On Monday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed 50 bills into law, many of them negatively affecting the state financially and in practice. One such bill was S.B. 23 by Sen. Bobby Gonzales (D-Los Alamos, Rio Arriba, Santa Fe, and Taos), banning trapping on public lands.
The bill squeaked by its last chamber, with the House of Representatives narrowly passing the measure by a vote of 35-34. During this session, many rural residents and wildlife conservation officers say trapping remains critical for managing wildlife and protecting livestock.
The bill, which many Republicans and Democrats vehemently oppose, has garnered formidable opposition, with one Change.org petition named “Support science-based wildlife management,” gaining over 19,000 names of those opposed to the bill.
“This bill is not based on science, data or wildlife [biologists’] input. It is not based on the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation and the Public Trust Doctrine, which define fish and wildlife resources as the property of the people to be managed by the state and federal agencies entrusted with their stewardship. This model should be used as the foundation of science-based fish and wildlife management and hunting, fishing and trapping are appropriate management tools,” reads a portion of the petition.
Despite the vast opposition to the bill by wildlife experts and everyday New Mexicans, Lujan Grisham signed the extreme bill into law, signaling “an unbalance and sets a precedent for what could end up listing many animals as endangered or threatened in the future,” according to the petition organizers.
The signing and passage of the bill come with little to no public or scientific involvement in its fast-track to the Governor’s desk, and the massive bipartisan opposition to the bill indicates just how corrosive it is.
The disgraced fringe eco-left group “WildEarth Guardians” celebrated the bill’s signing, writing on Twitter, “Woo-hoo! Minutes ago, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law a bill banning traps, snares, and poisons on public lands across New Mexico. Join us in celebrating this huge milestone for #wildlife and #publiclands.”
The Governor also signed multiple other bills into law, such as a bill banning “hair discrimination” regarding cultural hairstyles and headdresses, a bill dumping vast amounts of mostly unregulated money into failing public schools, a bill forcing New Mexico public schools to “develop programs and curricula to teach Black history and culture,” and a bill promoting the use of solar power.
The Governor also signed S.B. 112, a radical environmental bill sponsored by Sen. Mimi Stewart (D-Bernalillo), which moves $100,000 from the General Fund to form a “Sustainable Economy Task Force” tasked with “developing an annually updated strategic plan to transition the state economy away from reliance on natural resource extraction.” Leftist “Republican” Rep. Kelly Fajardo (Valencia) was the only Republican in either chamber to vote in favor of the extreme eco-left bill, which is corrosive to the oil and gas industry. Fringe groups celebrated the newly created commission to destroy the oil and gas industry in New Mexico:
The Governor has yet to sign many other more extreme bills into law, but she is allowed 20 days since the Legislature delivered the bills to her to sign them into law, or else they are considered “pocket vetoed.”