbors our ancestral rock paintings that confess to our fears, our struggles, our joy and our religious faith.

We made seasonal villages on Otero Mesa. We hunted and gathered medicinal herbs, celebrated in ancient song and dance, intermarried with other Apache bands and we worshipped Usen, the creator of the heavens and the earth.

We are a proud monotheistic people. To us Apache, Otero Mesa is our cathedral.

No other ethnic people in North American history have suffered so much from stereotypes as the Apache.

We were described as “bloodthirsty savages” for defending our land from invaders who respected neither our culture nor our faith. Today we live on reservations hidden away to what is left to us of our beloved mountains and plains. Still we struggle.

For most of the past decade, a coalition of groups has worked successfully to safeguard the grasslands, wildlife and freshwater resources of Otero Mesa from full-scale oil and gas drilling. Now, however, a new and even more volatile threat has emerged for this sacred land – hard rock mining.

A plan to mine for so-called “rare earth” minerals has the potential to significantly alter this landscape, but what is rarer than this earth that we hold so sacred?

Just 60 miles south of Otero Mesa in Hudspeth County, Texas, a rare earth mine is already in the early stages of what will likely become a vast open-pit mine. Something of that magnitude has absolutely no place in the heart of Otero Mesa, and this is why it is our mission to support the movement to preserve Otero Mesa as a national monument and ensure that our ancestral homelands are protected.

Our advocacy group is comprised of Mescalero Apache traditional elders and community leaders.

Combined, we have experience serving on the tribal council and various tribal committees and youth programs. We are employed by our local school system and serve in law enforcement. We maintain a Mescalero Apache Mountain Spirit Dance group. As concerned citizens, we wish to share the sacred nature of Otero Mesa with not only our children but also with youths from all cultures and nations.

From World War I up through the present, thousands of Apache men and women fought as U.S. soldiers to protect not only America, but foreign lands from invasion. Now we respectfully ask President Obama, through the American Antiquities Act of 1906, to protect this precious piece of land as a national monument.

Let us take you there! It is a beautiful land!

Click here to read the full letter, and please call Congressman Heinrich to thank him for standing up for Otero Mesa.

 In Albuquerque: 505-346-6781

In Washington, D.C.: 202-225-6316

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 5, 2011

CONTACT:
Nathan Newcomer, New Mexico Wilderness Alliance 505-250-4225
John Cornell, New Mexico Wildlife Federation 575-740-1759

New Mexico Wilderness Alliance* The Wilderness Society*
Southwest Environmental Center* New Mexico Wildlife Federation*
National Wildlife Federation* Sierra Club* The Audubon Society*
Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership* Restoring Eden*
Environment New Mexico* Apache Advocates for Otero Mesa*

For nearly a decade, the Coalition for Otero Mesa has worked to safeguard the fragile grasslands, abundant wildlife, and freshwater resources of this rare landscape from full-scale oil and gas drilling. Now, the volatile threat of hardrock mining in the region has grown exponentially.

In January of this year, the Coalition discovered 68 mining claims had been staked in the heart of Otero Mesa, but now that number has nearly tripled to 183 claims. Denver-based Geovic Mining Corp, also majority owner of the largest cobalt-producing operation in the world (based in Cameroon, Africa), is the lead company seeking to mine for zirconium and other rare earth minerals. This type of mining operation could destroy Otero Mesa’s rare and fragile ecosystem, seriously damaging wildlife habitat, soil composition and underground aquifers in the region.

“Otero Mesa is an extraordinarily rare landscape, and if this project moves forward, we could ultimately see the poisoning of our groundwater and the complete removal of the iconic mountains in this beautiful grassland,” said Nathan Newcomer, Associate Director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. “Hardrock mining has absolutely no place in the heart of Otero Mesa.”

On April 21st, Geovic Mining Corp filed for a “Minimal Impact Exploration Permit Application” with the State Mining and Minerals Division. However, obtaining a state mining permit does not necessarily satisfy the obligation to obtain other federal, state and local permits. The company is proposing to drill 10 test wells, with the majority of them on the slopes of the iconic Wind Mountain. All of the pending mining operations are either within proposed wilderness areas or proposed Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC).1

“To us Apache, Otero Mesa is our cathedral,” said Ted Rodriguez, speaking on behalf of the Apache Advocates for Otero Mesa. “This hardrock mining plan for so-called “rare earth” minerals has the potential to significantly alter the landscape, but what is more rare than this earth that we N’de hold so sacred?” Mr. Rodriguez is also the Headman of the Mescalero Apache Traditional Elders Council and serves on various tribal committees.

Otero Mesa is an ecologically rich area home to 1,000 native wildlife species, including mule deer, mountain lion, black-tailed prairie dogs, golden and bald eagles, over 200 species of migratory songbirds, and boasts the state’s healthiest and only genetically pure herd of pronghorn antelope. Otero Mesa sits above the Salt Basin Aquifer, which is suspected to be the largest, untapped, fresh water aquifer left in the state of New Mexico. The area also has a long history of cultural use and significance, which includes the estimated 20,000 petroglyphs on Alamo Mountain, historic ruins of the Butterfield Overland Stagecoach, and numerous archeological sites.

“Otero Mesa has been a special place for Southern New Mexico Sportsmen for many generations,” said John Cornell of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation. “Hard rock mining, in any form, would have a serious negative impact on wildlife, habitat and the salt basin aquifer.”

Protection for Otero Mesa enjoys broad support locally and nationally. Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson previously proposed a more than 600,000-acre National Conservation Area and has called on the BLM to conduct a new inventory of the area’s wilderness potential. Resolutions of support have come from the cities of Las Cruces and El Paso, Dona Ana County, and the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Tribe. Permanent protection has also been endorsed by former Lt. Governor Diane Denish, former State Secretary of Energy, Minerals & Natural Resources Joanna Prukop, and many state representatives, state senators, county commissioners, city councilors, archaeological societies, religious leaders, and local residents. Furthermore, Governor Bill Richardson asked the Obama administration to designate the area a national monument before leaving office.

For more information on the values of Otero Mesa and efforts to ensure its protection for future generations, visit www.oteromesa.org

###

[1] Citizens participating in the BLM’s preparation of a resource management plan governing millions of acres in Southern New Mexico found portions of Otero Mesa to meet the criteria for designation as wilderness under the Wilderness Act of 1964, and asked the BLM to protect these values. In addition, citizens have proposed protection of the grassland ecosystem through designation of an Area of Critical Environmental Concern, which the agency uses to protect lands with special scientific, natural, cultural and scenic resources. Otero Mesa has been highlighted from acreage encompassing three counties for its incomparable values because it not only merits special protection, but also needs to be safeguarded.

Nathan Newcomer
Associate Director
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
142 Truman St. Suite B1
Albuquerque, NM 87108
505-843-8696, ext. 106
505-843-8697 fax
www.nmwild.org