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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico’s newest wildlife refuge grew by 57 acres Monday, but you won’t see many visible changes yet.

The Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge on the old Price’s Dairy property in Bernalillo County’s South Valley was quiet Monday, with flocks of wintering snow geese and sandhill cranes grazing on its dormant alfalfa fields.

Monday’s purchase, funded with a $1.1 million state appropriation, brings the refuge to 488 acres and the project’s sponsors hope to buy the rest of the 570-acre site by the end of 2014, according to refuge manager Jennifer Owen-White.

Overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the new refuge is a joint project among Bernalillo County, the Albuquerque Metropolitan Arroyo Flood Control Authority, and a number of other federal, state, local and private partners. It will create the first urban wildlife refuge in the southwestern United States.

Located along the Rio Grande four miles south of Downtown, Valle de Oro is the largest remaining undeveloped piece of agricultural land in the Albuquerque metro area. Then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar formally declared the land a wildlife refuge in September 2011, opening the bureaucratic door for a multiyear land acquisition process carried out jointly by the federal government and the nonprofit Trust for Public Land. For the coming year, the refuge will remain much as it is while the agencies involved finish planning and environmental studies, Owen-White said Monday. “It’ll be farmed for another year,” she said.

Planning efforts will focus both on how to accommodate visitors and on habitat restoration at the site.

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The land purchase includes water rights and a flood control outfall, which increases the options refuge managers have in planning the site’s restoration.

The next community meeting in support of the planning effort will be held Jan. 9 at Mountain View Community Center, 201 Prosperity SE from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

“This whole next year is really going to be a chance for the community to be involved in planning their refuge,” said Owen-White.