New Mexico is hoping to pass protections for parts of the Gila River. What it means for Arizona

The Gila River is one of the last free-flowing rivers in the Southwest. It winds from the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico — all the way across the state of Arizona, through deep canyons and cottonwood forests to eventually join the Colorado River at Yuma.

But today, like many rivers, it’s under threat from drought, climate change — and proposed dams that would irrigate the river’s water for farming or hydropower. And now, a delegation from New Mexico is hoping to pass protections for the waterway — the strongest protections any river can get, in fact.

But those protections are only being proposed for parts of the Gila within New Mexico. So, what would they mean for the many miles of it that wind through Arizona?

The Show got a hold of Bjorn Fredrickson, conservation director for New Mexico Wild, to find out more — beginning with his work to protect the Gila Wilderness around it.

Full conversation

BJORN FREDRICKSON: The Gila Wilderness was actually first designated in 1924 by the Forest Service, 40 years before the Wilderness Act passed and kind of made it into what’s considered a federal wilderness today that’s legislatively protected. So long before I was born, both of those milestones.

New Mexico Wild is involved in protecting lands and waters around the Gila country in southwestern New Mexico, and it’s really our highest priority landscape in the state, and that’s because of its sort of large, intact wild character, with high-quality wildlife habitat, habitat connectivity, a lot of climate adaptation and mitigation values, and an extreme degree of biodiversity in terms of species diversity.

And so it’s really always been an important landscape, it still is, and so we’re really busy on a variety of fronts to protect this place and working really closely with communities. And the river itself is really special, it’s the last what we call mainstem undammed, free-flowing river at least in New Mexico, if not the Southwest.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Yeah, that’s so interesting. It’s one of the last ones in the in the entire region that’s free-flowing.

So let’s talk about efforts to protect the Gila River. I know a delegation from New Mexico headed to Washington recently and is after this kind of rare, it sounds like, protected status for the Gila River, part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. What would that kind of status mean? What would the protection get for the river?

BJORN FREDRICKSON: Yeah, Wild and Scenic River designation for the Gila under the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act would essentially protect the Gila’s free-flowing character and prohibit any kind of future dam building projects, diversion projects, other major river development like riprapping or kind of concrete channelization.

There have been numerous proposals, as an aside, over the years on the Gila and some of its important tributaries included in this legislation to dam and divert the river for water use, for pump storage hydropower, things like that. And so these threats are real, they’re persistent, they come around every decade or so, and, you know, the conservation community and the community in the in the Gila region has been successful in beating these back.

That said, we have to win every time to keep the river free and wild, free-flowing. And so, yeah, Wild and Scenic River designation would permanently protect that wild, free-flowing character for the river. It also has requirements around protecting what are called outstandingly remarkable values. These are river values and river-related values like fish, wildlife, scenery, recreation, cultural resources, scientific values, for example, that have to be really rare, unique or exemplary at a, at a regional or national scale. And the Gila has an abundance of these really significant values. I would argue some are internationally significant, such as the Gila trout. So yeah, that’s, that’s kind of the core of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

And you mentioned it’s it’s a rare designation, that’s true. I just want to say that about one half of 1% of rivers nationally are protected as Wild and Scenic, so it really is tremendously unusual. And in New Mexico that drops to about one-tenth of 1%. So, yeah, really requires a special river, and and the the Gila is that, no doubt.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so you think that it deserves this this protection, obviously. This protection would only be on the section in New Mexico and not the rest of the river?

BJORN FREDRICKSON: That is correct. So we have been working as an organization with community and nonprofit partners in the Silver City area, statewide, and we have some national partners as well for over a decade to protect this river.

So we’ve identified collectively through this effort with these different players about 450 miles of river and stream in the Gila region, that includes the Gila River, that includes major tributaries to the Gila, and that includes a few other scattered but outstanding rivers in the area that are in different watersheds as well.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So I mean, if if most of the river, which flows through Arizona and all the way down to Yuma, right, like isn’t under this protection, does it does it make a difference? Does this, you know, impact the river in a different way? Does it make a difference that the the mouth of the river essentially would be protected in New Mexico?

BJORN FREDRICKSON: Yeah, I would argue absolutely yes. I mean, some examples of of why Arizonans should be interested in and kind of support, join us in supporting protecting the Gila River permanently, include things like water quality protections in the headwaters mean higher water quality or or a lack of future degradation for downstream users in Arizona, whether that be for people who who are relying on the river for clean, safe, reliable drinking water, or for farmers, you know. And so protecting the headwaters and its water quality matters for people downstream, including in Arizona.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So I mean, this is a pretty, as you said, rare designation for a river, and the the legislation involved in this has been introduced in Congress, I think, four times, it’s never gotten through. What do you think the odds are that this will happen?

BJORN FREDRICKSON: I think it’s a it’s a given. I mean, I, we see it as a matter of when, not if, that this is going to happen. I mean, there’s really strong support in southwestern New Mexico among community members for protecting the Gila. Statewide, there’s been polling that says something like 81%, 82% of people in New Mexico polled support permanently protecting the Gila.

We have an amazing congressional delegation that is kind of full force behind this and kind of working on navigating through the challenges in Congress to see this legislation ultimately pass. We’ve, we’ve seen, yeah, like you said, four Congresses where this was introduced in the Senate, twice now in the House in two different Congresses. And we continue to work with the community and and build momentum and and support our congressional champions.

And I think it’s just a matter of when the window of opportunity opens, I have no doubts that our delegation will be there and ready and and and set to make this happen.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, all about timing. Let me ask you lastly, Bjorn, about the broader context here. Like, you mentioned this is one of the last free-flowing rivers in the region. What what do you think the value is of letting rivers flow freely?

Like, we have seen an effort, especially it seems like in Indigenous communities, to get rid of dams, to kind of revert rivers back to their natural state. What happens to the land, to the ecology around a river when that happens?

BJORN FREDRICKSON: When we see dams removed, what happens, a lot of times you see native species that may be really strained in terms of population level, not healthy, not doing well, really bounce back. Species really quickly return to their historic habitat range when these big barriers are are removed and are blocking species migration, for example. A lot of native plant species return really quickly.

I mean, you could look up to Glen Canyon as an example of this. There’s been a lot of work as Lake Powell has been dropping. And the cottonwoods and the native willows are coming back almost immediately as that reservoir drops. And so it’s really amazing to see how resilient nature is if you give it a chance to kind of come back and remove these like major impediments and impacts.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. All right, well, leave it there. Bjorn Fredrickson, conservation director for New Mexico Wild, joining us to talk about the Gila River. Bjorn, thank you for coming on The Show. I really appreciate you taking the time.

BJORN FREDRICKSON: Yeah, thanks, Lauren. I enjoyed the conversation.

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