New Member Organization!

Please welcome N.E.- El Paso National Active and Retired Federal Employees (NERFE)  Chapter number 1473 as FMWC’s newest organizational member!  President, Rodney Smith will be NERFE’s representative to FMWC.

Update to FMSP Entrance

Your calls, letters and e-mails made a difference when you asked TxDOT and elected officials to ensure that Franklin Mountains State Park (FMSP) will have a safe and effective entrance to the Tom Mays Section of the Park from Transmountain! 
El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar, Chair of the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) Transportation Policy Board (TPB) said she received dozens of e-mails.  In her reply she said, “Please know that TxDOT is still in the process of gathering input for the park entrance and your email was forwtarded to the TxDOT engineer who is charged with that process….  At a meeting earlier this week, the MPO Transportation Policy Board made it clear that we wanted the input regarding the entrance to take into account not only vehicle safety but also the needs and safety of pedestrians, bicyclists and wildlife.”
During that meeting on 15 April, Mayor John Cook made an amendment that gave direction to TxDOT saying, “the environmental needs assessment for the Franklin Mountain State Park Entrance must include pedestrian, vehicular, and wildlife access as well as traffic safety to both sides of the Park and a commitment that District Discretionary funds up to $10 million will be used if no other source of funding is found.”
The MPO TPB heard that you support our State Park.  Thank you!  Now we must stay vigilant.

Volunteer for the Friends of the Arroyo

Saturday, Mar 30th has been set for the spring workday, in which Friends of the Arroyo,
El Paso High School students, and interested citizens are invited to meet at the Tennis Club parking lot,  N. Virginia (bellow Robinson St.), at 9 am.  We will do trail work, trash pickup and vegetation trimming until lunch time.  

The park partnership for the upper section of Arroyo Park, established by the late Dr. Billy Rodgers, remains vacant.  For more information contact Matt Carroll, Senior Leader Friends of the Arroyo, 2friendsofthearroyo@gmail.com

Friends of the Rio Bosque

The Friends of the Rio Bosque is the volunteer-support group for Rio Bosque Wetlands Park. The Friends are active in all aspects of the park, from education programs, to outreach, to ecosystem management, to faunal monitoring, to fundraising, to advocacy.

Vision
Rio Bosque Wetlands Park will be a unique natural landscape where visitors from throughout the Paso del Norte region and the world experience first-hand the biologically rich ecosystems once found in our river valley, learn about those ecosystems, and become inspired to be careful stewards of our natural world.

Mission
Our mission is to provide the volunteer support needed to make Rio Bosque Wetlands Park a world-class nature park through active involvement in the Park’s habitat-restoration, education, research, public outreach, advocacy and fundraising programs.

More at www.riobosque.org