Stretching from the lower reaches of the Rio Grande River to the Mogollon Rim of the Gila and Blue Mountains of southwest New Mexico and southeast Arizona is the place I call Earth. It s also the environment I embrace as home. It s a dry, choking, and starving slice of the Chihuahuan Desert for those unfamiliar with its quiet beauty and solemn solitude. Our problems are as grand as the scenery and landscape of this small stretch of the lower Rio Grande. We have a river that is ailing from too much damming and irrigation, and wolves that ache to return to a niche denied them for 100 years by traps, guns, and human fear.
People are angry.
They want a Rio Grande that is more than a muddy flat, and livelier than a shallow chocolate flow when the dam gates at Elephant Butte Reservoir to the north close. They also long by an overwhelming majority statewide to hear the wailful howl of the lone lobo echo once again across the desert mountains. Instead, the Southwest Environmental Center and its allies look to the farmers to save the lower Rio Grande and the ranchers to bring the lobo back home to restore the earth in a way that counts and lasts. It s a tale worthy of Earth Day, one that tells how problems can be solved through incentives, community solidarity, and a constructive use of human nature rather than government regulation or prohibition. Consider the Mexican wolf.