July 2022
This month we celebrated Latino Conservation Week and “Moth Month”, AND, the folks from the Castner Range Coalition traveled to Washington DC!
The Moth Month event was a huge success! We’d like to extend a warm thank you to Dr. Paul Hyder for partnering with the Museum of Archeology and Frontera to lead a wonderful night-time hike to see insects and moths!
Latino Conservation Week
Latino Conservation Week was full of art, hikes, bilingual walks/talks, night exploration and a Hueco Tanks guided tour, plus a very successful clean-up along Hondo Pass Drive, Castner Range’s southern border. The congregation of Pastor Moses Borjas’s Living Covenant Church gave of their time to clean up the trash along Castner Range edge, with the support of the Hispanic Access Foundation. As the morning moved along and the heat began to climb, we were reminded that people are good. A neighbor, seeing others cleaning up the trash, came over, handed out Gatorades for each of us, and then personally took all the trash to the dump! This one act of kindness reminds us that by working together while supporting and encouraging each another we can really make a difference!
El Paso Electric Company
Cindy Hoffmann, Frontera VP, Development Director Kathia Gonzalez, Development Director and Frontera Director Janae' Reneaud Field joined EPEC CEO Kelly Tomblin as Frontera received a grant award for the nature education program.
Castner Range - Washington DC
This was the month that I had the honor of traveling to Washington D.C. to represent The Frontera Land Alliance and be a voice for making Castner Range a National Monument. It was our privilege to be joined by Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, Eric Pearson (President and CEO of the El Paso Community Foundation), Rafael “Shorty” Gómez (Councilman, El Paso’s Tigua Ysleta Pueblo del Sur), Judy Ackerman (Veteran and Secretary of Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition), Scott Cutler (Frontera, FMWC, and many other organizations), Gabaccia Moreno (of the Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project), Pastor Moses Borjas (the Living Covenant Church), Maité Arce with the Hispanic Access Foundation, and Janessa Goldbeck, CEO of the Veterans Voice Foundation.
We’re happy to report that in just this month alone we’ve had so much additional support from many other local, regional and national organizations, all asking President Joe Biden to designate Castner Range a National Monument, as he has the power to do so under the 1906 Antiquities Act.
For the few who don’t yet know, the effort to protect Castner Range – our beautiful poppy-filled jewel of El Paso and West Texas – has been ongoing now for more than 51 years. As I stood in DC I couldn’t help but reminisce about my last visit to DC. The last time I was there I was pregnant with my beautiful daughter Abigail. She is now 10 years old and here we all are, still campaigning hard for Castner Range to be designated a National Monument!
El Pasoans are fully aware that this designation will safeguard the cultural, ecological and recreational resources of Castner Range that have been chipped away by development and are always under threat. Our community has spent thousands and thousands of hours advocating for its protection. Among our many achievements we’ve collected over 137,000 letters of support, all of which have been transported to the White House.
On this visit to DC we met with the Under Secretary of the Army, with executives from the Center of Environmental Quality, and with high-ranking authorities from the Department of Defense along with several other governmental offices. We updated all of them on our efforts to make Castner Range a National Monument.
And while in DC we thanked the Army for its stewardship of Castner Range over all these many years— since Castner’s live-artillery range was shut down in 1966 — and the Biden administration for its ambitious America the Beautiful conservation plan. To meet those goals, it is imperative that the administration take action this year, and we hope that designating Castner Range as a National Monument will be part of that effort. (We fully understand that this will require coordination between the agencies mentioned above.)
In the fight to protect this piece of El Paso, it sometimes feels like the progress that we’ve made has been very hard fought, and is not being noticed as it should be. But as I look back over the last 10 years, we’ve made steps that many people would never have believed could be possible. Castner is truly a far-“Range-ing” campaign! From Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s visit to Castner Range in March, to the legislation introduced by Congresswoman Escobar last April and before, to the rapidly growing community and national support for Castner Range’s designation as a National Monument, two things have clearly changed since I last stood my ground in DC: We have made real progress, and it is being noticed.
The growing success of our movement is largely attributable to our partners, supporters and the community! Thanks to Congresswoman Escobar, we’re closer than ever to realizing our goal of permanent protection for Castner Range. As a devoted leader of El Paso, she introduced The Castner Range Protection Act, has been working to get increased funding for cleanup, and has asked President Biden to use his authority to make Castner Range a National Monument.
