New Mexico's Otero Mesa is a wild grassland that is home to pronghorn, deer, burrowing owls, mountain lions, and other wildlife and plants. A large fresh water aquifer lies beneath Otero Mesa, enough to supply drinking water for New Mexicans for over a hundred years. Under a plan finalized by the Interior Department in January 2005, 95% of Otero Mesa is open to oil and gas leasing and development. This decision ignored a plan offered by New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson, to protect the most sensitive parts of the area--640,000 acres--from energy development. In response, the Governor announced that his state is standing up to protect Otero Mesa. On April 22, Earth Day, Governor Richardson and New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid joined hunters and ranchers to announce that their state had filed suit in federal court to block the Interior Department's plan for Otero Mesa. The Interior Department's plan threatens wildlife, water and New Mexico's way of life. It would allow hundreds of miles of roads, hundreds of drilling sites, pipelines, and other development in the search for oil and gas. This despite indications by representatives from the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management that there is little chance of finding economically recoverable amounts of oil and gas in this area. It puts at risk groundwater--historically, oil and gas operations in southern New Mexico have contaminated public drinking water sources. And it threatens wildlife habitatfor pronghorn, Aplomado falcons, and other wildlife. Despite all these problems, despite comments supporting protection of this area from thousands of people from New Mexico and across the country, and over the wish of the Governor and people of New Mexico, the Interior Department has decided to push its drilling plan forward.