Signing features new book that explores preserving Otero Mesa

Staci Matlock | The New Mexican

11/27/2008 - 11/21/08

Otero Mesa —1.2 million acres of grasslands in the Chihuahuan Desert of Southern New Mexico — has been the center of controversy for years: Environmentalists, ranchers, biologists and New Mexico's governor want the mesa preserved. Oil and gas developers want to extract its underground hydrocarbon resources.

A new book, Otero Mesa: Preserving America's Wildest Grassland (University of New Mexico Press), explores the reasons the land is worth protecting. Written by Tucson, Ariz., author Gregory McNamee, with photos by astronomer Stephen Strom and wilderness advocate Stephen Capra, the book traces the mesa's history and the fight over its future. "As with all strange and empty places in this increasingly crowded, increasingly monocultural world, Otero Mesa is an important island in our geography of hope," McNamee writes.

The mesa is the kind of place some people see as stark and empty while others relish the beauty of so much unfettered space. Biologists know it as a richly diverse ecological niche of a half-dozen varieties of raptors, including the endangered Aplomado falcon. Bighorn sheep, bobcats, elk, mountain lions, black-tailed prairie dogs and many other types of wildlife roam the mesa.

Strom's and Capra's photos illustrate the incredible wealth of life and wildness on Otero from thunderstorms during the monsoon season to the intricate geometry of a Parry's agave. They illustrate the wide-ranging colors and textures of the landscape, giving it a rich depth that might surprise people who look at the stark mesa and think nothing is there.

Central to Otero Mesa is the grass. Thirteen varieties of grass support the intricate mesa ecology. McNamee takes readers through a brief history of grasses, including three that formed the bedrock of civilization worldwide — corn, wheat and rice. His description in taut prose engenders a new respect for a plant family most people think little about except when they mow it.

Across the world, the slow march of desertification and the faster march of development is wiping out grasslands.

Of Otero Mesa, he writes, "This particular grassland in the desert is one of the rarest of all North American ecosystems: An island of waving grain in an advancing sea of brown, the last of its kind."

Overgrazing, fire suppression, drought, loss of prairie dog colonies and climate change have all contributed to the decline of the Chihuahuan Desert grasslands. "They have made an orphan of Otero Mesa," McNamee writes.

Capra has been an outspoken advocate of preserving Otero Mesa in his position as executive director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. Strom, a research astronomer for 40 years, also is a photographer whose work has appeared in several books.

McNamee, an author, editor and photographer, expands the battle over oil drilling on Otero Mesa to an impassioned and wide-ranging look at oil, public lands and the place foreign oil plays in American politics.

He examines the decision by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to authorize in 2005 the drilling of 225 oil and gas wells on Otero Mesa. BLM maintains the restrictions on drilling Otero Mesa are some of the most stringent ever required and that very little of the land will be impacted. McNamee belittles that claim but doesn't explore it in much depth.

McNamee also uses Otero Mesa to examine the fate of solitude and wilderness in an increasingly crowded world. "The possibility of quiet, of escape, is being lost daily," he writes.

McNamee rightfully lays the blame for the threat to Otero Mesa at the feet not only of oil and gas companies, but all of us who drive cars. "We all scream for fossil fuel. If we do not change our course, then Otero Mesa will die — just as every other place is dying, measurably, daily, inarguably, before our very eyes."

Contact Staci Matlock at 470-9843 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.

What: Signing of the new book Otero Mesa: Preserving America's Wildest Grassland by author Gregory McNamee and photographers Stephen Strom and Stephen Capra

When: 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Garcia Street Books, 376 Garcia St.