Published by Santa Fe New Mexican | Edition 09/26/2025 | Link To Article
Growing up, Àngel Peña associated the outdoors with work, not recreation.
That changed when he had his first daughter at age 20. When Chuck E. Cheese was too expensive, he would pack her up and take her to the mountains. Over the years, visiting Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument with his four children became a tradition, Peña said.
“But when you fall in love with a place, you start to notice what threatens it,” Peña said. “You notice how easily it can be taken away, thanks to industrial interests or policy rollbacks or what your favorite color is, red or blue.”
So in 2019, he and now-U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez founded Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project, a Las Cruces-based nonprofit to encourage people to get outside and to bring new voices to conservation and outdoor equity.
On Friday night, Peña addressed a room full of conservationists, environmental justice and community organizers and tribal representatives at the nonprofit’s gala in Santa Fe.
He described the current moment as “dangerous” for public lands and conservation.
The event came the day before National Public Lands Day; former secretary of the interior and Democratic candidate for governor Deb Haaland was the keynote speaker and also received one of the nonprofit’s Corazón de Comunidad awards.
“I’m staying in the fight too,” Haaland said. “It’s what this moment demands.”
Other award recipients were state Rep. Angelica Rubio, D-Las Cruces, described as the architect of the state’s outdoor equity program; Teresa Martinez, executive director of the Continental Divide Trail Coalition; and state Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard.
“It’s important to highlight them because then they become examples of how it can be done,” said Nuestra Tierra board president Elvis Cordova.
Cordova, a former administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and staffer for the Wilderness Society, met Peña through the America the Beautiful For All Coalition, he said in an interview.
Cordova, who has been working in conservation for the past five years, said this is a “defining moment” for the environment. But, despite a lineup of honorees and speakers on Friday that included some of the state’s top Democrats, Cordova emphasized the need for bipartisanship in a “tumultuous” political quagmire.
“We have to sit down and figure out how to understand each other better,” Cordova said. “Because the solutions are there, but they’re not apparent. And we have to understand each other to get those solutions.”
The challenge is coming to a consensus on how to care for the environment, Cordova said — bringing Republicans and Democrats, “hunters and tree-huggers” to the table.
“There’s hunters out there that are going to care,” Cordova said. “How much are we talking to each other? ... How do we invite them in?”
He added, “The Earth doesn’t discriminate.”
Public lands have become a major flashpoint under the Trump administration, which has clashed with conservationists as it has sought to expand logging, mining and drilling. Earlier this year, approximately 2,000 people flooded the streets of Santa Fe to gin up support for public lands and protest the proposed sale of some parcels as Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum visited the City Different.
Some of the conflict involves rollbacks of actions Haaland herself took during her tenure as interior secretary during the Biden administration, including a two-year mining withdrawal in the Upper Pecos, which the administration nixed last spring to boost mineral development. Similarly, Pueblo leaders recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby to keep a 10-mile, 20-year buffer zone Haaland established in 2023 banning drilling around Chaco Canyon.
In an interview, Nuestra Tierra program and campaign director Adrian Angulo called this a “tenuous” moment in conservation and public lands management and said he expects the state to take a more active role. He pointed to recent legislation, including Senate Bill 21, which allows the state to take over the administration of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System water quality permits from the federal government.
“New Mexico champions a ‘we save us’ approach,” Angulo said. “We save ourselves.”