The deliberate poisoning of the Valle Vidal and the Río Costilla has already begun — the largest water-poisoning program ever undertaken in the West. One hundred seventy six miles of pristine watershed and 25 lakes will be contaminated by different so-called “piscicides,” fish poisons, ostensibly to restore a genetically pure (99 percent) strain of Río Grande cutthroat trout to its supposed “native habitat.” How? By killing tens of thousands of fish that now live in those streams and lakes.

The “restoration” effort could require up to 15 years of such poisoning. Not only fish will be killed off. Amphibians, rare migrating and fish-eating birds, and all kinds of microorganisms will be adversely affected, and the now pristine watershed will never be the same.

Despite reassurances from New Mexico Game and Fish and the U.S. Wildlife Service that the poisons used — rotenone and antimycin — only kill fish, and that they dissipate in the water after several weeks, we know from the work of Rachel Carson and others that chemicals don’t just disappear.

They bio-accumulate in the food-chain and inflict harm on every level. Aside from the “active ingredients” in the piscicides used, a whole host of other chemicals are involved, such as acetones, benzenes, toluene, diethyl phthalates and many others. Some of these are known carcinogens and others interfere in the hormonal unfolding of humans and other macroinvertebrates. Still others are mutagenic and their effects on future generations are unpredictable.

Whether the concentrations used are very small, as Game and Fish argues, is immaterial: These chemicals don’t need to unnecessarily be introduced into pristine waterways. In fact, it’s illegal to do so. The Valle Vidal has been designated an “Outstanding National Resource Water,” and that means that: “No degradation shall be allowed in high quality waters (such as the Valle Vidal), if they impair the existing use of protecting aquatic life.” Introducing these piscicides is certainly a degradation and extirpates aquatic life, and thus is illegal under New Mexico law.

Reflect, for just a moment, on the unnecessary death of millions of sentient beings, fish and others, living in their own intricate web of life.

The piscicides that are used act like cyanide, interfering with the uptake and utilization of oxygen on the cellular level. Animals and other organisms with mitochondria, even some plants, die of asphyxiation, a horrible death.

Aside from the fact that we humans are the very top of the food chain and eventually have to “eat” whatever we ourselves put into our environment, there are immediate consequences for food production and food security for the whole region. For one, the Northern New Mexico Organic Wheat Project — so delicately established over so many years, with efforts of so many people — will be jeopardized. These wheat farmers irrigate with the waters of the Rio Costilla, and will contaminate their crops and land with chemical-laced water. The very notion that organic lands are irrigated with poisonous waters might destroy the market for any produce and crops coming from that land. The “organic standard” will at once become meaningless, and the credibility of the New Mexico Organic Commodity Commission is at stake. The farmers and their wheat-project associates were never invited to participate in the process with Game and Fish to discuss the economic and social impact on their communities.

Despite the immense scope of the project, New Mexico Game and Fish only conducted a faulty environmental assessment. No organization or political body has forced them to conduct a full-scale environmental impact statement.

The organizations the public has empowered to protect them from such unconscionable atrocities as this one are strangely silent. There has not been a word from the Sierra Club, very little from Forest Guardians, the Environmental Law Center is apparently too busy, etc.

The congressional delegation, Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici and Rep. Tom Udall, who were instrumental in protecting the Valle Vidal from mining and oil-and-gas interests, are eerily silent on poisoning its waters. Gov. Bill Richardson is too busy promoting himself elsewhere as the environmental candidate for the presidency.

The fact is that global warming will push species this way and that way. The idea of killing in the name of genetic purity is a dangerous delusion. No amount of poisons will keep things “pure.”

Willem Malten lives in Santa Fe, where he owns Cloud Cliff Bakery. He was instrumental in the reintroduction of native-wheat farming to Northern New Mexico.