Caroline Knapp rolls an old tire to her truck past a mounted target as volunteers gather near the wildcat shooting area in the Caja del Rio for a community cleanup to honor Earth Day in April. The Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and Tesuque Pueblo have formed a co-stewardship agreement for the area.
Caroline Knapp rolls an old tire to her truck past a mounted target as volunteers gather near the wildcat shooting area in the Caja del Rio for a community cleanup to honor Earth Day in April. The Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and Tesuque Pueblo have formed a co-stewardship agreement for the area.
The U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and Tesuque Pueblo have joined forces to āco-stewardā culturally significant sites across the Caja del Rio Plateau, west of Santa Fe.
A new memorandum of understanding, signed Friday, is intended to ensure tribal access to sites in the Caja del Rio and to preserve places of import, using traditional insights to help manage the land. That incudes preventing illegal dumping and desecration of sacred sites.
Law enforcement officials with Santa Fe National Forest have been addressing illegal dumping on the plateau by cleaning up sites and removing abandoned vehicles, national forest spokesperson Claudia Brookshire wrote in an email.
āWe are pleased to work with BLM and the Forest Service on this historic co-stewardship agreement. It will incorporate traditional ecological knowledge of Tesuque Pueblo into the federal governmentās management responsibilities for this unique, living, cultural landscape,ā Tesuque Pueblo Gov. Milton Herrera said in a statement.
He added, āIt will strengthen our relationship with these two federal agencies and ultimately lead to improved protection of the culturally sensitive areas within the Caja del RĆo that are important to the Pueblo.ā
The area has been caught in a struggle over a proposed power line, which some say is needed to serve the Los Alamos area and keep up operations at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Two existing power lines are expected to be at capacity within three years.
The proposed 14-mile, 115,000-volt power line would cross parts of Santa Fe National Forest, the Caja del Rio and White Rock Canyon.
An environmental assessment for the plan published earlier this year said no route would completely avoid impacts ā including noise pollution and visual disruptions ā to cultural resources. However, the Santa Fe National Forest issued a āfinding of no significant impactā for the plan earlier this year.
Brookshire wrote that the new memorandum of understanding will not have an effect on the proposed power line.
āBoth parties acknowledge [The Pueblo of Tesuque and the Santa Fe National Forest] that this collaborative model applies solely to projects initiated after the date of execution of the MOU,ā Brookshire wrote.
