County is acting wisely to protect the Caja

Public lands such as the Caja del Rio must be protected, not only as a means to safeguard our state’s rich history, but also to forge a more equitable public lands future.

Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project extends a sincere thank-you to the Santa Fe Board of County Commissioners for voting unanimously in support of a resolution to preserve this landscape for its “profound cultural, historical, archaeological, and ecological significance,” and sees this as an invaluable step toward helping our communities reconnect with our cultural and natural heritage for generations to come.

The Caja del Rio plateau west of Santa Fe is a window into New Mexico’s rich and complex history. Millennia-old petroglyphs and ancient Pueblo cultural sites throughout the plateau shed light on the reverence Indigenous communities have held for these lands long before colonial times. Spanish land grant settlements also heavily relied on the Caja’s natural resources and influenced the landscape. Pueblo nations and traditional Hispanic communities still rely on these lands today to practice their cultural heritage.

Protecting the Caja del Rio ensures these communities can exercise their traditional lifeways. The landscape serves as a living history book, preserving traditional ecological and cultural knowledge of the area. As we look toward the future, it is vital we not forget this past.

The movement to protect the Caja del Rio is an opportunity to retrieve our forgotten history to produce a better future in New Mexico.

Nuestra Tierra’s national monuments fellow, Gabaccia Moreno, sees the long-term protection of the Caja del Rio not only as a way to conserve its history, but also as a way to make the area more accessible in the future: “If we collectively value the resources and histories found around the Caja, then we agree they deserve proper protections and regulations, so that we may keep this local gift accessible to all peoples today and tomorrow.”

As more and more people look back to the Caja del Rio’s rich history, we begin to see the necessary path forward of creating a robust movement to protect public lands that benefits everyone, not just a few. The Caja del Rio is at risk of being left behind to development interests, and along with it, all the historic, cultural and ecological knowledge it holds. The struggle to protect the Caja del Rio presents us with an opportunity to reflect and retrieve what is at risk of being left behind in order to secure a better tomorrow for future generations of land stewards.

The county commissioners’ decision exemplifies what the future of conservation looks like — it is community-led rather than top-down. In 2021, the Biden administration issued the America The Beautiful executive order that propelled the U.S. to join other countries on the path of protecting 30 percent of its lands and 30 percent of its oceans by the year 2030.

While this national-level order was visionary in its scope and ambition, it cannot be achieved without locally led efforts. The Santa Fe community, its spiritual leaders, New Mexico conservation organizations, tribal organizations and the County Commission are showing what conservation efforts everywhere need to be: highly collaborative, locally driven and diverse.

Protecting the Caja del Rio is an opportunity to reengage with our past to create public-lands infrastructure in our state that is expansive and accessible for all New Mexicans now and into the future, especially those of us from historically excluded communities.

This piece was originally published in the Santa Fe New Mexican, March 8, 2022.