Save the Gorge Vistas from ugly development!

Protect our environment and our futures rich success.  We can do it! Now is the time.

The too long letter 

Dear fellow Taosenos, Representatives, and Friends involved with the Taos Destination Stewardship plan. I am a local, born here in Taos in 1977 and my daughter was born here in 2011. I care greatly about our town and land and what the years to come will bring.
      I feel clearly, the most important issue for the future of Taos is the protection and preservation of our land in its natural beauty with all its magnificent views and sustainable resources. The spirit and land make us who we are, and its undeveloped beauty is what keeps us here. Our land is what creates our lifestyle, our art, the tourists, the dollars and the inspiration for us all. We must take care of our land, honoring its serene Sagebrush beauty, and it will take care of us. Expanding the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument and protecting more land in key areas along the Gorge and beyond would be a way to help ensure the success of Taos for generations to come.
      The Gorge, the Mesas, and mountains need protection, they are what create our iconic landscape and their protection ensures the good future of our land.  In 50 years, without protection, our priceless vistas could become like any blight of a Rio Rancho suburb…with strip malls and parking lots a stone’s throw from the Gorge rim …. a sad disgraceful future. We must preserve our land, and environment, and if that means reclaiming and buying private land as was done with 12600 acres of the Bears Ears National monument in Utah, in order to make sure critical land remains undeveloped, so be it, for the common good, and environmental wellbeing.
   Taos with our culture, our amazing views, our wild spaces, and outdoor lifestyle, is a treasure to the entire world. We cannot allow just a few people to ruin it by filling the incredible vistas with the trash of two week a year vacation homes, hobby ranches, and quickie marts. It is our duty and responsibility to protect and care for our environment.
      Let’s take a tip from the Pueblo and save the land!!! Let’s promote building in town and not on the most conspicuous views of the Mesa and Gorge. Let’s make it great to stay and live….in town, with awesome walking and bike trails along roads and to scenic spots, with local entrepreneurial venders and artists, let’s beautify our sidewalks and water ways …in town. Let’s incentivize with tax laws, codes, and zoning, building amazing environmentally friendly buildings, low-income eco-tec pueblos, and parks…in town.  Let’s make it impossible for people to build gaudy, inefficient, obnoxious vanity projects, and track homes along the Gorge rim which displace native species, and inhibit tourism, in an ugly and unconscious manner, ruining our invaluable land, and priceless views for everyone. 
    Let us be an example for the whole world in environmental stewardship, and conscious economic social growth. Let us take action, using zoning, eminent domain laws and the antiquities act to take back access and ownership of sacred, beautiful and historical places like the Stagecoach hot springs and more, widening the Rio Grand de Norte National Monument, both north and south all along the Gorge rim, from the horseshoe turn up past the sacred Ute mountain to Colorado.  
     Some places need to be shared for the good of all the people and the natural world, for all the future generations to come; some places are not just for sale to the highest bidder with a shiny new tin roof. We are lucky to live in such a place.   The protection and respect of our land and culture is what healthy, successful, and sustainable progress toward a positive future is. 
     A beautiful town, dense, and easy to get around, green, compassionate, historical, and artistic, is what we can grow to be.  A town, filled with culture, art, music, events, restaurants, galleries, street performers, vendors, a town of golden sloping adobe walls, solar panels, shade trees, and sun dappled benches; a town filled with innovation and consciousness is what we can be.  
      As we beautify our town and we secure the complete protection of the Gorge and prominent Mesa vistas through expanding the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, we will ensure the tremendous value of our land, increasing our notoriety. We will be an even more sought-after destination, exponentially promoting the rich experience of our welcome visitors.
      A town surrounded by pristine and beautiful wild lands, respected and protected for all our future generations inspiration and recreation, that is our prosperous and joyful path to a good and healthy future! If we work together, we can make it happen. 
May God bless you and the spirit be with you.  Thank you for all you do to make Taos wonderful. 
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