{"id":43497,"date":"2023-10-31T08:52:42","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T15:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/?p=43497"},"modified":"2023-10-31T08:52:44","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T15:52:44","slug":"shhh-listen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/shhh-listen\/","title":{"rendered":"Shhh…Listen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cI like to call [the Gila River] a reference river, a place that we can come and learn how rivers used to work before they were dammed and over-diverted and dewatered,\u201d says Martha Cooper, Freshwater Director for The Nature Conservancy in New Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly, in New Mexico, we put our rivers to work. We treat them as conveyance channels for waters we want to use, and to dilute pollution we don\u2019t want. Over the last few hundred years in the United States, this mindset has dominated our society. Rarely do we remember that rivers are their own creatures. And as living beings themselves, they have something to teach us.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe Saenz\u2019s mom would talk about water as a spirit, he says. \u201cShe would talk about water like my grandfather used to talk about trees, like they were people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With funding from The Water Desk, a journalism initiative at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism, the Our Land crew went to the Gila River this summer<\/a>, to visit the river, including a stretch that would have been changed forever if New Mexico had moved forward on a controversial diversion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this special Our Land segment<\/a>, we consider what lessons the Upper Gila River holds for the future\u2014and the rest of the Colorado River Basin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n