CLOVIS, N.M. – The U.S. Department of Defense, along with other government agencies, announced Wednesday the first sentinel landscape designation in New Mexico. 

The Sentinel Landscape Partnership program was first founded in 2013. Through the program, federal, state, and local government agencies work with landowners who volunteer to ease climate change impacts and improve sustainable land and water management practices around military bases.

“We will work in sentinel landscape on conservation, working lands, national defense centers, and all priority lands for USDA, DOD, and the Department of the Interior. All of those things converge being anchored by Cannon Air Force Base and Melrose Air Force Range,” said Ladona Clayton, the executive director for Ogallala Land & Water Conservancy. 

The new Eastern New Mexico Sentinel Landscape includes more than 2.4 million acres of land, covering all of Curry County and parts of Roosevelt and Quay counties. 

“We’re going to take 21,000 acres, and we’re going to make it 2.44 million acres. And we’re going to continue to work and serve those farmers who have come forward to change their generational way of life so that we keep a generation, the word generation, in the rest of their stories, for their kids and their kid’s kids,” said Jeff Davis, the technical project manager for the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program.

Local landowners are currently in the third year of a water conservation effort with the Ogalalla Land and Water Conservancy. That effort is expected to save 12 billion gallons of water over the three years. 

“We have taken aggressive action as a collective through very solid collaboration, leveraging the power and influence of so many partners to save our water and to become water resilient,” said Clayton.

According to the DOD, agency partners will focus on advancing sustainable farming practices through education and training.