Sandhill Cranes. Photo credit: Jerry Goffe, USFWS
	Chupadera Peak Granted Wilderness Status   October 2009 This week Congress formally approved the designation of 140 acres of newly-donated land at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, including the peak of Chupadera Mountain, to wilderness status.  The designation marks the first time that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been able to use a provision of the Wilderness Act, which authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to accept a donation of land immediately adjacent  to a designated wilderness area for preservation as wilderness. Read More...

Bosque del Apache is Spanish for "woods of the Apache," and is rooted in the time when the Spanish observed Apaches routinely camped in the riverside forest. Since then the name has come to mean one of the most spectacular National Wildlife Refuges in North America. Here, tens of thousands of birds--including sandhill cranes, Arctic geese, and many kinds of ducks--gather each autumn and stay through the winter. Feeding snow geese erupt in explosions of wings when frightened by a stalking coyote, and at dusk, flight after flight of geese and cranes return to roost in the marshes.

In the summer Bosque del Apache lives its quiet, green life as an oasis in the arid lands that surround it.

Visitors Center: M-F 7:30-4:00 Weekends: 8 -4:30; Tour Loop: Daily, 1 hour before sunrise - 1 hour after sunset.

Read the Bosque del Apache NWR Planning Update #1, Spring 2007

Read the 2008-2009 Burned Area Rehabilitation Plan for the Marcial Fire

Bosque del Apache Calendar

Friends of the Bosque del Apache NWR