Its license plates boast fairly: New Mexico is an enchanted landscape. And thanks to Aldo Leopold, it is also the birthplace of wilderness in America. It is home to some of richest biological diversity and most spectacular beauty on the North American continent. But New Mexico conservationists race against time, dirt bikes and feverish resource exploitation to save the best of it.

The Campaign for New Mexico Wilderness
The cultural, scenic and biological spectacle that is New Mexico spreads across 77.7 million acres. Almost 26 million of those acres are part of America's public lands. And though remote, wild places abound, only around 1.6 million acres are protected as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Wilderness Society and its conservation partners have identified much, much more and intend to protect it.
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Cabezon Country Wilderness
North of Albuquerque lies the Cabezon Country, a transition zone between the forested slopes of Mt. Taylor and the drainages of the Arroyo Chico and Rio Puerco. It is full of wildlife and full of wilderness, including a cluster of wilderness study areas and other wilderness quality lands. New Mexico wilderness advocates are working to map it, describe it and defend it.
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Otero Mesa
The Otero Mesa sits in south central New Mexico, just north of the Texas and Mexican borders. It is a big, splendid expanse of Chihuahuan Desert grassland and supports a great diversity of native plants and wildlife. It is also squarely in the crosshairs of the oil and gas industry, which is eager to turn it into a full-blown industrial oil field. New Mexico conservationists have a better idea, a wild one.
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Valles Caldera National Preserve and the Valles Caldera Coalition
The rim of a collapsed volcano surrounds the 89,000-acre Valles Caldera Preserve in the Jemez Mountains of Northern New Mexico. Within it is one of the most beautiful and ecologically productive landscapes in northern New Mexico and a place of extraordinary cultural richness. It is owned by the American people, with a trust set up to manage it. A coalition has formed to advocate for and monitor the Preserve.
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Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument
Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, designated in 2001, encompasses over 4000 acres of land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, with additional lands of the Pueblo de Cochiti. The BLM will begin its planning process for the Monument in 2003. The Wilderness Society will participate actively in the process and will pay particular attention to travel management issues.
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