Right of way
A storied river in New Mexico faces unrelenting pressure—a problem that a dedicated alliance of partners is working to resolve
By
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Laura Paskus
Illustrations by
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Nick Slater
© Bruce D Taubert
On a midwinter morning in northern New Mexico, Emilio Borrego and Ru Stempien walk the hilly stretch of land where Borrego grew up. On just over four acres above the mountain village of Cordova, the young couple grows corn, beans, squash, and a chile variety Borrego’s father has cultivated for decades. They also tend dozens of fruit and nut trees, including traditional favorites and drought-tolerant species they’re testing out as snowpack declines.
Borrego spent his childhood playing and working here, and he’s witnessed the world and the watershed change. Now, he says, he wants to be a part of another change—for good.
At the edge of their property, he points to the Rio Quemado, a tributary of the Rio Grande: Just upstream, a network of beaver dams and dens stretches into the watershed’s forested mountains. The toothy rodents’ activities bolster the biodiversity of rivers and wetlands and help streams flow year-round. Sediment builds up around the nature-made structures, then disperses when floodwaters breach the barrier. It’s a process that has shaped countless streams and valleys like this one and enticed farmers to the nutrient-rich land. But over time, people also came to resent the eco-engineers for making streambeds shift.
A Shared Journey
Stretching 1,900 miles from the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado to the Gulf Coast, the Rio Grande supplies drinking water to 15 million people in the US and Mexico and irrigates more than 3,000 square miles of farmland—an area larger than Delaware.
The Rio Grande Compact of 1938 divvies up that water among Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas: Every drop of the river’s waters is allocated to someone. But the river itself has no rights to any of those waters. All of these factors make it a challenge to unite individual landowners and disparate communities across even a small portion of the watershed. Yet, even as the region becomes warmer and more arid, a shared effort that includes local municipalities and pueblos, as well as WWF and other nonprofit partners like Defenders of Wildlife and Audubon Southwest, is developing solutions for people, wildlife, and the river itself.
Today, thanks in part to a grant from WWF, Borrego works with Defenders of Wildlife to build support for beavers in this part of the watershed, where they can coexist with homes and farms.
“I’m kind of breaking a myth,” says Borrego, noting how some people fear beaver dams will flood homes, fields, roads, and infrastructure—but that others “have cool memories of how things used to be. Like the river used to run stronger and there were more beavers in the watershed. There used to be more ojitos, little stream systems or springs that came down from the hills.”
Once people start remembering, he says, they imagine what the valley could look like again.
© WWF-US/DIANA CERVANTES
In summer 2022, the Rio Quemado sparkled to life.
While record-breaking fires burned in New Mexico forests and whole stretches of the Middle Rio Grande in and around Albuquerque ran dry, fireflies returned for the first time in decades to the pastoral valley behind the Santuario de Chimayó, a famed healing shrine visited by thousands of Catholic pilgrims each year.
Two decades ago, Santa Fe County acquired 40 acres near the church to protect it from development and Ofireflies returned for the first time in preserve the pastoral setting. Over the years, county officials garnered public input, created a management plan for the newly minted Los Potreros Open Space, and tried to restore the stream and grasslands while also supporting local agriculture. As soon as the county blocked cattle’s access to the stream, beavers moved in, says Adeline Murthy, who leads planning for Open Space and Trails for Santa Fe County, “but they weren’t exactly welcomed back.”
Within just a few years of the restoration project’s kickoff, beaver dams at Los Potreros slowed the Rio Quemado, allowing the river to deposit sediment into the incised stream channel and nurture a wide, braided meadow. Some streamside neighbors worried—and still worry—about flooding, which is understandable, Murthy says.
“It can be hard to take neat agricultural land and turn it back into a healthy, messy riparian ecosystem,” she adds, as a coyote watches her from across the waterway.
Now, migrating birds take advantage of the more reliable water source, and biodiversity has increased dramatically. And while much of New Mexico burned and dried in 2022, this stretch of stream kept running, lighting up with rare fireflies and raising the water table high enough for local farmers to harvest an extra cutting of hay.
© WWF-US/Nick Slater c/o Folio Art
“These little pockets of wetlands benefit agricultural production and allow for continued water supply in times of drought by storing water in the land,” says Murthy. “Any opportunity anyone can take in the watershed to steward little bits of wetland is really important.”
With Defenders of Wildlife, the county caged off large cottonwood trees important to the community and protected acequia headgates from getting clogged with woody debris. They also contracted with the nonprofit Rio Grande Return to install “beaver deceivers,” plastic pipes that regulate the level of the beaver ponds so they don’t flood adjacent private lands.
Not everyone in the valley is a beaver believer. But Murthy hopes that as they witness the transformative changes along the stream, they’ll understand how wildlife can improve habitat for human needs as well.
© DON GETTY
Since 2011, when a wildfire devastated another Rio Grande tributary, Santa Clara Creek, the Pueblo of Santa Clara has invested heavily in the watershed’s health. They’ve also spent decades restoring the riverside forest along the Rio Grande where it runs through tribal lands. And today, they’re trying to protect two miles of the Rio Santa Cruz, about 10 miles downstream of the Santuario.
Daniel Denipah, the pueblo’s forestry director, says that among many other habitat restoration and management efforts, the pueblo protects beavers because they help the entire watershed: Their ponds and dams slow springtime floods. They also trap sediment and clean the water, hold water higher in the watershed, and create habitat for other wildlife and plants.
“We use beavers for cultural dances, and we wear the pelts for different ceremonies,” adds Santa Clara Governor James Naranjo. “They’re an important part of our culture and heritage.”
But beaver dams can exacerbate conflicts over lands and waters, especially in places where the pueblo only has authority over a small stretch of the river. “We’re trying to put some kind of remedies in there to keep everybody happy, but more than anything, we want to keep the beavers happy, keep them safe, and keep the wholeness of the river,” says Naranjo.
As the pueblo works on this short stretch of the Santa Cruz, they face myriad challenges, including a shrinking water supply due to warming, conflicts with other water users, and encampments that pollute the water supply.
© WWF-US/Nick Slater c/o Folio Art
But Denipah persists by incorporating conservation and forestry science, the knowledge of elders, and putting young people to work on everything from watershed restoration to creating butterfly habitat. He knows that even small projects have big impacts, including downstream. He’s also especially mindful of future generations. “When people are in beautiful places,” he says, “they’re able to have beautiful thoughts.”
© ERICH SCHLEGEL
The farther south the Rio Grande’s waters travel, the more challenges they face. Demand from cities like Santa Fe and Albuquerque, along with agriculture, uses more than 50% of the river’s water. And in the mid-1990s, it started to become clear how strained the middle Rio Grande had become. That’s when the river began to dry, sometimes for stretches of up to 70 miles.
“Now, it’s like every year there’s some drying, and the snowmelt coming off the mountains has really decreased,” says hydrologist Paul Tashjian, who worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service for almost three decades before becoming director of freshwater conservation at Audubon New Mexico seven years ago.
Working with federal, state, and local partners, Audubon New Mexico leases water—when it’s available in upstream reservoirs—to create a spring pulse for the federally endangered silvery minnow or to strategically keep the river channel wetter during hot, dry times. Now, Audubon is among the partners working with WWF to restore environmental flows in the river while also boosting water security for farmers. (Learn more about e-flows and the Rio Grande.)
First, the partners quantified how much water the Rio Grande needs in six different stretches, says Tashjian, by considering questions like: During the heat of summer, how much water will keep a stretch from drying? How much water do fish need for springtime spawning? What will keep the ecosystem healthy? Then, he says, they evaluated how the dams, diversions, and management protocols work.
In 2022, WWF released a report card for the Upper Rio Grande River basin—from the headwaters in Colorado through Texas—showing that despite climate change and overconsumption, the Rio Grande still nurtures critical ecosystems and wildlife. The report card assessed the river’s overall condition as “moderate,” noting that while the river reliably supplies water for cities, the watershed’s score worsens from north to south, as biodiversity decreases, and the river channel is increasingly prone to low flows and drying.
© WWF-US/DIANA CERVANTES
While data and details are vital to protecting the river long term, it’s not enough, says Enrique Prunes, WWF’s Rio Grande manager and freshwater lead specialist. As a longtime expert on the larger river basin, Prunes has worked on projects spanning Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and northern Mexico. He’s also given the question of the river’s survival across the basin a lot of thought.
“We believe that a healthy, flowing river is the clearest sign of a thriving ecosystem—one that supports both nature and people,” he says. “That’s why WWF is trying to be a bridge for conversations among the many people who rely on the Rio Grande, to help ensure that science and policy guide all our decisions and that all voices are heard.”
© WWF-US/DIANA CERVANTES
In central New Mexico, the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District delivers water to farmers within a 150-mile stretch of the watershed. The quasi-governmental agency’s history is complicated: To attract Anglo settlers and farmers, the district condemned land and built the valley’s irrigation infrastructure to create 60,000 acres of farmland from salt marshes and swamplands. When it started taxing farmers, many of those who had lived in the valley for generations ended up in arrears and lost their lands.
But a new perspective has taken hold in recent decades. “Today, the district works to meet three key needs: Supply water to irrigators, comply with the Rio Grande Compact’s directive that New Mexico deliver water to Texas, and care for the health of the river’s natural resources,” says Casey Ish, director of lands and conservation at the agency. “There’s a lot that we do here to try and balance a system that is for all intents and purposes no longer able to balance itself.”
© WWF-US/Nick Slater c/o Folio Art
As Ish speaks, a wedge of sandhill cranes flies overhead, calling to one another with guttural croaks. Tens of thousands of these tall, lean birds winter in the Middle Rio Grande Valley, foraging in chile and corn fields and roosting overnight in the river channel or within sculpted ponds in a string of state and federally run wildlife refuges south of Albuquerque.
Downstream, for example, at the Bernardo Wildlife Area, manager Michael Chavez readies all year for the cranes. Relying on water deliveries from the district, he cultivates corn for the birds in the spring and summer and moves freshwater through the wildlife ponds and wetlands in fall and winter.
“We’re not getting the water we used to,” says Chavez, who grew up on the refuge; his father was manager here, beginning in 1956. “So we have to do things more efficiently. We laser-leveled our fields and lined the ditches with concrete so there’s no water loss through the dirt. It’s just a different world now.”
Migrating sandhill cranes, like other river-dependent wildlife—from silvery minnows and beavers to otters, elk, multiple trout species, and birds like the western yellow-billed cuckoo—don’t distinguish between the river’s natural ecosystem and irrigated farmland, says Ish. They just see suitable habitat. “What we’ve effectively been able to maintain through carefully managed water releases is a lot of the same processes that the river would have performed previously, which is spreading water across the valley,” he says.
© WWF-US/Nick Slater c/o Folio Art
Rather than fomenting division between farmers and the federal government or people advocating for the river and its ecosystems, the district now considers itself a partner in protecting the Rio Grande. “We can’t continue to provide services to farmers unless we’re balancing the system,” says Ish. “It’s also just the right thing to do. We pull from the river, the river provides for us, and we need to do our part to provide for the river in return.”
So, while no one imagines the Rio Grande will flood and flow as it did prior to colonization and legal compacts, or that the river will run undammed and undiverted from the headwaters to the delta, a hopeful community of river champions persists. Because even in a hotter, drier world, it is still possible to heal the Rio Grande, one stretch, one small valley, or one gathering of partners at a time.
WITH GRATITUDE for their generous support of WWF’s work to protect the Rio Grande River basin: Allen Family Philanthropies | The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations
© Sarah Mosquera / WWF-US
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