March 2009

{FMWC} E-Newsletter – March 2009

FRANKLIN MOUNTAINS WILDERNESS COALITION
http://www.franklinmountains.org/


Annual Meeting: March 25, 2009

It has been a number of years since the Coalition has put on an annual meeting. So much has happened this past year, especially the 30th anniversary of FMWC, that it’s time to get together and celebrate. Consequently, the March meeting will be a time to honor our past and look to our future. We are inviting founding members of the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition to attend so all may celebrate their early work to save the mountains.

The event will take place at Jaxon’s Restaurant on Airway Blvd. There will be a no-host bar. Dinner will be a fajita buffet costing $16.00 per person. We will need to have a final count by Monday, March 16 so please make your reservation by then. Unfortunately, no tickets will be available at the door. You’re welcome to attend even if you don’t plan to eat.

When: March 25, 2009
6:00 PM Meet and Greet
6:30 PM Dinner
7:30 PM Meeting
Place: Jaxon’s Restaurant, 1135 Airway Blvd.

Please contact Scott Cutler at 915-581-6071 to make reservations.


“Those Were the Days, My Friends”
by Kathy Kennedy McConaghie

Way back when I attended UTEP (1972 – 1976) a crazy little thing called Crazy Cat happened to the Franklin Mountains. Many of my fellow students and some faculty members joined together in a petition drive to try to stop the planned residential development on the tail end of our beautiful mountains. I remember innocently bopping into Chicano Brown Beret, Vietnam Vets Against the War, American Friends Service Committee and other group “headquarters” and asking for help gathering signatures on our petitions to stop the City of El Paso from allowing the development. Some of the conversations were along the lines of: “If you will take some of these petitions and get them signed, we will march alongside you in your endeavors.” This led to some pretty interesting collaborations and we spent hours accosting potential signers outside of drugstores, grocery stores, and nightclubs; getting our siblings and parents to take petitions to work; walking door to door in our neighborhoods. We talked ourselves hoarse and we gathered thousands of signatures.

When the petitions were invalidated by the city “fathers” due to technicalities (well, we were young and naïve), I grew so disgusted with local politics and my hometown that I left, pretty much in a huff, to pursue graduate studies back east (I thought happiness was El Paso, Texas in my rearview mirror). Crazy Cat happened and that piece of our beloved mountains was gone.

I lived far away from the rugged Franklins for over two decades. There were tears of joy and relief every time I drove home to visit – blasting down that long last stretch on the Carlsbad Highway or War Highway or, in later years, whisking in on I-10 – when those familiar peaks rose up from the desert and I knew that I was almost home.

The point of this personal recollection is that some people stayed here, founded a Coalition, and became sentinels dedicated to protecting the Franklin Mountains from further encroachment. Their efforts were successful beyond my wildest dreams: an entire mountain range became a state park in the middle of a desert city! Thank you, founding members of FMWC and all those who have continued the good fight to this day. Hope to see you at Jaxon’s on the 25th!


Trail Building Crews Needed!
by Dave Wilson, BMBA President

The Borderland Mountain Bike Association, a non-profit dedicated to improving mountain biking in El Paso, is seeking volunteers and new members to help build trails in both the Franklin Mountain State Park and in several city parks.

The city park’s department wants to build a complete mountain bike center at the Westside Recreation Center off High Ridge. There are plans for beginner level single track trails and a skills park with ladders, bridges, teeter-totters, pump track, table tops, and much more. Trail builders and flagging crews are needed for this project. There is potential to put in more than 10 miles of high quality single track at the park. No experience is necessary.

Club rides take place the first Sunday of every month with the next ride (April 5th) meeting at 9 am in the upper parking lot of the Tom Mays Unit of the FMSP. Food is served around noon. Club membership is $25 per year.

For more information, contact the BMBA at bmbaelpaso@hotmail.com, or check the club’s website at www.bmba.wordpress.com .



HEY, FOLKS, TAKE A LOOK AT RICK LOBELLO’S COOL BLOG AT http://iloveparks.blogspot.com/


Why Should We Care About Saving The Poppies and the Castner Range?
by Rick LoBello (from his blog, with permission)
Posted on March 2, 2009

For me this is an easy question to answer. Prior to moving to El Paso I spent seventeen years working at Big Bend National Park, the world’s largest protected area of Chihuahuan Desert. It was there working as a park ranger and on a variety of research projects that I came to know this desert ecosystem so well. Today I am very concerned about its future and the threats of development that endanger the desert on both sides of the border. Since the first day I put on a park ranger badge in 1975 I have dedicated my life to helping people connect with and understand this amazing land.

We need the poppies and the adjoining Castner Range like we need water flowing into our homes and food in our stomachs. Nature is life and without it we simply cannot survive. Imagine what our world would be like if all we knew were buildings, super highways and concrete. Ever try eating a rock? Do you think you could live very long without water? All of the natural resources that we need to survive are limited. Unfortunately for our children and their children’s children many if not most of the decision makers approving plans for urban sprawl, one of the main threats to the desert, have little understanding of why keeping the desert ecosystem intact is so important to our future. Still others have some understanding, but do not know how to stop the wave of development currently underway. As a result thousands of species of animals and plants here and around the world have gone extinct or are on the road to extinction.

Most of the animals that live in the Castner Range are valuable in helping to maintain the desert’s complex biodiversity. For example, the foraging behavior of mule deer, small mammals and birds helps to disperse seeds of numerous plants important to their own survival and the survival of countless other species. Writing for the US Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species Bulletin, Jim Lyzer brings this important understanding into focus: “We are destroying or wiping out species before we know what their value might be. That in itself should justify the time and expense that it takes to help them avert extinction. Beyond that we have an ethical obligation to all the species that share this planet. When we lose anything, we’re really losing a figurative encyclopedia. And we might be losing a page with enormous benefits to mankind. Unfortunately, today most people around the world either are unaware or unconcerned about the consequences that will surely affect the survival of our own species in the near future.”

Looking at the “big picture for El Paso’s future” the most valuable resource we have is not anything we have built or we are about to build, it is the people who live here and the natural ecosystem with its complex biodiversity. The Castner Range helps to protect that biodiversity and the last thing we need to do is to allow the current threat of urban sprawl to spread any further into the Franklins. Already we can see that we are about to lose the magnificent wilderness vistas on the west side to the developers who have recently announced the coming of their army of bulldozers to begin another chapter of destruction along Trans Mountain Road.

The Castners offer hope for our community and the Chihuahuan Desert is this part of North America. Can’t we learn to share the earth with native animals and plants?

I encourage you to learn more about efforts to protect the Castner Range by attending the Poppies Celebration, visiting franklinmountains.org and by becoming a member of the Franklin Mountains Coalition.

Our thanks to you, Rick, for all your help!



Castner Range History Project
by Scott Cutler

The Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition would like to gather information about the history of Castner Range from its beginnings in the 1920’s until it closed in the 1960s. Much information may be available in the older editions of the El Paso Times and the Herald Post, both archived on microfilm.

We would like to ask people to volunteer to go through a few years worth of these older records and make note of articles mentioning Castner Range. If you have time to help with this project, please contact Scott Cutler at 581-6071 to find out which years still need to be reviewed and details about what to look for. Thanks.


Poppies Celebration on Saturday,
March 14
FREE Event with Free Parking and shuttle at Cohen Stadium

The Franklin Mountains Poppies Celebration on Castner Range is being planned again this year on Saturday March 14 from 10 am to 6 pm at the El Paso Museum of Archaeology, 4301 Transmountain Road. The day's activities will include nature talks, wildlife displays, educational exhibits, demonstrations, crafts, music and refreshments. Educational Speakers will be in the Gazebo from 10 am to 3 pm and there will be music, entertainment and tequila tasting from 3 - 6 pm. Please note that even if the poppies do not bloom this year, we celebrate the only place in El Paso where poppies can bloom.

Speakers at the Gazebo
10am - John Kiseda, Birds of the Franklin Mountains
11am - John White, Plants of the Franklin Mountains
Noon - Rick LoBello, Mammals of the Franklin Mountains
1pm - Sal Quintanilla, Venomous Animals of the Desert
2pm - Leon Metz, History of El Paso

The Celebration will also include Leyton Cougar with Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in Ramah, New Mexico and a socialized live wolf, videos by local documentarian and producer Jackson Polk, puppet shows, a magician, and raffle prizes. Everyone is welcome to come out and enjoy the beauty of the mountains and the poppies during this FREE Family Fun event.

Capstone Productions Inc. will show many of their El Paso Gold Heritage TV series films FOR FREE at this year's Poppy Festival in the auditorium at the Museum of Archaeology. It is called Poppy Fest Film Fest and will feature ten years of videos that El Paso TV producer Jackson Polk has produced about the history and heritage of the El Paso area.

Poppy Film Festival schedule of films for March 14, 2009 at the Museum of Archaeology
10:00am El Paso’s Magoffin Home Update 2008
11:00am El Paso’s Historic Sites and MarkersNoon Mexican Revolution Sites in El Paso
1:00pm Legends of El Paso’s Mountains
2:00pm Gunfights of the Old West
2:45pm El Paso’s Mount Cristo Rey
3:45pm Ghost Stories of El Paso Vol.1
The Poppy Film Fest ENDS at 5:00pm

Sponsored by The El Paso Times, Cohen Stadium, REDCo and Project Amistad, LULAC
Organizing Sponsors include El Paso Archaeological Society, http://epas.com/ , El Paso Museum of Archeology, http://www.elpasotexas.gov/arch_museum/ , Franklin Mountains State Park, http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/spdest/findadest/parks/franklin/ , and Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition, http://franklinmountains.org/



FRANKLIN MOUNTAINS STATE PARK NEWS

For the latest news and information about the Park, visit their great website:
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/spdest/findadest/parks/franklin/


Lone Star Legacy

You can make a lasting contribution to the future of Franklin Mountains State Park with your tax-deductible donation to the Lone Star Legacy Endowment Fund. Checks, payable to "Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation" can be sent to: Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, Attention: Lone Star Legacy, P.O. Box 191207, Dallas, TX, 75219. Mark your donation to the endowment fund for Franklin Mountains State Park.



FMWC In Cyberspace

This is the electronic version of the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition newsletter. To be added to or removed from the distribution list, contact: j.p.ackerman@sbcglobal.net.

The Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition

Borderland Mountain Bike Association • Border Toasters, Toastmasters International • Bordersenses • Celebration Of Our Mountains • Centro San Vicente • Chihuahuan Desert Education Coalition • Chihuahuan Desert Wildlife Rescue • Eco-Club EPCC • El Paso Archaeological Society • El Paso Cactus And Rock Club • El Paso County Master Gardeners • El Paso Native Plant Society • El Paso Regional Group Of The Sierra Club • El Paso/Trans-Pecos Audubon Society • El Paso Youth Symphony • El Paso Zoo • Environmental Advocates at UTEP • Friends of the Arroyo • Friends Of The Rio Bosque • Jolly Elders • League Of Women Voters Of El Paso • Mesilla Valley Audubon Society • Mountain Park Community Association • Photography Enthusiasts Of El Paso • Southern New Mexico Group Of The Sierra Club • Southwest Environmental Center • Skyline Optimist Club Of El Paso • Trans Pecos Chapter Of The Texas Master Naturalists • Vista Hills Rotary Club • Voter Education Project, Inc •