2 • 2012 Festival of Cranes • El Defensor Chieftain • November 14, 2012
Festival planning a yearlong effort Festival coordinator Michael Hanauer is confident Karen Bailey-Bowman
El Defensor Chieftain Reporter kbaileybowman@dchieftain.com
Bosque del Apache NWR Festival of the Cranes Coordinator Michael Hanauer isn’t losing any sleep worrying about the Bosque del Apache’s signature annual public event, but only because he and many others have been preparing far in advance of the Nov. 13 start date. Besides Hanauer, there are four other paid coordinators to plan and manage the festival, such as Liz Taylor, the festival registrar, who started work in September. “I have been planning all year long,” Hanauer said. “Any given month, there are different things to get done.” Hanauer came on board as festival head coordinator last December. This year marks Hanauer’s first year as coordinator, but not his first experience with the festival. Last November, he shadowed former festival coordinator Robyn Harrison, whom he credits for his confidence about this year’s event. “Robyn led the festival for four years, and created a tremendous base,” he said. While he was assisting Harrison, Hanauer took time to interact with presenters. “I talked to key speakers, and got their input,” he said. “I adopted all of their ideas for this year’s festival.” As a result, this year’s roster features 54 new or significantly altered programs out of the 110 scheduled, especially for topics involving cranes and raptors, he said. The biggest change in terms of area happens just west of the refuge visitor center. “Eighty percent of festival-goers visit the refuge in their car and then participate in the free events,” he said. There is a $5
Karen Bailey-Bowman El Defensor Chieftain
Festival coordinator Michael Hanauer points to the area this year’s expanded Wildlife Zone will occupy.
Karen Bailey-Bowman/El Defensor Chieftain
Festival of the Cranes coordinator Michael Hanauer readies signs that will direct visitors to attractions and warn them away from sensitive areas at the Bosque del Apache NWR. Some trails and fields are off limits for the protection of visitors and the wildlife the refuge is mandated to protect. fee per car to drive inside the refuge. Based on that information, Hanauer doubled the size of the Wildlife Zone — an area devoted to free, hands-on educational children’s activities. The Wildlife Zone will be open from Friday afternoon, Nov. 16, to Sunday afternoon, Nov. 18. “It’s for families with kids,” he said, “or anyone young at heart.” A new Wildlife Zone attraction will be a large artificial pond New Mexico Department of Game and Fish will stock with 9- and 18-inch trout. Children under 18 will be able to fish for free, and volunteers will clean the fish and package their catch so the lucky fisherkids can take it home for dinner. Tackle will be provided at no charge. “The pond will give kids a real life experience of what it is like to catch a trout,” he said. Besides fishing, children will be able to try their hand with archery, although there will be no actual hunting. Interested in the role fire plays in managing habitat? For a $5 fee, children and parents can participate in a controlled burn on the refuge property, learning the
basics of fire prevention and suppression. Some of the refuge’s heavy equipment will be parked at the Wildlife Zone for children to explore, and Tonka versions of the bulldozers, graders and cranes will be set up in a huge sandbox to let future heavy equipment operators create pretend refuge wetlands and canals. People can walk up to captive raptors at booths manned by volunteers from Hawks Aloft and Hawks International. Mexican gray wolves will be on display as well. Preparing for the needs of the 8,000 visitors Hanauer expects at this year’s event, up about 2,000 from last year, had to be carefully organized. “We have extra parking, which more than doubles our present capacity,” he said. The local high school MESA club has been hired to direct traffic. Breakfast burritos, hamburgers and hot dogs, as well as cold drinks will be prepared by the high school Interact Club, a youth branch of Rotary International, as well as Green’s Kitchen, a local food catering company. Socorro’s M Mountain Coffeehouse will be selling their beverag-
es in the art tent next to the visitor center. Six months ago, refuge staff installed electrical boxes at the art tent site, eliminating noisy generators. All festival exhibits and activities support the Friends of the Bosque mission, which is to protect the refuge’s wildlife and habitat through education. The Friends of the Bosque is a nonprofit, volunteer organization founded in 1993. “The Bosque is about wildlife — preserving habitat and animals,” he said. “The secondary mission is education because what protects wildlife is education.” The refuge staff used to struggle to provide access to the public who want to experience the refuge during the high birding season from November through February, Hanauer said. Thanks to the help of the Friends of the Bosque and the 30 or so resident volunteers who live and work at the refuge during the winter, the refuge can handle the impact of the thousands of bird enthusiasts every winter. The Friends of the Bosque manages the gift shop and the festival, the proceeds from which support educational projects at the refuge such as guided free refuge tours and funding for guided school field trips. Now that the festival is getting underway, volunteers and staff are busy with last minute details, such as cleaning the gardens and pathways around the Cactus Arboretum. The activity level is high, but calm. “We’re on it. Everyone’s busy,” Hanauer said. “There are details to take care of all the time, so quite a few of us are working really hard. Refuge park ranger Chris Leeser has worked 17 days in a row without a day off. He’s first in line, in charge of the visitor’s center, scheduling and handling all of the duties for the volunteers during the festival.” The only thing Hanauer can’t control is the weather. “Winds are the hardest thing to deal with, especially the dust,” he said.
Festival registrar Liz Taylor works behind the scenes at the Friends of the Bosque office signing up people for programs and answering questions.
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4 • 2012 Festival of Cranes • El Defensor Chieftain • November 14, 2012
The heart of the valley runs deep By Julia M. Dendinger For El Defensor Chieftain
It is a silent and strong force that runs through the heart of our community. Stealthy, subtle, often ignored, yet vital as the air we breathe. For millions of years, the Rio Grande has crept down the valley. As civilizations were drawn to the source of life, early humans learned to dig ditches and draw the water away from the silent beast to irrigate crops and stay alive. And because of this life-giving waterway, the Rio Grande Basin is one of the oldest areas of habitation in the country. The headwaters of the river rise from the east slope of the Continental Divide in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. It enters the Land of Enchantment near Ute Mountain, then winds its way south for nearly 470 miles until it reaches Texas, and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. The miles it spends in Valencia County are short compared to its 1,800 miles, but it is a vital thing — the heart line that both divides and unifies the community. Since Europeans first saw the river in 1519, the Rio Grande has enjoyed many names. Paul Horgan, in his book “Great River,” found 16 unique names for what is now the “big river” in his research. Alonso Alvarez de Pineda called it El Rio de Las Palms, “The River of the Palms,” and Coronado’s captain, Hernando de Alvarado, upon seeing a great river near the site of what is the modern Isleta Pueblo on Sept. 7, 1540, dubbed it Rio de Nuestra Senora, or “River of Our Lady,” because the explorers came upon it on the eve of the Virgin Mary Feast Day. It was called the Rio del Norte, Rio Bravo, P’osoge, Rio Caudaloso and River of May. But by any name, it was still the same river — flooding, meandering and shifting from escarpment to escarpment, blessing farmlands with water and rich deposits of silt while simultaneously destroying the structures men had dared to build upon the valley floor. The Rio Grande could be called a mixed blessing for the people who chose to live near its banks — banks that might have changed from season to season, until the intervention of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District in the 1920s. At the time of the district’s creation in 1923, the flow of the Rio Grande through central New Mexico fluctuated dangerously and unpredictably. Development and deforestation in Colorado since the 1880s had raised the
Elva K. Österreich/El Defensor Chieftain
The Rio Grande north of Albuquerque flows strong. By the time the water arrives in Socorro County, much of it has been used by existing water rights and the flow has narrowed. levels of silt in the river, which led to increased sedimentation. These deposits then began to collect in the Middle Rio Grande Valley — where the river first widens and slows — raising the level of the riverbed and the surrounding water table. The MRGCD was created to provide flood protection from the Rio Grande, drain swamplands and provide irrigation water to farmlands. By 1935, the district had built the storage dam at El Vado and the diversion dams at Cochiti, Angostura, Isleta and San Acacia to manage its water. The conservancy district had also dug 17 miles of new drainage and irrigation canals, and incorporated another
214 miles of existing canal into the system. Nearly 200 miles of riverside levees and a system of jetties and checks alongside the river protected against floods. The drains funneled water away, lowered the water table, dried the land and reclaimed it for agriculture. That irrigation of agriculture is one of the many positive aspects of the river, says historian Richard Melzer, Ph.D. “With the irrigation from the acequias, the river used to have more meaning. There used to be more agriculture,” Melzer said. “Cleaning the acequias in the spring n See Rio Grande, Page 13
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6 • 2012 Festival of Cranes • El Defensor Chieftain • November 14, 2012
Karen Bailey-Bowman/El Defensor Chieftain
Friends of the Bosque president Lise Spargo readies the gardens near the visitor center for the festival.
Elva K. Österreich/El Defensor Chieftain
Richard Guzmán, a painter from Truchas, visits the bosque for a commissioned painting and said he fell in love with the area.
Friends of the Bosque work all year By Laura London
El Defensor Chieftain Reporter llondon@dchieftain.com
The Friends of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is working hard to help make the 2012 Festival of the Cranes a soaring sensation, just as it works all year to promote and assist the refuge any way it can. This year’s festival is the 25th and features over 100 tours, workshops, hikes, lectures and special activities. The festival is sponsored jointly by the Friends, the city of Socorro and Bosque del Apache staff.
Dinner with Friends
Leigh Ann Vradenburg, executive director of the Friends, said the nonprofit group has a few different events planned for this year’s festival, including the Friends dinner Thursday night at the Bodega Burger Co. & Lounge in Socorro. “And that’s just something we do every festival,” Vradenburg said. “Even nonmembers are invited to attend the dinner.” The dinner starts at 6 p.m. and costs $30. The keynote presentation to be given after dinner is “Bosque Past Present Future” by John Vradenburg, head refuge biologist and husband to Vradenburg. Vradenburg said that during the dinner, the group recognizes the winners of
the Friends photo contest and its volunteer of the year. She said they also have a silent auction fundraiser to benefit the bus scholarship program. Vradenburg explained the bus scholarship, or the Emerson Learn Bus Scholarship Endowment, is a project to provide funds for any school in New Mexico to come to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. The scholarship pays a percentage of a school’s expenses to bring a bus load of students to the Bosque; however, it pays 100 percent of costs for schools in Socorro County to visit the refuge. “It’s in their backyard,” Vradenburg said. “They should know about the refuge.” Vradenburg said the endowment was named after G. Emerson Learn III, who was a past president of Friends of the Bosque and worked hard for the benefit of the refuge. According to the Friends website, www.friendsofthebosque.org, Learn spearheaded the plans to enhance the visitor center at the refuge, which finally came to fruition in 2006 with the completion of the Christina Ann Lannan Educational Annex. He was also known for his excellent birding skills and the popular Beginning and Black Belt Birding tours he led during some festivals. Vradenburg said the endowment started with donations people made in Learn’s memory, and the Friends continues to
build it so it will someday be a self-sustaining amount. She said they want it to become a perpetual source of funding so the Friends can always afford to bring a school to the refuge. She said it is about one-third of the way there; in the meantime, the Friends has an active fund to bring schools to visit the Bosque. Vradenburg said each year the number of schools the bus scholarship helps bring to the Bosque fluctuates. They have helped as many as 15 schools in a year, although that doesn’t reflect the number of trips their scholarship has helped fund. She explained some schools will bring different grades on different occasions, so one school may take a few trips to the Bosque. “It’s underutilized,” Vradenburg said of the bus scholarship. “I think more schools would come if they knew about the availability of funding.” The Friends website states schools that arrange a tour with refuge staff or volunteers are automatically eligible to receive a scholarship by filling out the bus scholarship application. The application can be downloaded as a PDF file from the Friends website. Each touring school can receive up to $250 in reimbursement for travel costs. “It helps,” Vradenburg said of the bus scholarship. “We’ve heard from several teachers who say they wouldn’t be able to visit without that funding.”
Vradenburg said the bus scholarship program has been very important to the Friends for many years now. “Because kids are the future,” Vradenburg said. “For just a few thousand dollars a year, if we can expose kids to the refuge then that’s helping to make a difference.” The Friends website reports knowledgeable tour guides and presenters are available to touring schools at no cost. The Friends can also do gradeand subject-appropriate presentations to support a school’s curriculum objectives. Presentations and tours can focus on whatever the season has to offer. Spring, summer and fall can be great times to visit the Bosque, according to the Friends website, and tours can showcase subjects like ecosystems, the food web, birds, flowers and aquatics. The refuge is open year-round; however, Nov. 1 through Feb. 15 is the most popular time to visit because of the tens of thousands of sandhill cranes, snow geese and ducks. Volunteer tour guides are available every day of the week during this period.
Friends help friends buy art
Vradenburg said the Wildlife Art Show is part of the Friends’ festival activities, and it is a juried fine art show held every n See Friends, Page 7
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Friends: Organization mission is to support refuge all year Continued from Page 6 year on the refuge. The art show is Friday through Sunday — 7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. Vradenburg said this year they have 27 artists for the show, and most of them are from New Mexico, or at least the Southwest in general. They are showing all types of different art, including painting, woodwork, jewelry, metalwork, photography, origami and more. “They just showcase their stuff, and it’s all available for sale,” Vradenburg said. She explained the art show isn’t a benefit to fund Friends activities; proceeds go to the artists. It is just an event the Friends sponsors to enhance the Festival of the Cranes. “It’s a little different than some other things we have during the festival,” Vradenburg said. “It gives people something to take home as a reminder of the refuge.” She noted due to the timing of the festival, people often end up doing holiday shopping at the art show.
Become a Friend
Vradenburg said anyone interested can join the Friends of the Bosque, and there are different amounts one can donate to do so. A basic individual membership is $20 for a year; one can also purchase a lifetime membership for $1,000. Vradenburg said the yearly membership is annual from the date of purchase. “We have a lot of members sign up during the festival,” Vradenburg said. She said membership benefits include a 10 percent discount at the Nature Store, which is a Friends enterprise located
at the Bosque’s visitor center. Members also receive “Bosque Watch,” a quarterly newsletter focused on the Bosque; it is available electronically or hard copy via U.S. mail. “It will keep you up to speed on what’s going on at the refuge,” Vradenburg said. Members also receive the Festival of Cranes brochure, a 48-page document this year, giving them first notice of what’s available at the festival, Vradenburg said. She said members are also invited to different events, like the Friends dinner and the group’s annual meeting in October. She added it is also a benefit “just knowing you support the Friends, who are supporting the refuge.” Vradenburg said over 80 cents of every dollar in membership dues goes directly to help support programs that benefit the refuge. Those include the bus scholarship program, education programs in local schools, advertising for the refuge, the Friends’ website and “different things like that we do on their behalf.” She explained the Bosque, as a national wildlife refuge, cannot advertise for itself, for instance, but the Friends can. Vradenburg said Friends also gives direct support to the refuge, such as buying diesel fuel for its heavy equipment, paying part-time staff to help there and more. “We have a broad scope of help we can provide to the refuge,” Vradenburg said. “It just depends on what they need.” One time, the Friends bought the refuge a mountain. Vradenburg explained Friends bought 140 acres, including 6,272-foot Chupadera Peak, in 2007 and donated it to the refuge, which incorporated it into its wilderness area.
Elva K. Österreich/El Defensor Chieftain
Chupadera Peak, 6,272 feet, is part of 140 acres purchased in 2007 by the Friends of the Bosque. Friends then donated it to the refuge, which incorporated it into its wilderness area.
“That was a project the refuge asked us to do,” Vradenburg said. “They identified it as a project they would like done, and we did it.” She explained there was a trail leading up to the top of the mountain; the trail started in the refuge area, but the mountain top was actually on private land. People visiting the refuge would hike up the trail and end up on private land without knowing it. “That was a great project,” Vradenburg said. “We did that in a year — raised the money and bought the land.”
Vradenburg said a major focus for Friends right now is getting local people out to the Bosque del Apache. She noted there are people in Socorro who were born here but haven’t even been to the refuge. “It’s beautiful right now, the birds are here,” Vradenburg said. “It’s a great afternoon for families.” Vradenburg said the refuge is a great place to visit year-round, actually. “There’s always something to do, for any age, interest or ability,” Vradenburg said. “That’s what we’re here to promote.”
Friends till the end
For memberships, donations and questions about the Friends of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge: • Visit www.friendsofthebosque.org online. • Email friends@sdc.org. • Call (575) 838-2120.
According to the Friends website, Friends of the Bosque organized in 1993 to publish a refuge paper needed to inform visitors. Federal regulations at the time prevented refuge staff from publishing materials. The paper, “Habitat,” has since been an annual full-color, 12-page publication financed by Friends and full of information and photos. It can be downloaded free, member or not, through the Friends web site. “We’ve certainly grown and taken on more,” Vradenburg said. “In the beginning it was just a few projects, and now we coordinate the festival ... We have a really nice gift shop ... We also have an education program with San Antonio Elementary School.” Vradenburg said the Nature Store is the Friends’ main source of funding. According to the Friends website, it started as a book store only but now sells clothing, jewelry, photos, artwork, note cards, children’s toys, educational materials and much more. It is located at the Bosque visitor center, and it can be accessed online via the Friends website.
For more information about the Bosque Nature Store • Check the Nature Store page on the site www.friendsofthebosque.org. • Email natstore@sdc.org. • Call the main refuge number, (575) 835-1828, and ask for the Nature Store manager. The Friends board of directors are: • Leigh Ann Vradenburg, executive director. • Lise Spargo, president. • Matt Mitchell, vice president. • Bob Moran, secretary. • Kitty Pokorny, treasurer. Board members at large are Ann Hodges, Jill Green, Jill Buckley, John Larson and Kumar Golap. Paul C. White is an ex officio member.
Get your subscription today! 575-835-0520
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8 • 2012 Festival of Cranes • El Defensor Chieftain • November 14, 2012
Wildlife refuges pay communities back El Defensor Chieftain Report National wildlife refuges — public lands set aside to conserve American wildlife and wildlife habitat — offer more than outstanding wildlife viewing and public recreation, said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. They also stimulate local economies. “Americans know national wildlife refuges are public treasures that protect imperiled species and improve public health and recreation,” said Salazar, speaking at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on the 109th birthday of the National Wildlife Refuge System. “They may not be as aware that these same refuges where they love to fish, to hunt, to hike and see wildlife are powerful economic engines that give back far more dollars to the community than they receive in appropriations.” Refuges also benefit their communities in other critical ways, he said. As an example, the secretary pointed to John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, just 11 miles away. The refuge, located wholly within Philadelphia city limits, each year plays host to 8,000 inner-city school children, educating them about nature. The refuge also attracts more than 125,000 other visitors each year — to fish, to hike or to birdwatch. For the local community, visitors mean revenue. The refuge generated $2 in local economic effects for every $1 it was appropriated, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “John Heinz Refuge is a terrific model of some of the many ways in which refuges improve the quality of life, economically and otherwise,” Salazar said. In much the same way, national wildlife refuges boost business in local communities across the country, he said. The refuge system recorded 45 million refuge visits last year. The more visitors enjoy birding or hunting or hiking at some of the refuge system’s 556 refuges, the more sales rise in nearby restaurants,
hotels, shops and gas stations. Data from local tourism bureaus and chambers of commerce confirm the link. According to an October 2011 report commissioned by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a nonprofit conservation organization, refuges and other natural lands managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service generated about $4.2 billion in economic activity and supported more than 32,000 jobs in 2010. New data show how three popular refuges — one in the desert Southwest, one on a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico, and one in the Midwest heartland — help their local economies. The three are Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, and Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge in Illinois. Every winter, tens of thousands of sandhill cranes and snow geese flock to the desert oasis of Bosque del Apache Refuge, and wildlife enthusiasts follow. The refuge’s annual Festival of the Cranes in November draws up to 10,000 people in just one week. In sparsely populated Socorro County, with fewer than three people per square mile, that presence is felt. Local businesses vie to piggyback onto festival events, luring visitors with concerts, tours and art shows. “Definitely Bosque del Apache is the largest of our tourism attractions and economic generators,” said Terry Tadano, executive director of the Socorro County Chamber of Commerce and a former deputy manager of the refuge. As a destination site, he said, the 57,000-acre refuge outdraws the area’s ghost towns, fishing and hunting sites, a Civil War fort, a historic cattle driveaway, and a radio astronomy observatory. “Bosque is still number one of all those sites combined,” he said. Joe Ruiz, manager of the Best Western Hotel in Socorro, appreciates the uptick in business from Bosque’s Festival of the Cranes. “Folks enjoy being out there (on the
refuge). We put up information (about the festival) on our marquis without being asked,” he said. Preliminary findings from a new U.S. Geological Survey report on refuge visitation show that in 2010, non-local visitors (93 percent) to Bosque del Apache Refuge spent an average of $64 per person per day in the local area; local visitors (7 percent) spent an average of $41 per person per day. How does that spending add up? In 2011, the refuge’s 165,000-plus visitors
spent more than $5 million during their stay, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service economists estimate, based on data in the National Survey of Hunting, Fishing and Wildlife-Associated Recreation conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. This spending, in turn, generated more than $7.6 million worth of state economic activity and supported 94 jobs outside the refuge. n See Communities, Page 9
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November 14, 2012 • El Defensor Chieftain • 2012 Festival of Cranes • 9
Communities: Across the nation, refuges work for people Continued from Page 6 Winter is also high season for J.N. “Ding” Darling Refuge on Florida’s Sanibel Island, famed for its abundance of birds. More than 700,000 people visit each year — many of them “snow birds” from New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and other northern cities. Spending by refuge visitors, which the Service estimated at nearly $14 million in 2011, helps sustain island hotels, restau-
rants and shops, said Sanibel city manager Judy Zimomra. The dollars also percolate into the rest of Lee County, hard hit by the housing bubble collapse of 2007. There they generate another $26 million in economic activity and support an estimated 264 jobs, say Service economists. High visitor numbers to “Ding” Darling Refuge boost the local economy one more way, Zimomra said. “Our feeder market for our housing stock is very much based on people visiting
Elva K. Österreich/El Defensor Chieftain
As the first rays of the sun rise over the hills east of Bosque del Apache, the snow geese lift off to find food after a full night’s rest.
the island first. It’s not at all uncommon for people to visit the island, visit the refuge and then make this their second home or retirement home,” she said. At Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge in Williamson County, Ill., it’s always high season. Summer is popular with boaters and campers. Hunters prefer fall and winter. For anglers, the best biting is in spring. “Outdoor recreation is very large here,” said Shannon Johnson, executive director of the Williamson County
Tourism Bureau. All told, some 750,000 people visit the refuge each year, and refuge recreation programs generate millions for the local tourism economy, according to the refuge. The refuge courts outdoor enthusiasts with five annual fishing tournaments and several smaller “fish-offs.” In 2011, refuge visitors spent an estimated $7.9 million, generating $15 million in local trade and supporting 150 jobs outside the refuge, according to Service economists.
10 • 2012 Festival of Cranes • El Defensor Chieftain • November 14, 2012
Photos by Lindsey Padilla/El Defensor Chieftain
The Buckhorn Tavern was voted number seven by GQ Magazine in 2005 as one of the best burgers to eat before you die.
San Antonio Crane has original homemade food for its customers.
The Owl Bar has been around since 1945. It is known for the world famous green chile cheeseburger.
San Antonio businesses love Festival of the Cranes By Lindsey Padilla
El Defensor Chieftain Reporter lpadilla@dchieftain.com
San Antonio San Antonio was an Indian village before it was a town, said Owl Bar owner Rowena Baca. Its history starts with Conrad Hilton, who was born in the town. And according to Buckhorn Tavern owner Bob Olguin the village attracted miners and cotton growers long ago. In 1945, the Owl Bar opened in San Antonio. Baca said her father, Frank Chavez, came back to San Antonio from serving in the U.S. Navy and opened a bar, in what was previously a grocery store operated by his father-in-law, J.E. Miera. Chavez put a grill behind the bar and made the original green chile cheeseburger recipe, she said. Baca has worked at the Owl Bar all her life and gets hundreds of customers every year for Festival of the Cranes. The Owl Bar was a late night place where people would go to gamble, Baca said. There used to be dances and movies in the back room. While those activities no longer take place, the Owl still has plenty of regular customers. It’s called the Owl Bar because people would stay up late all night long, Baca said. “It’s a small town and everyone helps out,” Baca said. “It is the capital of the green chile cheeseburger.” For seven to eight years, the Owl Bar has collected money to donate to charities. Customers write messages and names on a dollar bill, and put them into the suggestion box as a vote for which charities they want the money to be donated to. The money is then divided and donated to charities including St. Jude, Make a Wish, the Boys and Girls Ranch and Good Samaritan. People come from France, Germany, Iowa and Michigan to the Owl
Bar Cafe. “The food is home made, and always fresh,” cashier Mary Gallegos said. “It is an old family business known worldwide, word of mouth for people to come all over.” Hours of operation at the Owl Bar are 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The Buckhorn Tavern is a third generation restaurant, says owner Bob Olguin. His father inherited the restaurant from his grandfather and passed it down to Olguin. Olguin said he always loved to cook, and his dad was always there. The Buckhorn Tavern got its fame boost in 2005 when GQ Magazine had the 20 best burgers to eat before you die, and his green chile cheeseburger was lucky No. 7. The business was discovered by media such as the Food Network and The New York Times, he said. “The publicity really got us out there,” Olguin said. “And it (Buckhorn Tavern) was in other magazines such as Rachel Ray and Sabroso.” Olguin even had an opportunity to host “New Mexico Hot Chefs” and said it was great exposure for his business. “The business is important to the town because it has great history,” Olguin said. “People come here from all around the world. People make a special trip to eat here. It’s a dream.” The Festival of the Cranes is especially busy for his business, and he treats everyone special. Olguin said it is a privilege for people to visit this part of the world to see the birds. “I love to cook and I am a musician,” Olguin said. “We have music and food to entertain people.” San Antonio Crane has Mexican food New Mexican style, says owner Zoolia Armijo. During the week of the Festival of the Cranes, the Crane will be open from
8 a.m. to 2 p.m. In 2002, Armijo’s mom, Maria Acosta, owned the place and her daughters worked with her. Armijo is the youngest and she took over the restaurant, she said. All the homemade recipes are handed down and are still the same. The original name was
Acosta’s, but Armijo changed the name to San Antonio Crane for the town, she said. During the Festival of the Cranes, Armijo said there is more traffic because there n See Businesses, Page 11
November 14, 2012 • El Defensor Chieftain • 2012 Festival of Cranes • 11
Research continues at Bosque del Apache By Elva K. Österreich
El Defensor Chieftain Editor At Bosque del Apache over 30 different research projects are taking place at any given time. From an ongoing study on mountain lions to a weekly waterfowl survey, the bosque provides a perfect environment to study the natural world. Ashley Inslee, refuge biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, visited with the Socorro Rotary Club last week to update them on some of the projects. Specifically she talked about two new projects and two ongoing ones, one of which is the mountain lion project. The mountain lion project led by Dr. Travis Perry, Inslee said, is winding down. It originally involved fived collared animals and now has only one collared female still in the area. “We have gotten an incredible amount of data,” Inslee said. The Bosque del Apache mountain lion population tends to stay in the area except for juvenile males who wander, she said. And the study has shown, through those wanderers, that the animals have an affinity to the habitat they are raised in. The animals may head for the mountains and spend some time there but they tend to return to bosque habitats along the Rio Grande. Another thing the study has shown with its camera trap portion is that mountain lion movements are concentrated around high public use areas like the viewing decks. “This is disturbing to us,” Inslee said. “These are top predators who belong in our food chain.” The people involved in the project have been spraying tiger urine around some of the camera traps to see if that affects the big cats’ behavior. If a visitor to the bosque sees a lion, she said, “Clap your hands, make noise, throw a rock at it.”
Elva K. Österreich/El Defensor Chieftain
Ashley Inslee, refuge biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, talks with Socorro Rotary Club members Nov. 7 about ongoing research projects at the refuge. The project, Inslee said, has also shown that although mountain lions in the mountains tend to choose the elk and deer as prey, those in the bosque tend toward beaver and carp for sustenance, which is excellent for the environment. Although sometimes they certainly choose other things. “A female and her kitten took out a
collared elk,” Inslee said. She said rarely do the cats choose oryx as prey, although there was one large male who took down three or four of them. “He was a beast,” she said. There is another study — being done by Ryan DeVore, graduate student at Texas Tech University — on the elk population at Bosque del Apache, Inslee said.
“Fifteen years ago it was rare to see elk,” she said. “Now there are from 100 to 200 elk in the area.” DeVore has 31 of the elk collared with GPS and VHF collars, she said. The study has to do with habitat selection. He studies habitat use and movement patterns of the animals. “For the most part they stay within the bosque,” Inslee said of the elk. Like the young male lions, it is the young male elk who disperse to the nearby Magdalena Mountains as they grow older. The elk, Inslee said, are causing problems as they eat the nearby corn grown for the geese. “We raise the corn to provide much needed energy for the geese as they arrive exhausted and depleted,” she said. “We are working with the state, hoping to figure out a sustainable population of elk. Right now there is too high of a population.” In the next week or two there will be a paper and choices posted on the Bosque del Apache website where the public can offer public comment as to how to handle the elk problem in the area, Inslee said. In another corn related research project, bosque personnel are looking at the birds’ distribution and reliance on corn. It’s being done through the use of stable isotopes, Inslee said. “Do we need to keep doing this?” Inslee asked. “We want the cranes to forage and feed as naturally as possible.” Yet another study involves the Mexican duck population, habitat selection and movement. The Mexican duck life cycle occurs completely in the Southwest, Inslee said. “This is a species of concern for us,” she said. “It is really important we understand movement and what habitat is needed.” Other studies taking place at Bosque del Apache refuge include plants, birds, mammals, geology, insects and fish.
Businesses: Delicious Continued from Page 10
are people from all around visiting, but in general business is good, she said. Casa Blanca Bed and Breakfast is the accommodation closest to the Bosque, said owner and proprietor Phoebe Wood. Casa Blanca customers receive hot drinks and snacks and get up early to see the birds lift off, Wood said. The bed and breakfast is in a comfortable historic adobe house. The house has been around since 1880, and it usually gets booked up by Sept. 1 for Festival of the Cranes, she said. Casa Blanca offers a mini breakfast and visitors go to the Owl Bar or the Buckhorn Tavern for other
foods, she said. Some will even go to Socorro. The bed and breakfast opened in 1989. Casa Blanca gets some of the same people from previous years who come back, she said. There are a lot of people who are from outside of New Mexico and they attend workshops and lectures at the refuge, Wood said. She said she knew the previous owners of the house, Jean and Archie Roath, and bought the house from them in 1988 and opened it in 1989. Assistant innkeeper Phil Norton was manager at the Bosque del Apache Refuge from 1986 to 2000 and he is able to talk to the customers about Festival of the Cranes and the refuge. “It’s a very homey and cozy place to stay and accessible to the refuge,” Wood said.
Enjoy the Festival of the Cranes!
12 • 2012 Festival of Cranes • El Defensor Chieftain • November 14, 2012
COMMON GROUND
El Defensor Chieftain file photo
A shared appreciation for the hospitality of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge brings birds of many feathers together in the winter months.
November 14, 2012 • El Defensor Chieftain • 2012 Festival of Cranes • 13
Rio Grande: History of ‘great river’ changes as time moves on Continued from Page 4 was a community event. “It’s where boys became men — it was a big deal to be allowed to clean the ditches. The conservancy district is great, but it took away some of that tradition when it tamed the river.” The Rio Grande may be wide and muddy like another mighty American river to the east, but it never became a trade route for boats due to its shallow waters. However, that didn’t stop it from being an important aspect of transportation through the county and the Middle Rio Grande Valley in general. “You wouldn’t have the Camino Real without the river,” Melzer said. “To have a good camp site, you need three things — water, grass and fuel. All three are found in the valley, so the river has a direct tie to the Camino Real.” And the communities up and down the Royal Road are linked back to the river for their survival and placement. There are 10 miles between the major settlements on both sides of the river, Melzer explained, because that’s how far a wagon train could travel in a day. “They wanted to be in a village by nightfall,” he said. Of course, in addition to the main road, there were alternate roads that swung west and east to allow travel to continue when the valley flooded. Melzer said historical accounts talk about floods in Tomé stretching all the way from the river to the base of Tomé Hill. The small town was called the “village of puddles,” Melzer said. “The whole plaza, church and cemetery would flood. There were often ranchitos on the mesa that families would go to, to get on higher ground.” South of Tomé, in Belen, repeated floods forced the move of Our Lady of Belen Catholic Church from its Wisconsin Avenue location to its current home on 10th Street. There is even one story that tells about flood waters reaching the tops of the cottonwoods in 1884. Melzer doubts those accounts, but admits the cottonwoods might have been exceptionally short at that time. Entire communities were erased when the Rio Grande came out of its banks. Probably the most devastating one locally was the 1929 flood of San Marcial south of the present-day Bosque del Apache NWR. Little remains of the small settlement except its cemetery now, but the people never forgot, according to Melzer. “It was a railroad town and a lot of the families moved to Belen and Socorro,” he said. “The descendents still have strong emotional ties to the community and hold a reunion every two years.” Even as unruly as the river was, people still needed to travel, transport goods and generally move about, and the idea of building a bridge to cross a river was nothing new. In colonial times, there were three bridges across the Rio Grande — one in El Paso, one in San Felipe and one in Belen. The people in those communities were expected to build and then maintain the bridges. The work was uncompensated, so there was much bitterness over being used as “slave labor,” Melzer said. “Building the bridges took time away from work, so they were pretty flimsy things, more for walking,” he said. “So the least wave from the river would take the bridge out and they had to rebuild it.” Even if the locals didn’t particularly like building and rebuilding the bridges, they did do one good thing. “A community having a bridge could connect the Camino Rael on the east side of the river with the communities on the west,” Melzer said. The river has been the source of controversy as well, he said. From water use in general, to the protection of the silvery minnow, it has endured criticism and attack. It has set and erased boundaries large and small. Because it wandered from time to time, land grants that marked one boundary line with the river’s center would see its area expand or contract, depending on the mood of the Rio Grande. Melzer said even the Pueblo Revolts of 1680 can be connected in some respects to the river. The Pueblo Indians believed there was a bond with nature that included having enough water to irrigate, he said. The Franciscans didn’t let them worship their gods, so all the wrongs — the raids, disease, brutal drought — were blamed on lack of proper reverence. John Taylor, Peralta historian and an expert on the Catholic culture in the Rio Abajo, said in his point of view, the most historically significant part of the river was how the flooding changed people’s lives. “And the cycle of flooding was depended on to enrich the area with the silting,” Taylor said. “It also took away lives, livelihoods, villages and changed history.” When the river changed course one year, 320 acres of the land grant that was Bosque de Los Pinos was lost. That community would eventually become the village of Bosque Farms. “It created something, but took things away,” Taylor said. The shifting and flooding of the river dictated building patterns, Taylor said. “Over the years, you see consistent movement around to higher ground,” he said.
Elva K. Österreich/El Defensor Chieftain
As the Rio Grande reaches Socorro County, depleted by water users north of the county, it is no longer seen as a political boundary or physical barrier between communities. “But if you live in the desert, you have got be near water. The river was the source of water in acequias to get irrigation to places that were not suitable for cultivation.” The river was also a boundary through the county. Because of that, many people often think of the communities on either side of the river as one continuous population, Taylor said. “When the river was running, before bridges, you didn’t just cross the river,” he said. “So the communities were separate. Going back and forth was not a trivial thing. It really formed a boundary so Valencia, Peralta, Tomé were very different than Los Lunas, Belen, Los Chavez.” Over the years, thinking of the river as a hard, fast physical barrier has become almost a non-issue, Taylor said. “The significance of the river has changed over the years. It’s a water source for Albuquerque and irrigation here,” he said. “Thinking of it as some kind of political boundary or barrier is not as significant as it was really before.” It is easier to cross the great river today thanks to modern bridges. And it has become so managed as to be nearly docile. But on a quiet evening, as the sun slips over the mesa, the waters of the river slip past the exposed roots of the cottonwoods. It nibbles at the banks, little by little, changing its path even now. It reminds us that while it might be a tamed heart, it still has the ability to bring life and possibly death.
14 • 2012 Festival of Cranes • El Defensor Chieftain • November 14, 2012
CRANE HAVEN
El Defensor Chieftain file photos
Every year thousands of cranes settle into Bosque del Apache for the winter as cold temperatures push them south.