Land swap angers hunters, governor

SANTA FE (KRQE) - Hunters are ticked off and so is the governor as the State Land Office pushes a trade that would turn a chunk of pristine mountain wilderness over to private ranchers.

Hunters think they'll be left out, and Gov. Bill Richardson issued a statement Friday calling the swap a "behind-the-scenes deal" that lack transparency and public input.

Officials with the land office say that's just not true.

It's a fight over elk, antelope and the land on which they live on around White Peaks in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

"Since I was 8 years old I've been going up to that area, and I have seven brothers," hunter Eddie Trujillo of Las Vegas said. "We've all gone. My dad's taken us. My grandfather's taken me."

Trujillo called hunting on the land his heritage. He and other hunters joined by the New Mexico Wildlife Federation exchanged verbal fire with the public information officer for the State Land Office Friday.

Tuesday is the deadline for a land swap between the land office and a private ranch. Hunters said the state loses 3,800 acres in the deal.

"The acres is not tit for tat," said Brian Henington, land office deputy director of field operations. "It's the value, and we're coming out ahead on the value for this exchange.

"The premise of this exchange is consolidations."

Right now the land is a checkerboard of state and private property. Henington said it's cheaper to maintain state trust acreage if it's all together and that the land it's acquiring could be more profitable.

"There's nothing else that we do but generate revenue for our beneficiaries," he said.

The beneficiaries are schools across the state that use the money generated by energy production, agriculture and hunting license fees.

"Grazing income, potential biomass interest, a company can come in and create some type of biomass product," he said.

Trujillo and others hold firm to their past and believe the right for a license to hunt there is worth a fight for the next generation.

"If this land trade goes through, they'll never see that land because it will be closed off," Trujillo said.

There's another exchange up early next month in the Whites Peak area. Land commissioner Pat Lyons has the final say on all these deals.