Nature and Human Society: The Quest for a Sustainable World (1997)
Chapter: Community Involvement and Sustainability: The Malpai Borderlands Effort
Page 596
Community Involvement and Sustainability:
The Malpai Borderlands Effort
The Malpai Borderlands Group is a grassroots, landowner-driven organization that is attempting to implement ecosystem management on nearly one million acres of unfragmented landscape in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico along 70 miles of the Mexican border. The elevation of the area ranges from about 4,500 to 8,500 feet. The San Bernardino and Animas valleys, along with the Peloncillo and Animas mountain ranges, lie within the boundaries of the Malpai Borderlands. Annual precipitation here averages 12–20 in. Put succinctly, it is high and dry. Nonetheless, this area of remarkable biological diversity is home to numerous wildlife species. Perhaps most remarkable is that fewer than 100 people live in a region that is half the size of Rhode Island. One observer called it a “working wilderness”.
The Malpai Borderlands is cattle ranching country, and ranching has kept this country open for the last century. In the Southwest, ranching depends on the existence of large amounts of open-space landscape. Many of the resident families are descended from the homesteaders who established ranches here around the turn of the 20th century. The diversity of land ownership is nearly as great as that of the country itself: 53% is privately owned, and 47% is owned by the federal or state government. The 320,000-acre Gray Ranch (which is predominantly private land) skews the percentage of total private land in the Malpai Borderlands. The other, smaller ranches that make up the remainder of the area range between 15,000 and 40,000 acres; most contain more than 50% government-owned land, which is leased for grazing, and, when combined with the private lands, make economic units. The intermingled character of the ownership
Page 597
guarantees that government policies regulating the use of state and federally owned land will determine the fate of the private land. In turn, the fate of the private land, which generally contains the most reliable sources of water and other advantages (this was, after all, the land picked by the homesteaders as the best available), will determine the open-space future of the surrounding and intermingled government land.
In the fall of 1991, a small group of ranchers in the Malpai Borderlands met with a group of individuals from the environmental community at the headquarters of a ranch owned by the Glenn family, known as the Malpai Ranch. These ranchers were concerned about the future of the big open landscape that is their homeland and wanted to get together with some of the critics of livestock-grazing in the West to see whether they shared any concerns and, perhaps, could find some common ground. This group, calling itself the “Malpai Group,” continued to meet at different ranch homes over a 2-year period. They were joined by scientist Raymond Turner, who has spent his life researching and recording changes in the landscape of the Southwest through this century.
Two types of common ground were identified. One was a mutual concern about the possibility of fragmentation of the region. On the fringes of the area, some ranches already had sold to subdivision. Neither ranching nor many wildlife species prosper in an area that is fragmented by development. Second was a concern about the seemingly inexorable encroachment of woody species on the grasslands. The group believed that some human activities contributed to this occurrence; fire suppression was identified as perhaps both the most damaging and the most easily changed. It was generally acknowledged that truly sustainable ranching might be the only hope for holding this landscape together in the future. In the arid West, ranching is the only livelihood based on human adaptation to wild biotic communities.
The group was unsure of its next step but believed that, whatever it would be, it should be driven by good science, contain a strong conservation ethic, be economically feasible, and be initiated and led by the private sector, with the agencies coming in as partners rather than with the private sector as their clients.
The suppression of a small brushfire by a federal agency, over the objection of the ranch manager whose intermingled private land was involved, proved to be the catalyst that took the group to the next step. Another meeting was held at the Malpai Ranch, this time with 30 area landowners in attendance. From that meeting came a request to the agencies to join with the landowners in creating a comprehensive fire-management plan for the region. The landowners even took the first step, presenting the agencies with a map of all the different individual ranches. Each ranch map showed the owner's preference for a response to a firelet it burn, decide at the time, or suppress immediately. The agencies reacted positively to the request. A meeting with representatives of all the land-management agencies followed, and the parties committed to embark on an ecosystem approach to all resource management in the area, including fire. This enthusiasm by the agencies for a privately led initiative surprised many, but with thought, it made sense. It is truly ludicrous to expect government land-management agencies to take the lead, with shrinking budgets, conflicting
Page 598
internal agendas, outside litigation, and partisan politics pulling them first in one direction, then in another, not to mention the consistently high turnover of personnel in key positions. One highly placed agency official remarked, “We just don't want to get in your way.” In a supporting role, however, the resources and expertise that dedicated agency employees can contribute is invaluable.
While this effort was beginning, the largest ranch in the area was changing hands. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) had bought the Gray Ranch a few years before to keep it from being broken up and possibly subdivided. Now, TNC was preparing to sell the Gray Ranch to a local ranching family. The Hadley family, which had spent 20 years on the Guadalupe Canyon Ranch and had considerable resources beyond its cattle operation, was to be the buyer. The Hadleys created a private organization, the Animas Foundation, with which to purchase and manage the Gray Ranch. Maintaining the vast open-space character of the ranch was important to both the Hadleys and TNC, so part of the purchase agreement included conservation easements, to be held by TNC on the private lands of the Gray Ranch. These easements stipulate that the ranch can never be subdivided.
John Cook, a TNC senior vice president, negotiated the sale. The Hadleys introduced Cook to some of their ranching neighbors, and he became intrigued and inspired by the fledgling Malpai Group. TNC generally was looked on with disfavor by most of the ranchers in the area, primarily because of their displeasure with TNC's practice of buying private land and then reselling it to the federal government. But TNC had done something different with the Gray Ranch, and the ranchers were impressed with John Cook's sincerity and his obvious love of the land. TNC was potentially a formidable partner, bringing to the table good science, a history of good working relations with the agencies, organizational skills and energy, a link to foundations and other donors, and even top-notch legal advice. At the ranchers' request, John Cook and some of his colleagues began working with the group. Some of the ranchers, fearful that TNC would take over the Malpai Group, dropped out at this point. The remainder believed, however, that this was the team to move ahead with. Thus, at the very time TNC was giving up its land holdings in the area, it was asked to remain.
In the spring of 1994, the Malpai Borderlands Group came into being as a nonprofit organization. The group has a nine-member board of directors and counts as its cooperators all landowners in the area who wish to work with the group, all government agencies engaged in any way with the borderlands area, three universities, TNC, and various scientists. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) assigned Ron Bemis, a senior range conservationist, to work with the Malpai Borderlands Group in both states as the only NRCS fieldlevel employee in the nation to have two-state responsibility. Likewise, the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service assigned its senior range conservationist for the Coronado Forest, Larry Allen, to work with the group. In addition, two districts of the Bureau of Land Management work closely with the Malpai Borderlands Group. In fact, the voluntary commitment of all agencies to work together with this landowner-driven group toward mutual goals has been one of the hallmarks of our effort.
Page 599
Early on, the Malpai Borderlands Group formulated the following goal statement: “Our goal is to restore and maintain the natural processes that create and protect a healthy, unfragmented landscape to support a diverse, flourishing community of human, plant, and animal life in our Borderlands Region. Together, we will accomplish this by working to encourage profitable ranching and other traditional livelihoods which will sustain the open-space nature of our lands for generations to come.” Everything done by the group must be consistent with these stated goals. Actions taken so far have resulted in better communication between landowners, between landowners and the agencies, and even between agencies.
Part of the group's success has come from its insistence on involving the best available science in whatever it does. The link with science had its start with Ray Turner and his colleagues at the Desert Laboratory in Tucson. The science link expanded when TNC became involved with the group and then was boosted again when the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station obtained a large grant to work in the area.
The Malpai Borderlands Group has formed a science advisory committee that reviews and oversees the various research projects going on in the region and includes such researchers as James Brown, of the University of New Mexico. The immediate past president of the Ecological Society of America, Dr. Brown has maintained a long-term project in an adjacent valley, studying, among other things, the individual effects of various birds and mammals on the area's landscape. The committee recently helped establish a standardized range-monitoring protocol for use by the group's cooperators.
Among the various research projects is a rehabilitative effort set up by the Forest Research Station, the NRCS, and a private landowner on 150 acres of veryeroded land adjacent to a creek. The presence of significant archaeological artifacts on the site has prevented the use of mechanical means to address the erosion problem. The research station funded a survey by the University of Oklahoma, which found evidence on the site of a history of fairly intensive human activity dating back to AD 1000. Without the use of mechanized equipment, and not wishing to introduce exotic grass species, the landowner was stymied about how to rehabilitate and protect the site. Native grass seed is nearly 20 times more expensive than seed of adapted exotics, and it often does not pioneer well. The decision was made to use the landowner's cattle herd to affect the erosion site intensively by feeding native grass hay, raised at the NRCS Plant Materials Center, to the cattle at the site for 3 days, after which the site would be fenced off and rested for an as-yet-undetermined period to monitor the results. This project is just one example of how cooperation has allowed for an action that the landowners, researchers, agency, or university would have been unable to do alone.
Another example has occurred on a neighboring ranch, where the Magoffin family became concerned for the welfare of an amphibian, the Chiricahuan leopard frog, which is listed as threatened. During a recent drought, the water source that was habitat for the frogs on the ranch began drying up. The Magoffins began hauling water to the frogs as a stopgap and also began consulting with herpetologist Cecil Schwalbe, of the University of Arizona, about how best to protect the frog in the future. According to Dr. Schwalbe, the biggest threat to the
Page 600
leopard frog is predation by introduced species, such as bullfrogs, that live in aquifers and waters on public lands. He believes that the best chance in the future for the leopard frogs is in isolated sources of water on private land, such as the Magoffins' ranch. Working together, the Magoffins, Dr. Schwalbe, the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the NRCS, and the Malpai Borderlands Group designed, funded, and created a permanent water source at the site of the frogs' jeopardized habitat and at one other site on the ranch where they are known to exist on the ranch. These waters were designed so that they also could be used in the ranch operation, making this a win for all concerned. A high-school biology class in nearby Douglas, Arizona, has collected tadpoles from the Magoffin sites and is raising them with the idea of distributing them to other isolated waters on private land in the region; the hope is that this program will obviate the eventual listing of this species as endangered.
In March 1996, Warner Glenn, owner of the Malpai Ranch, encountered a jaguar in the Peloncillo Mountains. Armed with a pistol, he shot several times with a camera instead. As the big cat was leaving his sight, he realized that he faced a dilemma. The jaguar was proposed for listing as endangered in the United States. If he went public with his story and his photographs of the jaguar, the resulting attention might lead to the designation of the area in the future as critical habitat, a designation that could affect the two activities on which his livelihood depends, hunting with dogs and grazing cattle. After a lifetime of hunting mountain lions, he felt a kinship with the big cats and a fascination with the jaguar as well as a concern for its future. The deciding factor was Warner Glenn's faith in the ability of the Malpai Borderlands Group to make it turn out right.
After a meeting with the appropriate agencies, the Malpai Borderlands Group became active with a coalition of other organizations and individuals in drawing up a conservation agreement for the jaguar in Arizona and New Mexico. Officially sponsored by the game and fish departments of both states, the agreement was attacked by activists as simply a ruse designed to subvert listing the jaguar as endangered. Despite this, although the jaguar is now listed, the conservation agreement and the working group that drew it up live on.
At the invitation of the Malpai Borderlands Group, world-renowned big-cat researcher Alan Rabinowitz visited to survey the site of the jaguar encounter, as well as the corridor that runs from the Peloncillos to the Sierra Madres in Mexico. Rabinowitz's opinion is that the Peloncillos and the neighboring Sierra San Luis are not true habitat for the jaguar. The true habitat lies to the south, which is where resources and efforts should be directed (Rabinowitz 1997). He did, however, help Warner Glenn set up some trip cameras in an effort to record any further visits by jaguars.
The Malpai Borderlands Group also met with representatives of an activist organization well known for suing the government for species listings and critical-habitat designations. While professing to have no current interest in pursuing critical-habitat designation in the United States for the jaguar, the activists vowed that they would pursue endangered-species listing for the leopard frog, regardless of the success of the group's efforts to restore the population, which has dampened that effort somewhat.
Page 601
The most successful, yet most frustrating, type of work for the Malpai Borderlands Group has concerned the use of fire. Tree-ring studies by Tom Swetnam and subsoil studies by Owen Davis, both with the University of Arizona, yielded evidence that fire historically affected nearly all sites in the Malpai Borderlands at least once a decade (Swetnam and Baisin 1995). Today, this area may be one of very few in this country where a large-scale attempt could be made to replicate that frequency of fire. In fact, during the last 4 years, because of the relationships developed by the Malpai Borderlands Group between the neighbors, the agencies, and the rural fire departments, more naturally ignited fires have been allowed to burn. About 120,000 acres have been affected, including two prescribed burns. One advantage of prescribed burning is that it permits studies to be done before and after. For both burns, various studies are looking at the effects on different plant and animal species. These fires were ignited during the normal pre-monsoon fire season, when lightning strikes often occur, mimicking natural fire as nearly as possible. All the fires, natural and prescribed, have tended to leave behind a burned and unburned mosaic pattern, allowing for side-by-side comparison.
The first prescribed burn presented several political challenges. The targeted area lay in two states and involved coordination with six agencies in both states. In addition, a wilderness-study area was involved, and because of the international boundary, Mexico needed to be consulted. With a Herculean effort by everyone involved, the planning was actually completed in 8 months and the burn itself was quite successful.
Although the second burn did not involve anywhere near the jurisdictional difficulties of the first, the attempt nearly ran aground when ecosystem management came into conflict with single-species management. The two ranchers involved voluntarily withheld grazing from their forest allotments to build the fine-fuel load high enough to affect the woody species, but the consultation under section 7 of the Endangered Species Act between the Forest Service and the Fish and Wild-life Service over the possible effect of fire on three species listed as endangered dragged on for 2 years. Eventually, the disagreements between biologists in the two agencies over the possible effects on one species, the desert-blooming agave, became so heated that the Malpai Borderlands Group requested that Jamie Clark, national head of ecological services for the Fish and Wildlife Service (now its director), visit the site to help resolve the debate. Negotiation led to the establishment of plots for before-and-after studies to be funded by the Forest Research Station. This avoided any further stalemate and the fire was ignited in the premonsoon period.
This experience taught us several things, principally that the site-by-site approach is just too costly. The planning for this burn cost about $20 per acre for the Forest Service alone, but it cost only $3 per acre to actually perform the burn. Because the cost of consultations was the primary factor in driving up the cost of planning, it became clear that an alternative approach to prescribed burning was desirable. What has emerged is a comprehensive programmatic approach that will identify and attempt to resolve as many concerns as possible for the entire area before planning begins for a specific burn. We hope that this can be accomplished
Page 602
in a 2-year period, after which the process of burning on specific sites will be expedited and require a minimal number of consultations. At this point, while awaiting the data from current and future studies, the Malpai Borderlands Group feels positive about the results of the burns, both natural and prescribed. Early results show a considerable immediate effect on the woody species and the rejuvenation of the grasses, resulting in more ground cover.
Unfortunately, not everyone has waited for the data. The herpetologist who led a before-burn study on the endangered ridgenose rattlesnake has issued a report recommending critical-habitat designation for the snake and recommending against future prescribed burning in the Peloncillo Mountains at elevations above 5,000 ft. The report also recommends that livestock-grazing on all Forest Service allotments that contain ridgenose rattlesnake habitat be restricted to midwinter. Even before this report had been reviewed by those for whom it was intended, and well before the Malpai Borderlands Group became aware of it, these recommendations were incorporated by a US Fish and Wildlife Service herpetologist into a court-ordered biological opinion on grazing for two Bureau of Land Management districts that cover nearly one-third of the land area of Arizona. Even though the report itself (which is final but not published yet ) states that the effects of grazing on the habitat of the ridgenose rattlesnake are unknown, it recommends midwinter grazing only. The snake-survey team shut down its study within a week after the burn, well before the monsoon rains and the resulting revegetation of the site began, permitting no opportunity to study even the shortterm effects of the fire on the habitat, but the report still recommends no burning above 5,000 feet. Only one of 13 collared snakes died in the fire, and it was not a ridgenose rattlesnake. The survey team itself was responsible for the loss of two snakes during the course of its research.
Given the facts, what is the basis for the no-burn recommendation? Why is this recommendation part of a biological opinion on grazing? We believe that with the force of the Endangered Species Act behind them, some individuals within the Fish and Wildlife Service have been abusing the power of the act increasingly in recent years to force their will, with little regard for science. For instance, peer review is not required for opinions expressed in section 7 consultations. Under pressure from the courts, biological opinions are being thrown together with the flimsiest of scientific underpinnings. We believe that these opinions are destructive and counterproductive to collaborative efforts like ours. The opinion on the ridgenose rattlesnake effectively prevents any prescribed burning in the Peloncillo mountains, and its grazing recommendations potentially could affect some ranching operations to the point of jeopardizing their continuation as ranches, possibly putting thousands of acres at risk for development. This “shoot-from-the-hip science” hardly encourages private landowners to want researchers to come onto their ranches. The trust and openness that have characterized the efforts of the Malpai Borderlands Group to this point are threatened, encouraging nonparticipating landowners to remain nonparticipating. The few who believe that the safest policy toward endangered species is to “shoot, shovel, and shut up” will stay convinced of the certitude of their position, and they may even gain some converts. In such an atmosphere of mistrust, for instance, it will be difficult for land-
Page 603
owners to have the confidence to place leopard frogs willingly on their private land. Landowners must know that the Endangered Species Act will not be used retroactively to restrict the activities on which their livelihood depends.
We believe that rigid single-species management in our biologically diverse world is wrong. Whether the species is a ridgenose rattlesnake, a willow flycatcher, or a beef cow, management for one species alone is narrow-minded, short-sighted, ineffective, and, in fact, harmful.
Will this unfortunate action ultimately blow apart the efforts in the Malpai Borderlands? We hope not. The Malpai Borderlands Group is positioned uniquely to bring to bear the scientific rigor and influence necessary to address this abuse. If the principals are willing to come together to talk and to work for as long as it takes for all concerns to be addressed fairly, the confidence and trust that must exist for a collaborative effort to work can return.
From Montana to Hawaii to Brazil, the “radical-center” approach of the Malpai Borderlands Group is regarded by many as the bestand maybe the onlyhope for our remaining wildlands. However, reasonable people in both the public and private sectors must be allowed to work together in pursuit of creative solutions to issues about the land as they occur. If they are not allowed this flexibility, all the government policies and global treaties that can be dreamed up will amount to only so much hot air and wasted paper and ink.
Writing in support of the approach of the Malpai Borderlands Group, James Brown stated, “Ranchers, conservationists, government-agency employees, research scientists, and the American public all have much to lose if the present climate of distrust, disagreement, and interference is perpetuated. All have much to gain through interaction, cooperation, and collaboration” (Brown and McDonald 1995). Which will be our legacy? The generations to come will be the biggest losers or winners.
References
Brown JH, McDonald W. 1995. Livestock grazing and conservation on southwestern rangelands. Cons Biol 9:1646.
Rabinowitz A. 1997. The status of jaguars in the United States: trip report. New York NY: Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx Zoo. p 3–5.
Swetnam TW, Baisin CH. 1995. Historical fire occurrence in remote mountains of southwestern NM and northern Mexico. Gen Tech Rept INT-320. Ogden UT: USDA Forest Service Intermountain Research Station. p 153–6.
There was a problem loading page 604.
