New Mexico Wildlife magazine Conserving New Mexico's Wildlife for Future Generations
On an early June morning in the Gila National Forest, Department of Game and Fish conservation officers and biologists stop their pickup trucks along a winding dirt road. It’s a quiet, sunny morning; the only faint sound is the whirling of a distant, lone helicopter scanning the landscape below for …
February, 2020
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14 February
Wildlife Captures: Q&A with the Department’s big game program manager
Captures are conducted to accomplish a variety of specific goals, said Nicole Tatman, big game program manager with the Department. “Biologist are looking for some piece of information from the species or herd.” For example, a capture could help biologists investigate why a population of elk is declining in certain …
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14 February
Out of Range: Javelina are making appearances in some of the most unlikely places
Collared peccary, better known as javelina, have been a part of southern New Mexico’s landscape since before biologists such as Stokely Ligon and Vernon Bailey started discovering things about them in the early 1900s. The name javelina is derived from jabalina which, in Spanish, means “wild sow.” These medium-sized omnivorous …
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14 February
Conserving Rare Southwestern Fishes
Certain places in our collective consciousness seem to exist because they have been the subject of books. The Four Corners belong to Tony Hillerman; the Gila River to Rev. Ross Calvin; and the Pecos Wilderness to the legendary conservationist and former director of the New Mexico Department of Game and …
November, 2019
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26 November
Wildlife pathways: Long-billed curlews
Long-billed curlews (Numenius americanus) are a Species of Greatest Conservation Need in New Mexico. This large shorebird breeds in grassland habitat and New Mexico is at the southernmost extent of their breeding range. The Department of Game and Fish is collaborating with biologists from the United States Fish and Wildlife …
August, 2019
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27 August
Department Conducts Largest Elk Capture in New Mexico
A helicopter rises slowly over the snow-covered trees in the predawn light. Heading up into the mountains, the headlights from a procession of trucks, loaded with nets, netguns and other capture gear, can be seen glistening across the snowy landscape below. A hundred miles away, a small group of elk …
June, 2019
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13 June
Black-footed ferrets reintroduced
Hiding inside small pet carriers in the back of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service truck, eight very rare animals that once thrived in New Mexico waited to go home. It was a sunny, late September afternoon when wildlife biologists, conservationists, ranchers and local residents gathered on the side of …
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13 June
Wildlife water woes
Wildlife in the southeast New Mexico desert get a new drinker If you are from southeastern New Mexico or have spent any time here you know it is a dry and at times hot climate. It can be really hot, windy and dry in the summer months with not much …
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13 June
BioBlitzing
Taking inventory of the Mesilla Valley Bosque In the pre-dawn hours of Mesilla, bleary-eyed biologists are debating whether the large black bird they just saw fly over was a common raven or a Chihuahuan raven. The discussion isn’t pedantic one. They are participants in a BioBlitz at Mesilla Valley Bosque …
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13 June
Out of Range
Moose from southern Colorado wander into New Mexico Moose have called the Rocky Mountains home for millennia but have never been found as far south as New Mexico, until recently. Since the 1990s, moose have occasionally been spotted in northern New Mexico around the Taos, Chama and Tierra Amarilla areas. …