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3 days ago | 
searchlightnm.org | Molly Montgomery
Often called the “lifeblood of northern New Mexico,” acequias are collectively tended, democratically governed irrigation ditches, primarily located in the north-central part of the state. The term acequia can refer either to the ditch or to the collection of people who rely on it to irrigate their crops. Those people are called parciantes.
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3 days ago | 
searchlightnm.org | Molly Montgomery
Twice last year, in the spring and fall, water burst from the Rio Santa Cruz and poured into the tiny northern New Mexico community of Santa Cruz, between Española and Chimayó. It cracked concrete ditch liners and spilled into houses and a trailer park. Irrigators along the streams are frustrated and worried about the time and money that beavers could cost them.
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2 weeks ago | 
sourcenm.com | Molly Montgomery
At first, in the haze, they look like birds, perched on fence posts along the road. But they don’t shift or take flight, and there’s one on every post for as far as I can see. They are upside-down boots. “I’m so grateful to the people who get up every day and do the work in the grueling and the awful conditions,” says Jozee Zuñiga, an environmental activist and the daughter of a man who worked in the oil fields. “But I want people to know that, yes, we depend on it. Yes, we need it.
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1 month ago | 
tricityrecordnm.com | Molly Montgomery
Meet Howard Hutchinson, a private property rights activist who is quietly organizing county-level rejection of a landmark law: the Antiquities Act of 1906 In January and February, county governments in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and North Carolina began passing resolutions containing nearly identical language. The resolutions oppose what they refer to as an “abuse” of the Antiquities Act of 1906.
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1 month ago | 
sfreporter.com | Molly Montgomery
Editor's Note: This story was originally published by searchlightnm,org
The rise of the Coalition, and Hutchinson’s political evolution, occurred alongside the rise in the 1980s and ’90s of a right-wing land-use movement called Wise Use. The movement took its name from an early twentieth-century debate between Gilford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, and John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club.
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1 month ago | 
sourcenm.com | Molly Montgomery
In January and February, county governments in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and North Carolina began passing resolutions containing nearly identical language. The resolutions oppose what they refer to as an “abuse” of the Antiquities Act of 1906. Enacted by Congress as people went west and frequently looted from historic sites, the law gave presidents the authority to protect any area on federal lands by declaring it a national monument.
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1 month ago | 
hcn.org | Molly Montgomery
This story was originally published by Searchlight New Mexico and is republished here by permission. In January and February, county governments in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and North Carolina began passing resolutions containing nearly identical language. The resolutions oppose what they refer to as an “abuse” of the Antiquities Act of 1906.
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1 month ago | 
searchlightnm.org | Molly Montgomery
In January and February, county governments in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and North Carolina began passing resolutions containing nearly identical language. The resolutions oppose what they refer to as an “abuse” of the Antiquities Act of 1906. Enacted by Congress as people went west and frequently looted from historic sites, the law gave presidents the authority to protect any area on federal lands by declaring it a national monument.
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1 month ago | 
searchlightnm.org | Molly Montgomery
The rise of the Coalition, and Hutchinson’s political evolution, occurred alongside the rise in the 1980s and ’90s of a right-wing land-use movement called Wise Use. The movement took its name from an early twentieth-century debate between Gilford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, and John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club. Muir believed that nature is a source of wonder, and that people have no right to profit economically from it.
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Mar 5, 2025 | 
organmountainnews.com | Molly Montgomery
Molly Montgomery, Searchlight New MexicoThis article was originally published by Searchlight New Mexico. A week ago, on orders from the Trump administration, federal officials began firing thousands of employees at agencies including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Energy, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Forest Service, which is part of USDA.
