Watch: Save the Gila Wilderness

From the air, America's first designated wilderness area -- the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico -- appears as a maze of forests and canyons, waters flowing from one fork to another and then into New Mexico's last undammed river. The walls of the canyons, eroded by the water, are majestic and catch the late afternoon light. In the distance, hunters’ camps glisten with their white tents and elks prance across a small pond.

 

Where the Gila spills out of America’s first wilderness area into a lush valley that eventually meanders into the agricultural plain downstream. That’s where people fish, hunt, raft and camp, and it’s where the Governor's Interstate Stream Commission is proposing to build a $1 billion diversion.

 

This $1 billion boondoogle is what led David S. Smith, the founder of CAVU, an organization dedicated to flight and film for conservation, and Albuquerque’s Inaugural Poet Laureate Hakim Bellamy, to release a music video called Everywhere is a Gila in collaboration with the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club. They want to draw attention the looming deadline for Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell to sign an agreement with New Mexico that would allow a billion-dollar diversion of the Gila River to go forward. 

 

The song, accompanied by aerial and ground shots of the wilderness area and the adjacent area slated for diversion, encourages listeners to take action by writing to Secretary Jewell in opposition to the project.

 

"My son is eight and my job is to share with him all the beauty I've ever been fortunate to find in this world," said Bellamy. "The Gila is part of that beauty. I did this song because I don't know what else to do. I'm an artist. I generally feel powerless unless I am 'arting.' It's what I know how to do to impact change. It just seems ridiculous to get rid of something our state is known for, unless we've tried every way possible to preserve it first. I hope that this video won’t be essentially an artifact to show the beauty of the Gila for posterity."

 

The video work illustrates the natural beauty of the Gila while the song highlights the risk to this very special place, said CAVU Executive Director David S. Smith.

 

"It is difficult for me to imagine a clearer issue than the proposed diversion of the Gila River," said Smith. "Almost 100 years ago the Gila was designated the world’s first Wilderness Area. The world's first! That fact should be sacrosanct. Let's leave this place alone, so that our children, and our children's children, and their children may love it, and learn from it."