Sierra Club director visits Río Grande del Norte

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune joined local supporters — and a couple of llamas — Monday (June 17) as the sun set on La Junta campground to celebrate the Río Grande del Norte National Monument. Brune is traveling across the West with his family, visiting sites of successful and hoped-for preservation efforts. He said since they left their home in the San Francisco Bay area, they had seen Nevada, Canyonlands, Rifle, Colo., Browns Canyon (where permanent protection is being sought), Crested Butte and Chimney Rock. After hiking the Little Arsenic Trail Tuesday (June 18), the Brunes planned to travel to Santa Fe and then the Grand Canyon, where the Sierra Club is advocating for a new National Monument to protect the Grand Canyon Watershed. “We’re calling it a work-ation,” Brune said. March 25, President Obama signed a proclamation creating a 242,555-acre national monument around the Río Grande Gorge and surrounding plateau in Taos and Río Arriba counties. The signing capped decades of local advocacy for protection, though efforts continue to create two new wilderness areas within the monument, around Ute Mountain and the Río San Antonio...more