User:Smallchief/Malpai Borderlands

Recent history

In 1990 the Nature Conservancy purchased the Gray Ranch, with an area of 502 sq mi (1,300 km²) from a Mexican owner. The Animas Mountains were within the boundaries of the ranch. The Nature Conservancy began negotiations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to turn the ranch into a wildlife refuge and exclude cattle grazing, the principle economic activity of the ranch.

Local ranchers lobbied against the sale of the ranch to the U.S. government. The ranchers saw the proposed transfer of the land to the government as part of a movement to prevent cattle grazing on public lands. Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan sided with the ranchers. As a result in 1993, the Nature Conservancy sold the ranch to the newly-created Animas Foundation. A conservation easement prohibited the Foundation from developing the land but permitted continued cattle grazing. The name of the Gray Ranch was changed to the Diamond A.

In the midst of the controversy surrounding the Gray Ranch, a group of local ranchers banded together to form the Malpai Borderlands Group. The goal of the Group was to preserve the land in the Malpai region from fragmentation, i.e. the division of large ranches into small "ranchettes" as is common in the American west, and to manage the land in a way that benefited both ranchers and plant and animal life. The Malpai Borderlands Group also included scientists and environmentalists among its members.

By 2021, the accomplishments of the Malpai Borderlands group included acquiring conservation easements from fifteen ranchers on 280,000 acres (110,000 ha) on land in addition to the conservation easement on the Gray ranch of 320,000 acres (130,000 ha). The easements protect the land from subdivision and development.

GRASSBANKING https://www.uwyo.edu/haub/ruckelshaus-institute/private-lands-stewardship/conservation-toolbox/grassbanking.html