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Support Pro-wilderness Candidates

One of the major gauges in voting for candidates for our next Senator or U.S. Representative should be if they support the Citizens’ Wilderness and National Conservation Area Proposal for the Organ Mountains. This is the only concrete way to preserve the Organ Mountains for future generations. Congressman Pearce is the one of most odious anti-Wilderness candidates in New Mexico history. He is a throw back to New Mexican Senator and Interior Secretary Albert Fall of the 1910s and 1920s, who like Congressman Pearce was an advocate for selling off all public lands to the highest bidder or biggest campaign contributors. He will open the Organ Mountains to ATVs, mining operations, housing developments, etc. He supports a pseudo-wilderness scheme pushed by a vociferous minority. Pearce poses an unprecedented threat to the forests, wilderness areas, and wildlife refuges of New Mexico. At the same time, protecting these natural places is more important now than ever before. Senator Bingaman needs to advance this proposal. Senator Domenici is retiring and still has a chance to do the right thing.

So contact the other candidates (Tom Udall, Heather Wilson, Bill McCamley, Harry Teague, Aubrey Dunn, Jr., Greg Sowards, Ed Tinsley, Monty Newman and C. Earl Greer) to find out where they stand on this important issue. An overwhelming number of Las Cruces residents support the proposal. We should vote for candidates who support our view as a community. It was President Ronald Reagan, who signed 43 wilderness bills into law designating a net total of 10.6 million acres that said it best: “I just have to believe that with love for our natural heritage and a firm resolve to preserve it with wisdom and care, we can and will give the American land to our children, not impaired, but enhanced.”

Greg Lennes
Las Cruces

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