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© Matthew Zmuda / USFWS CC
Valle de Oro, or Valley of Gold, sits amid heavy industry along the Rio Grande outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took over these 570 acres in 2012, and it’s the first urban national wildlife refuge in the region. Residents who have had little opportunity to engage with nature in the past will now have access to new hiking and biking trails, wetlands, and riparian fields – and seeing birds like this meadowlark!
BirdNote®
Valle de Oro
Urban National Wildlife Refuge
By Jerry Redfern and Karen Coates
This is BirdNote.
Valle de Oro, or Valley of Gold, is an old dairy farm that sits amid heavy industry along the Rio Grande—not what you might expect for wildlife habitat.
[Train]
But the region’s first urban national wildlife refuge is being built here near the airport on the south side of Albuquerque.
[Airplane]
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took over these 570 acres along the river in 2012.
[Construction]
The visitor center is slated to finish this month. The adjacent cottonwood forest is already home to small mammals, reptiles, and 250 bird species.
[Killdeer]
With new hiking and biking trails, wetlands, and riparian fields, the old farm fields are a bird lovers’ magnet.
[Geese]
The refuge sits in an ethnically diverse neighborhood of agriculture, industry, and residential housing whose residents have had few opportunities to engage with nature.
[Train and Meadowlark]
Mikayla Ranspot: Just the fact that there’s so many factories and landfills down here … It’s a community that wants change and it’s a community that’s working towards change.
[Killdeer]
Mikayla Ranspot is an environmental science student at the University of New Mexico, who’s been coming to Valle de Oro since grade school.
[Meadowlark]
One of the things that draws Mikayla here is a cycle that hasn’t changed for centuries.
[Sandhill Cranes]
Sandhill Cranes winter along this stretch of the Middle Rio Grande. And every morning at dawn and every evening at dusk, they fill the skies with their flying Vs and creaky calls.
[Sandhill Cranes]
For BirdNote, I’m Karen Coates.
###
Senior Producer: John Kessler
Production Manager: Allison Wilson
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Editor: Ari Daniel
Producers: Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern
Field Recordings by Karen Coates
© 2020 BirdNote December 2020 Narrator: Karen Coates
ID# riogrande-01-2020-12-24 riogrande-01
