Ciudad SWCD

Ciudad SWCD is a highly collaborative entity that bridges environmental programs at Federal, State, County and Municipal levels with constituents within our district boundaries. Currently Ciudad SWCD is managing an approximately 75 acre property in the North Valley of Albuquerque called Candelaria Nature Preserve (CNP). CNP is agricultural land that is being converted to wildlife habitat in collaboration and partnership with numerous entities including City of Albuquerque Open Space Division, Friends of CNP and Rio Grande Return, along with other wildlife preserves up and down the Middle Rio Grande. As a preserve, CNP is not open to the general public, but the public are able to volunteer on the property and join tours, and school groups are welcomed for organized field trips. Ciudad has long-standing educational programming that reaches around 1500 hundred elementary-aged public school students each year. These programs bring watershed, water resource and conservation education into classrooms and bring students outside to important watershed features such as the Bosque/Rio Grande or Arroyos nearby the schools, where many of them complete a service project planting native trees. Additionally Ciudad SWCD has a senior citizen environmental education program in Sandoval County that is able to, through partnerships with local senior centers and residential communities, provide transport to participants for educational field trips. Recently, Ciudad SWCD was awarded almost half a million for the Trails+ Grant to create an all-ability inclusive and accessible trail at the Tijeras Creek Outdoor Education Center within the Tijeras Creek Biozone. This grant also includes funding for creek restoration and invasive species removal to improve the function of the creek within the larger Tijeras Creek Biozone and Cultural Corridor. These are just a few of the examples of the current achievements that demonstrate Ciudad SWCD’s impact on local systems change. A healthy watershed is a marker for individual wellness and we see our constituents as integral pieces of the larger goal. No matter what angle we are doing our conservation work from, it includes getting people outside to connect to the land, building knowledge around our local landscapes and stewarding that land through individual and community action.