New Mexico Mercury

Insight New Mexico - Chris Wilson

V.B. Price talks with historian, professor and award-winning author Chris Wilson about rethinking and re-branding cities in an effort to survive and what Albuquerque can glean from Santa Fe's historical re-branding success.

Pearce, Fossil Fuels, and Climate Change

How culpable are the Republican Party and Congressman Steve Pearce for the environmental havoc being wreaked in New Mexico and throughout the world?

Border surge misses real security threat in Transborder West

New U.S. initiatives associated with immigration reform proposals aim to seal the U.S.-Mexico border with more hulking fences, high-tech surveillance, sensors, and drones -- all to “secure the border” against a dramatically diminishing flow (lowest in four decades) of south-north immigrants, and costing at least $30 billion in additional border security funding.

Generally unnoticed in this border security buildup is the rapid onset of a new transborder security threat. Not immigrants, not terrorists, not drugs, not spillover violence. Rather frightening changes in the deserts, in the mountain flora, in the surface water flows, in the falling levels of reservoirs, and in the disappearing aquifers and underground water basins...

Gila Plans Still Open to Debate

Water transfer "message bill" highlights rising tensions over water in the southern part of the state.

Politics of Climate Change in Chihuahua

In Mexico climate change is a given, it's the rule of law that's murky. Borderland journalist Tom Barry explores the increasing tensions amidst dwindling water supplies just south of the border.

What’s happened to ABQ? Part 5: Rio Grande Vision- Nature center or amusement park?

The Rio Grande Vision plan for “improvements” to the Middle Rio Grande Bosque breaks continuity with the long and illustrious history of citizen activism to preserve riparian habitat and allow residents to refresh themselves in a natural setting and observe wildlife without disturbing it.

Modeling itself on duded up urban rivers in Texas and other places, the Vision seems to have overlooked completely the ideal model right under its nose – the Rio Grande Nature Center, a masterwork of architecture so inconspicuous and respectful of its place that birds and other creatures have no fear of us when we’re visiting...

Leave Mount Taylor in peace

There’s something particularly ugly about the proposed new uranium mine on Mount Taylor west of Albuquerque. If past history is any indication, it will leave this sacred site littered with mining debris and contaminated water. And it will probably sell the uranium to China and India, the biggest uranium markets in the world, ruining a local place to make some people an international fortune. This will truly amount to ill gotten gains...

Striking a Balance

Environmental journalist Laura Paskus interviews Dr. Benjamin Tuggle, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Southwest Regional Director.

The Coming Water Wars in Mexico – Part 2

Mexican farmers and indigenous group join forces to protest illegal wells and tourism encroachment in northern Mexico.

Attacking Chaco Canyon

Imagine traveling to one of the world’s greatest and most desolately beautiful monuments to human genius and finding when you get there that drilling equipment, jack pumps, truck dust, back up beepers, and road noise have been allowed to destroy the mysterious solitude of such a singular and magnificent place.

That’s what will happen to the Chaco Culture National Historical Park if the state of New Mexico and our congressional delegation doesn’t insist upon an extensive buffer zone around the 53-square mile monument where drilling and other extractive process are prohibited. This is not only a buffer zone, it’s a zone of respect...