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Anglers and paddlers won a major victory at the New Mexico Supreme Court on Tuesday, as justices ruled a state game commission rule that allowed land owners to block access to streams was unconstitutional.
A coalition of rafting, fishing, and conservation groups argued that the public has a constitutional right to fish and boat on streams as long as people don't trespass across private land. The New Mexico Game Commission had crafted a rule in 2018 that allowed land owners to put up "no trespassing" signs and construct gates across streams.
It took justices 15 minutes to reach their unanimous decision. The ruling was hailed by Senator Martin Heinrich, who had filed a "friend of the court brief" along with his former colleague, Senator Tom Udall.
“This is a huge victory for people who care about our history and our culture and our natural resources,” Heinrich said. “I want to thank everyone who made this possible to make sure that public waters stay in public hands.”
Climate crisis gets short shrift during SOTU
President Biden's first State of the Union address gave only a passing nod to the climate crisis, touting $500 in household energy savings by combating climate change. The president did not mention this week's report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that warned of widespread human suffering if the world continues on its current path of carbon emissions. Biden did refer to an international plan to release “60 billion barrels of oil from reserves around the world” to lower energy prices and offset the effect of sanctions against Russia.
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Conservation in the U.S. as we know it begins with the dispossession of Native people. This is unsettling work, talking about decolonizing and unsettling the settler state. It means making people uncomfortable, inevitably, but we have to have these uncomfortable conversations.”
