Beautiful New Mexico in Photographs

Photo above: Mesa Ranch, northern New Mexico

Each year, as part of our stewardship responsibilities, NMLC is required to visit and monitor each of the 98 conservation easements that we currently hold throughout New Mexico and parts of southeastern Arizona for the landowners we serve.

We conduct the annual monitoring to ensure that the landowners are in compliance with the terms of the easements, to learn about actual or potential changes in their management practices from year to year, and to observe and document changing conditions on the land that might be occurring as a result of management practices or due to natural environmental causes.

It’s a big job – lots of ground to cover each year – and we’re fortunate to have an intern, Nicholas “Nick” Jacobson, to help us get the job done this summer.

Nick is a rising junior at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Studying geography (with an emphasis in geospatial sciences) and environmental studies, his position as NMLC’s conservation intern provides an opportunity for him to gain real-world experience while putting his academic experience to work.

Nick brings an added talent to the internship:  he has a good eye for landscape photography!  Since many New Mexicans are staying home more this summer for health and safety reasons, we thought we’d send you photographs of the New Mexico landscape as Nick makes his way throughout our beautiful state on NMLC’s annual stewardship monitoring mission.

Best wishes,

All of us at NMLC

Beautiful Pecos River Property.

Crops coming up in Corrales along the Rio Grande, where the folks are serious about preserving farmland this close to Albuquerque metro area.

Taylor Springs Ranch. The shortgrass prairie of northeastern New Mexico represents one of the last remaining intact, landscape-scale grasslands left in North America — critical habitat for grassland birds and important stopover habitat for birds migrating between breeding and wintering grounds.

LET IT RAIN! Taylor Springs Ranch.

NMLC’s intern, Nick Jacobson, in the field.