By Cathy Cook, Albuquerque Journal
December 12, 2024
A 3,400-acre section of the Caja del Rio Plateau near Santa Fe will be protected from mining, new transmission lines or major thoroughfares for the next 20 years.
State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard created the protections with an executive order Wednesday.
The 106,000-acre Caja del Rio is a checkerboard of federal and state lands that are home to wildlife like elk, bear and golden eagles, and an area where people have traditionally picked piñon, grazed cattle and performed religious ceremonies.
“This special place is our grocery store. This is where we gather our edible plants. This is our pharmacy, where we gather our medicinal plants. This is our church, where we go to pray,” said Pueblo of Tesuque Gov. Milton Herrera.
The Caja del Rio includes thousands of sacred sites, petroglyphs and irrigation systems. The area has cultural significance for the Pueblos of Cochiti, Tesuque and San Ildefonso, as well as Hispano communities such as Agua Fria, La Cienega and La Bajada.
Dignitaries like Santa Fe County Commissioner Anna Hansen and former Santa Fe City Councilor Carmichael Dominguez praised the executive order and urged President Joe Biden to protect Caja del Rio further by designating it a national monument before he leaves office.
“It is a place of spiritual refuge for many and a place in deep need of protection from numerous threats, including wildcat shooting on BLM and Forest Service land that has left a legacy of lead and other toxic substances behind that must be cleaned up for the protection of our wildlife and groundwater,” Hansen said.
The All Pueblo Council of Governors, Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber and the Santa Fe County Commission have all called on Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to designate a new national monument protecting the Caja del Rio. Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich, who sits on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, echoed that call Tuesday.
“Tribes, traditional communities, the County of Santa Fe, sportsmen, hikers, birders, and countless New Mexicans all want to see the Caja protected as a national monument,” Heinrich said in a statement. “I join them in calling on Secretary Haaland to make sure this landscape is protected and restored for generations of New Mexicans to come.”
Along with protecting 3,487 surface acres, the state land commissioner’s order protects 5,523 acres of mineral rights within the Caja del Rio. There are no active mining leases on the state lands, but there is mining in Caja del Rio on federal lands, said the Rev. Andrew Black with the National Wildlife Federation.
The order does not prevent traditional land uses like hunting, fishing, grazing, wood gathering and pilgrimages.
The order also will not prevent a planned 12-mile transmission line meant to upgrade the electrical power capacity for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the area. The plans for that transmission line do not affect state land but would be on U.S. Forest Service land in the Caja del Rio.
In September, the Forest Service issued a draft decision of “no significant impact” from the proposed transmission line.
The All Pueblo Council of Governors has called on the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration to pause the project until a tribally led ethnographic study can be completed to assess how the transmission line could impact cultural resources.
Many Pueblo communities have connections to the Caja del Rio, said Pueblo Action Alliance Program Director Reyes DeVore.
“It holds history. It holds migration stories, and those are ancestral, historical pieces of how Pueblo people have connection to the area. However, that spirit and that power still exists there today,” DeVore said.
This article originally appeared in the Albuquerque Journal.