Before Picture
After Picture
For over thirty years I have been walking my dogs in the Bosque. You see a lot of senior citizens down there doing that. So, imagine our surprise this morning when we show up and find our trail obliterated by the State Parks Department. No public input. No hearings. No information or dissent allowed. All thanks to the Rio Grande Nature Center. Now they are pointing fingers at the City's Open Space and Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District as being complicit. You can see from this photo how debris and downfall have been spread over the trail. When I called about this mess all I got were conflicting statements. 
One of the state employees told me the trail was only a few years old. Even though I explained to her I had been using it since the late 70's. I am just stupid I guess. This is a picture of my son and I in the Bosque when he was about five years old. (He was hunting for Ewoks) He is now nearing thirty.
Many neighborhoods along the Bosque work hard to keep it nice. We should have been consulted. The trail needs to be cleared now, otherwise people will start breaking new ones all over the place making things worse.
My good friend State Parks Director Dave Simon said he would look into the lack of public input.
2 comments:
It seems to this 11-year resident that the bosque is one of the most underutilized urban park spaces in America. Here we have America's third longest river, an important historical waterway, and its course through the city is managed in a way that makes no public sense. Accessing the riverbank to watch the river flow is nearly impossible without a weed-whacker. We are, I assume, expected to stick to the irrigation ditch trails (the ugliest part of the whole environment) and stay out of the woods and away from the water. How short-sighted. We should be managing the Rio Grande as the great attraction it is.
This is just insane! I'm wondering what their justification for doing such a thing could possibly be?! How frustrating for those who live nearby.
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