New Mexico is well known for its bone-dry high desert climate…and that can be a major challenge for elk and other wildlife. Yet it is riparian habitat that you find here in the watershed of the Rio Grande River that represents less than one percent of New Mexico’s land cover.
It is also here where the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation teamed up with a private landowner and other partners to permanently protect and open to public access more than 58-hundred acres of elk habitat.The Alamocita Creek project also improves access to more than 24-thousand acres of nearby public land. It includes more than 5-and-a-half miles of intermittent drainages of Alamocita Creek which feed large, lush cottonwood galleries. Approximately one-thousand elk are known to roam across the landscape which is also home to mule deer, pronghorn, black bear and a wide variety of other plant and animal life. The project secures opportunities for hunting, hiking, camping and other activities. In fact, it gives federal land managers the opportunity to pull 52 miles of the Continental Divide Trail off a highway shoulder and onto a scenic landscape, providing nearly 500 miles of scenic trail systems in New Mexico. And it stands as yet another testimony to RMEF’s commitment to conserving wild places and highlights how Hunting Is Conservation.
Alamocita Creek Project Partners
RMEF’s Torstenson Family Endowment
Land and Water Conservation Fund (Bureau of Land Management)
Trust for Public Land
Private Landowner