Shooting Range or Shell Game?
By: John Paul Romero, Hunter and HCLC member.
The quest to establish a safe and sensible shooting range in Santa Fe County has been an elusive venture. The Bureau of Land Management, The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, sportsmen’s organizations, local and state governments have been working together and apart to find a location that is safe, and will have minimum impact on the residents of the county and city. In recent weeks the BLM in their newsletter released their top three candidate locations and will publish an environmental assessment and begin a public comment period starting October 2022.
The areas known to locals as Camel Tracks on the Caja Del Rio Plateau, the Buckman and the San Pedro Mountains have become the focus areas chosen by the BLM for the potential development of a managed shooting range. Next to impossible is the possibility that all stakeholders will agree with the final location of this range but one thing we can all agree on is that the local recreational shooting population sorely needs a place to enjoy the hobby they love, safely and responsibly.
The current “wildcat shooting range” located near the Camel Tracks area has become an eyesore and an environmental concern as more and more shooters take used household items like televisions, washers and dryers, old cooking ranges to the area and use them as targets then leave these items to be cleaned up by someone else. With little to no law enforcement on BLM lands this behavior will likely continue and this beautiful treasured landscape’s degradation will cause this place to be sacrificed. A short Mile and a half away from what has become Santa Fe’s latest illegal shooting and dumping ground is one of the most spectacular petroglyph panels in the Southwest. The Santa Fe River’s Northwest canyon walls hold what may be thousands of years of pueblo culture’s history. The community of La Cieneguilla also a centuries old settlement depicts the arrival of the Spanish to the area.
This convergence of cultures is unique and deserves to be preserved and not abused, protected to commemorate and celebrate this magnificent landscape. The BLM instead of narrowing choices of areas to develop a safe and managed shooting range should broaden their horizons and look beyond the three areas that they have chosen without much public input. The Community needs a shooting range, not a shell game. As an avid hunter and sport shooting enthusiast I am certain that the community can come to an agreement on locations for the range or ranges. There is a place for our new shooting range, it will just take the community to participate and help provide the answers.