Sevilleta (Sev-ee-eta) National Wildlife
Refuge just off I25 at exit 169, encompasses 360 square miles and is one of the
largest refuges in the USA.
The refuge has an interesting
history, during his search for the fabled cities of gold, the area was named by
Juan de Oñate in honour of the Spanish city of Seville. At the end of the Spanish occupation the
area became the Sevilleta de La Joya Land Grant, and was administered by Mexico
and then after 1848 it belonged to the USA.
In 1928 after New Mexico became a
state, Socorro County bought the land, it changed hands again in 1936 when it
was bought by General Thomas Campbell who ranched the land for the next 30
years. Shortly before his death the
general formed the Campbell Family Foundation.
In 1973 the Nature Conservancy acquired the land from the foundation and
today the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nature Conservancy work in
partnership on the refuge.
All different sorts of eco systems
from high mountains, to wetlands, to desert make up the refuge. The visitor
centre has remote cameras usually at watering holes in different areas of the
refuge and you can see bears, wolves, mountain lions, deer, coyote all
different types of animals.
We hiked two of the trails by the
visitor centre, our first hike was the Nature Loop which is just over a mile
long. At one point we could see across
I25 to the wetlands and were lucky enough to see what the biologist back at the
reserve told us were elk. The
photograph isn't very clear as we were so far away.
The other hike we took was the Mesa
View Trail which is about 3.8 miles long, the charming lady at the visitor
centre recommended that we climb the mesa first as since all the rain last
autumn they have a tumbleweed problem.
They certainly do!
As we followed the trail up towards
the mesa we could see what, to us, looked like dried grass along the side of
the path, but was actually tumbleweed, in places you could barely see the path,
so it could’ve been quite difficult to see the route if we’d hiked down from
the top.
Once at the top we walked to the
viewpoint, tumbleweed was everywhere, we could see for miles and
enjoyed the view from one of the strategically placed benches for a while
before continuing to follow the trail around the top of the mesa.
Eventually the trail led down into a
bowl
and then along a small slot canyon,
the views were excellent and there
were some very pretty wildflowers.
From there the trail looped its way
around the bottom of the mesa until we were back at the visitor centre.
Have fun, we are!
No comments:
Post a Comment