Upcoming events
JOin NMWF at an Event!
Join us at Wildlife Wednesday, a family event, or an advocacy day.
Visit us at a community event.
Find important hunting and fishining deadlines and meetings.
Wherever we meet, we look forward to seeing you on our public lands and waters!
Wild Rivers Film Tour
105 minutes of awe-inspiring river cinema in celebration of the Caja del Rio Plateau.
For 11 years, the Wild Rivers Film Tour has been celebrating wild rivers and the people and wildlife who cherish them. This grassroots-style film tour was born out of a partnership between American Rivers and Greater Yellowstone Coalition, two non-profit organizations committed to protecting and enhancing ecosystems that depend on clean and free-flowing rivers. This showing of the Wild Rivers Film Tour is in partnership with, and in support of, the Caja del Rio Coalition. Our goal is to share awe-inspiring river stories and engage more people in the stewardship of landscapes like the Caja del Rio.
Happy hour starts at 5pm, films start at 6pm.
The New Mexico Wildlife Federation is a part of the Caja del Rio Coalition.
Wildlife Wednesday Free Event: Exploring the Fungi that Sustain the Rio Grande Bosque
Rich Wagner, an ecologist at the nonprofit Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program, has made extensive study of the fungi that have evolved alongside cottonwoods and other native plants in the Rio Grande Bosque. He will present a talk on his work Feb. 11 through the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s “Wildlife Wednesday” series.
Up until the last century or so, the Middle Rio Grande flooded every spring. The vast river flows watered cottonwoods and other plants and left fresh sediments when the waters finally receded in summer. Of course, that’s no longer the case.
A series of dams along the Rio Grande now captures spring runoff and releases it slowly to meet the needs of cities and agricultural users.
Every drop of water in the river these days is spoken for. Only the existence of the endangered Rio Grande Silvery Minnow and a few other endangered species account for keeping minimal summertime flows in the Middle Rio Grande, which nonetheless occasionally runs completely dry.
That stark change in river flows coupled with the wholesale invasion of nonnative plant species such as salt cedar and Russian olive have created challenging conditions for cottonwoods and other native plant species. All that, in addition to widespread development, has resulted in loss of wildlife habitat.
While it’s easy to see such changes on the surface, Wagner’s research shows that disturbances in the bosque also hurt the fungi that coexist with and help sustain plant roots in the soil. In working to replant areas, he said it’s important to add soil from undisturbed areas of the bosque that still retain the essential native fungi. For more information, click HERE.