Salazar Center awards $150,000 in implementation funding for Accelerator participants in New Mexico, Texas

By Emily Barbo
An illustration of the Rio Grande River Basin, with overlapping scenes showing farms, the Great Sand Dunes, the U.S. - Mexico border wall, bats, birds, an ocelot and desert city.

The Salazar Center’s inaugural Peregrine Accelerator for Conservation Impact program culminated last week in a presentation event, during which nine project teams from across the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo river basin had the opportunity to share their final proposals with the Center and a panel of experts. Today, the Center is thrilled to announce that three of those teams will receive funding to implement their innovative solutions for ecological and human health in the region. 

Chama Peak Land Alliance; Hispanic Access Foundation and their partner Por La Creación; and the City of San Elizario will receive awards ranging from $25,00 to $75,000 to support their work over the next two years.  

About the awardees


Chama Peak Land Alliance

Chama Peak Land Alliance will receive $75,000 to implement uplands restoration pilot projects for working lands in the Rio Chama watershed in northern New Mexico. This project will initiate an opportunity for ranchers and farmers to do replicable riparian restoration projects across the Rio Chama Watershed and the broader basin that address the need for training and capacity building along with monitoring data that will help partners address challenges in the region. 

The Rio Chama

Hispanic Access Foundation & Por La Creación

Hispanic Access Foundation and Por La Creación will receive $50,000 to help realize their vision of creating a Rio Grande Valley Nature Park in the Texas borderlands. This project is bringing Latino grassroots leadership to the forefront of a community-driven effort to protect habitat, create recreation access, and increase public health benefits within wildlife refuge parcels in Lower Rio Grande Valley.

People standing on a rope bridge

The City of San Elizario

The City of San Elizario’s Urban Agriculture Department will receive $25,000 to build and scale its water banking program in El Paso County, Texas. This project will provide infrastructure and training to residents to harvest and then sell or trade collected rainwater and, in turn, support local small-scale agriculture, mitigate regional climate impacts on water supplies, and create community-based economic benefit. 

The Salazar Center launched the pilot year of the Peregrine Accelerator in October 2022 and received nearly 30 eligible proposals from across the basin. Following a multi-stage evaluation process, nine teams were selected in early 2023 to participate in the cohort-based accelerator program, which then provided teams with $10,000 seed grants, as well as tailored curriculum and mentorship over the course of six months in order to address challenges and barriers to their projects’ success and to help accelerate the pace at which teams could put their proposed solutions into action. All of the teams from the 2023 cohort are highlighted on the Peregrine Accelerator website and this story map.

Funding for the accelerator was provided by the VF Foundation; the Trinchera Blanca Foundation, an affiliate of The Moore Charitable Foundation, founded by Louis Bacon; the Gates Family Foundation; the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation; Martha Records and Rich Rainaldi; and the Kelley-Knox Family Foundation.