Troubled Borderlands

Since 1994, the Malpai Borderlands Group, a coalition of ranchers, has worked to steward approximately 800,000 acres of rangeland in southern Arizona and New Mexico. The group started with the idea that if its members — ranchers from multiple generations who worked the land — could come together to manage the landscape with other stakeholders, then broader regional decisions could be made with their input.

They have been lauded as a model of collaboration for their work with environmental groups, scientists, nonprofits and federal and state land managers, with the goal of using ranching as a tool for conservation while safeguarding the land’s ecological importance. And for the past two decades, this approach to finding common ground has worked. What was once a tense relationship between ranchers and environmentalists became a strong partnership in the Borderlands.

Ranchers have worked to restore the watershed through a series of small rock structures that slow water runoff during heavy rains, recharging groundwater. A cattle-pond enhancement project aided the threatened Chiricahua leopard frog. The group has received money from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a federal agency, to enhance water sources for both the ranchers’ cattle and the wildlife that cross through their land, and their work has helped inform regional fire-management decisions. Approximately 86,000 acres of land have been protected through conservation easements, maintaining ecological connectivity in a region that both ranchers and environmentalists feared would be fragmented by subdivisions.

Read full story on: High Country News

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