ALBUQUERQUE — hen the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund set up camp in New Mexico last spring, its goal was to help elect U.S. Senate candidate Tom Udall as part of a wider effort by environmental groups to pack the Senate with green-leaning members.

It did that and more, Defenders CEO and President Rodger Schlickeisen told the Independent this week, playing a role in Udall’s victory as well as those of U.S. House candidates Martin Heinrich and Harry Teague, and even aiding the Democratic presidential ticket at a key time.

“We feel pretty good,” said Schlickeisen. The group’s strategy was to focus on one state “where a relatively small group like ours could come come in and try to make a difference,” he said.”It’s played out as planned in New Mexico.”

Schlickeisen told the Independent in late May that Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund would focus its efforts this year on key U.S. Senate races — New Mexico, Colorado and elsewhere. The Senate, he said at the time, “is where environmental legislation goes to die.”

Electing Democrats was seen as a way of improving the defense of conservation-oriented bills and perhaps even achieving the 60-vote margin Democrats need to override Republican filibusters and presidential vetoes, he said.

Defenders’ work in New Mexico was aided by the pitched battle for the GOP nomination between Reps. Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce. Even before the Republican candidate was selected, however, Defenders ran ads saying Wilson and Pearce were “Two wrong for New Mexico.” “They couldn’t respond,” Schlickeisen said of Udall’s prospective opponents. “They were too busy beating up on each other.”

After Pearce won the primary and polls showed Udall with a double-digit lead, Defenders felt confident enough to spread out its effort, Schlickeisen said. “The strategy was to get Udall so far ahead by mid-summer that we could switch to Heinrich, and if we could help out Teague, we would,” he said. “It pretty much played out like we thought.”

While the group ran some advertising for Heinrich late in his campaign against Republican Darren White, mainly it offered use of its canvassers to Democratic candidates statewide, Schlickeisen said. Defenders’ field staff knocked on more than 120,000 doors around New Mexico for the congressional candidates, and thousands more in Colorado for candidates including Udall’s cousin, Mark Udall, who also was running for the U.S. Senate.

One bonus surprise of the Defenders’ political summer was producing an ad that took aim at Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The graphic TV ad showed a pilot shotgunning a wolf from the air as part of the controversial predator control program Palin supports as governor of Alaska.

Schlickeisen, whose Alaska field office fought that Alaska’s wolf-control program for years and sparred with the Palin administration, said he was stunned when her popularity soared following the Republican National Convention in August. Defenders quickly produced the ad, ran it in several small markets and watched as it went viral on the Internet. Although Palin remained popular with some voters, Schlickeisen said he believes the wolf-kill ad helped turn public opinion against Palin — and McCain for choosing her.

The ad also brought in more than $1 million in donations, he said. That money was used this fall to campaign on behalf of Obama and other Democratic candidates.

The payoff for Defenders’ work came on Election Day, Schlickeisen said. Voters elected both Udalls to the Senate, and Heinrich, Teague and a host of Democratic U.S. House candidates in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and elsewhere. Together they should make it easier to pass conservation legislation and start tackling what Schlickeisen called the No. 1 environmental issue facing the nation: global warming.

At the same time, there are Bush administration policies that must be overturned or overhauled, which is crucial work, but dwarfed by other challenges, he said. “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global financial crisis, health care — somehow global warming has to fit into that, and somehow we’ve got to get his (Obama’s) attention turned toward reversing some of these bad laws,” Schlickeisen said.

While the environmental community is overjoyed at the Election Day outcome, Schlickeisen is quick to point out that there is much work yet to be done. Even with the elections of Obama, the Udalls and other Democrats, he said, conservation groups have their work cut out for them in coming years. “It’s not a gimme by any stretch.”