BLM Campground, El Malpais National Conservation Area, Grants NM
Camped at BLM Campground, El Malpais National Conservation Area, Grants NM, March 24, 2011
El Malpais National Conservation Area
El Malpais National Conservation Area and the adjoining El Malpais National Monument are located a few miles south of Grants, New Mexico.
Here's an excerpt from the BLM website description of the El Malpais National Conservation Area
The El Malpais National Conservation Area was established in 1987 and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The adjoining El Malpais National Monument was also established at the same time and is managed by the National Park Service. The 263,000 acre NCA includes two wilderness areas — West Malpais and Cebolla — covering almost 100,000 acres.
El Malpais translates to "the badlands" in Spanish and is pronounced Mal-(rhymes with wall)-pie-ees. El Malpais NCA was established to protect nationally significant geological, archaeological, ecological, cultural, scenic, scientific, and wilderness resources surrounding the Grants Lava Flows.
In addition to the two wilderness areas, the NCA includes dramatic sandstone cliffs, canyons, La Ventana Natural Arch, the Chain of Craters Back Country Byway and the Narrows Picnic Area. There are many opportunities for photography, hiking, camping and wildlife viewing within this unique NCA.
For more than 10,000 years people have interacted with the El Malpais landscape. Historic and prehistoric sites provide connections to past times. More than mere artifacts, these cultural resources are kept alive by the spiritual and physical presence of contemporary Indian groups, including the Puebloan peoples of Acoma, Laguna and Zuni, and the Ramah Navajo. These tribes continue their ancestral uses of El Malpais including gathering plant materials, paying respect, and renewing ties.
BLM Campground, El Malpais National Conservation Area, Grants NM
- This is a new, small, quiet BLM campground with shelters and fire rings at each site and vault toilets - no water, power, or dump station available.
- Good Verizon cell phone service
- Good Verizon EVDO service
- Locate this campground on my Night Camps Map
- Go to BLM El Malpais National Conservation Area website
- Get a BLM map
- Check the weather here
Nights I've camped here
Genetic Determinism and Human Nature
The "implication" that seems to worry people the most is so-called genetic determinism - the notion that if human nature was shaped by evolution, then it's fixed and we're simply stuck with it; there's nothing we can do about it. We can never change the world to be the way we want; we can never institute fairer societies - policy-making and politics are pointless.
Now, that's a complete misunderstanding. It doesn't distinguish between human nature - our evolved psychology - and the behavior that results from it. Certainly, human nature is fixed. It's universal and unchanging, common to every baby that's born, down through the history of our species.But human behavior, which is generated by that nature, is endlessly variable and diverse. After all, fixed rules can give rise to an inexhaustible range of outcomes. Natural selection equipped us with the fixed rules - the rules that constitute our human nature. And it designed those rules to generate behavior that's sensitive to the environment. So the answer to genetic determinism is simple. If you want to change behavior, just change the environment.