Picket Wire Canyon to be Managed for Wild & Scenic River Eligibility
- Anne Boswell Taylor
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
~Norman Kincaide
The National Forest Service held an in-person information meeting at the Pritchett School, Baca County, August 4, 2026, 5-7 PM and via zoom, August 5th, 5-7PM. Presentations emphasized the management plan for the Purgatoire River and Picket Wire Canyon for Wild and Scenic River Eligibility. The 1994 management plan for the Purgatoire River focused on riparian, wildlife and special interest management. Currently, Picket Wire Canyonlands management emphasizes conservation, controlled access and travel, limited, controlled and resource centered recreation, conducting research inventories and monitoring, developing partnerships while encouraging volunteers, and enhancing educational opportunities.
How can the Forest Service manage the Purgatoire River to maintain its wild and scenic eligibility, while also providing for multiple uses? Managing the Purgatoire River for outstanding remarkable values (ORV) and free-flowing character involves what is required by law. Under the Wild & Scenic River system rivers are protected with free-flowing and outstanding remarkable natural, cultural and recreational values.
The river must remain free-flowing and contain at least one outstanding remarkable value. Free-flowing means “flowing in a natural condition while there is no minimum flow requirement for continuity.” The values can be scenic, historic, geologic, and recreation but also hydrologic, paleontological and heritage. The Picket Wire has geologic (dinosaur tracks), history or culture (historic and pre-contact era sites), fisheries (unique native assemblage & high habitat connectivity), wildlife (largest Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep herd and array of sensitive wildlife species).
Purgatoire River core management direction remains strongly aligned with the 1994 plan. Keeping the river free-flowing. Ensure that activities avoid impairing outstanding recreational values, allowing recreation and uses that fit a primitive low-impact setting. Protecting heritage sites, dinosaur track sites, wildlife habitat and fish connectivity are emphasized, while screening projects through Wild & Scenic River criteria.
Wild and Scenic River eligibility may elevate the Purgatoire River’s national importance. The Forest Service must consider Wild & Scenic River criteria, while controlled access continues and interpretation emphasis may grow for its remarkable values. Eligibility only applies to Forest Service land and the river corridor and does not give the government control or zoning power over private lands or county authority, nor does it affect water rights.
Recreation management for Purgatoire River and Picket Wire Canyon involves considering increases in visitation, requiring a balance between growing recreation demands and local economic needs and incorporating mitigation strategies to maintain ecological integrity while accommodating multiple use opportunities.
The emphasis on the Wild & Scenic River eligibility overshadows the overall Cimarron and Comanche Grasslands revised management plan. Eligibility is a management status between a Wild & Scenic River study and eventual designation. It means managing to maintain eligibility status and whatever that requires of the governing agency (Forest Service, Park Service, Bureau of Land Management). The main issue is maintaining a water course as “free-flowing.”
There is no fixed, automatic time period after which a river managed as Wild & Scenic eligible is deemed no longer eligible. Eligibility is an inventory finding that generally continues, with protective management under agency policy, until specific conditions change it. Under the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act, congressionally authorized study rivers receive statutory protections during the study period, for any interim period until the report is submitted and up to three additional years after the required study is submitted to Congress. If Congress does not designate the river within that three-year window, the statutory protections end and the river is no longer afforded protection by the Act as a study river.
Federal agency identified eligible rivers are protected by agency policy to protect free-flow, water quality, outstandingly remarkable values and tentative classification. This generally continues for the life of the relevant land use or resource management plan. The river stops being treated as eligible for designation when a suitability assessment determines it is not suitable; a subsequent land planning evaluation finds it no longer eligible; or other documented changes render as not meeting eligibility criteria.
Agencies reevaluate eligibility only if changed circumstances warrant it. Past eligibility determinations do not automatically expire and typically do not require re-study. Protective management begins once eligibility is found and aims to avoid actions that would make the river ineligible.
Core Protective Management for federal land managing agencies apply restrictions to the extent of their existing legal authorities while subject to valid exiting rights. The Wild & Scenic Rivers Act does not provide direct statutory protections for Section 5(d)(1) eligible rivers. Protection relies instead on agency policies, land resource management plans, NEPA analysis, and other applicable laws. Agencies specifically aim to protect free-flowing condition, avoiding or minimizing new impoundments, diversions, channelization, straightening, rip-rapping, or other modifications that would alter the natural flow character.
Within these protections are maintaining water quality sufficient to support the river’s values. Preventing degradation of the specific values that qualified the river segment. Protective management applies for the life of the relevant agency management plan. Agencies incorporate these protections into resource management plans, project level decisions, and environmental reviews. Proposed actions are evaluated to ensure they do not compromise free flow, water quality, ORVs, or classification. This approach keeps the river’s qualifying characteristics intact so that it remains a viable candidate for congressional designation without imposing the full range of requirements that apply only after formal designation.
Preventing a Wild & Scenic eligible river classification from becoming a part of a federal land resource management plan (Comanche National Grasslands Revised Management Plan) is much the same for defeating the designation. Las Animas and Otero County Commissioners passed resolutions opposing the Wild & Scenic River designation, which were given to Rep. Jeff Hurd, US House District 3, who said he would not sponsor a designation if the County Commissioners were opposed.. This requires resolutions opposing the inclusion of the Purgatoire River and Picket Wire Canyon as Wild & Scenic eligible within the Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands Revised Management Plan. Pertinent Therefore, “Commissioners are opposed to Picket Wire Canyon to be managed as Wild & Scenic River eligible within the context of the Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands Revised Management Plan, since the Purgatoire River is unsuited for inclusion in the Wild & Scenic River System.”
Defenders of Wildlife covet the Wild & Scenic River designation for the Picket Wire Canyon, as indicated in a letter dated, December 11, 2025, Keats Conley, Defenders of Wildlife to Beth Davis, Forest Service: “On behalf of Defenders of Wildlife . . . thank you for the opportunity to provide comments on the Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands Draft Assessment as part of the land management plan revision process.”
“Please include this letter in the administrative record for the land management plan revision for the Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands.”
“We strongly support the finding that the 20.8-mile segment of Purgatoire River is eligible and possesses many Outstandingly Remarkable Values . . . We concur with these findings in the eligibility report and look forward to management direction in the revised plan to maintain its outstandingly remarkable fish and wildlife values.”
Serious questions remain about the Wild & Scenic River issue. There was no question-and-answer period for the Pritchett meeting, cards were handed out to attendees for comments and questions. Questions were entertained for the Zoom meeting. If Wild & Scenic designation did occur, would funding be increased for the Picket Wire Canyonlands? Ryan Nehl, Forest Service, responded: Not likely. Laurie Schroeder of Campo, asked about hunting and fishing in the Picket Wire Canyon. Someone responded via Chat, there was very little fishing on the Purgatoire River in the Picket Wire Canyon, mostly minnows while there might be catfish. Hunting in the Picket Wire is a difficult because of rugged terrain, access restrictions and no overnight camping within the canyons.
Access to the Picket Wire Canyonlands is already strictly supervised under the 1994 Management Plan. It appears that further designation as Wild & Scenic would not enhance protections already in place and only complicate and frustrate growing recreational interest. Which raises the question: Is the Revised Management Plan really a pretext for establishing a Wild & Scenic River on the Comanche National Grasslands regardless of the 2012 Planning Rule requirements?
Sources
Cimarron & Comanche National Grasslands Plan Revision Public Meeting, Understanding Management of the Picket Wire Canyonlands, Purgatoire River & Recreation, August 4, 2026
GROK Summary of Wild & Scenic River Eligibility Protections and opposing eligibility.
Freedom of Information Act Request, Filed September 2, 2025, First Document Drop, March 25, 2026, 2025-FS-R2-09429-F-Kincaide 1, 07 References, Conley References, 20251211-DOW comments on CCNG Draft Assessment PDF. Defenders of Wildlife, Conley to Davis, December 11, 2025, pp. 1, 32. See the link below.
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