This file was created by scanning the printed publication.
Errors identified by the software have been corrected;
however, some errors may remain.
Grassland Management
by the Animas Foundation
Ben Brown 1
My name is Ben Brown and I am the Program Director for the Animas Foundation. The
Animas Foundation is a private operating foundation created by Drum Hadley and his family in
1993. The primary purpose of this foundation when it was created was to acquire the Gray
Ranch from The Nature Conservancy and to manage it in an ecologically responsible manner
within the context of a working livestock operation. A private operating foundation is a little bit of
a hybrid. You have probably heard of private foundations and public foundations. A private
operating foundation is a private foundation that serves a public purpose. The Internal Revenue
Service treats them as though they are a public foundation in some important ways.
The Nature Conservancy was seeking a private solution to the long-term problem of
managing the Gray Ranch and protecting and preserving its significant ecological features. The
Gray Ranch is a 502-sq mi ranch in southwestern New Mexico. The Animas Mountains run
through the center of the ranch, and its eastern boundary lies in the Playas Valley and the
western boundary in the Animas Valley. It contains a large expanse of diverse, high-quality
grasslands as well as some fairly unique woodland and riparian communities. The Nature
Conservancy met Drum Hadley when he was given the New Mexico Chapter's Aldo Leopold
Stewardship Award for his work in restoring the riparian communities in his Guadalupe Canyon
Ranch. the Conservancy talked with Drum and his family about the peculiar problems of finding
a satisfactory solution to ensure the integrity of the Gray Ranch over the long term. The
culmination of these conversations was the creation of the Animas Foundation and its purchase
of the ranch from the Conservancy in 1994.
The Animas Foundation has a seven-member board of directors, consisting of Drum Hadley,
his wife Teresa, his son Seth, Mike Hadley, Leo MacDonald, Sr. (who is also our legal advisor),
Bill McDonald (a neighboring rancher) and Dr. Ray Turner (a plant ecologist). Our board meets
four times each year and it is very active in setting the overall management agenda for the
foundation and the Gray Ranch.
Our operating programs on the ranch fall into four areas. The first is called Land
Management and Conservation. Under this program we take care of the unique natural features
of the Gray Ranch. We have been working steadily at grassland restoration, primarily through
the restoration fire as a natural process on the landscape. We employ both natural prescribed
fire and management-ignited prescribed fire to alter and restore the natural structure of the
grassland communities. We have implemented some mechanical treatments, as well, to
compare the relative costs and effectiveness of both methods of altering vegetation structure.
We have some other research that we will touch upon in other program areas, but most of the
activities under our Land Management and Conservation Program consist monitoring and
managing the unique natural features entrusted to us.
The second program area is Science and Education. We operate our own monitoring
program to document the effects of our management on the natural communities and their
1
The Animas Foundation, Animas NM.
248
constituent plants and animals. When the foundation acquired the ranch, we established a
network of 114 monitoring plots and established an ecological baseline through quantitative
sampling. The monitoring regime is designed to be repeated at five-year intervals, but some of
our plots have burned in natural and prescribed fires, and we have revisited those plots annually
to track changes in species composition and abundance following these fires. It has been
interesting to look at these results because most of the effects that we have seen following our
extensive fires in 1993 and 1994 seem to be more associated with the effects of summer
drought than the effects of the fires themselves. We also have a number of outside
collaborators that we work with. Tom Valone, from California State University-Northridge (who is
speaking at this conference) is researching the effects of fire, looking not only at the changes in
species composition and structure of the vegetative communities, but documenting the effects
on vertebrate and invertebrate populations, as well.
The Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station is researching the effects of fire
and mechanical treatments, both alone and in combination, on the structure of older, more
established woodlands and shrub lands. One of their experimental plots is on the Gray Ranch.
We also have cooperative programs with agencies such as the New Mexico Game and Fish
Department, various universities, and private cooperators to monitor species which we would like
to track on an annual basis. There has been a significant amount of work on the fire history of
the Animas Mountains and how that affects the structure of the vegetation, both in the
woodlands and the adjacent grasslands. Ray Turner and a panel of scientists are actively
involved in reviewing proposals from potential cooperators who want to establish research
programs. We have a formal Science Advisory Panel which assists us in evaluating and making
recommendations on proposed research projects. If we get a proposal from a potential
cooperator and it looks like something that fits with the mission of the foundation, we will usually
try and find a way to get it done.
The third program area is called Domestic Grazing. We are committed to carrying out all of
our programs within the context of a working, responsible livestock management program which
preserves the ranching culture of the Boot Heel as well as the biological diversity of the area.
Right now, there are two kinds of grazing management programs. The first is called "grass
banking", and some of you may have heard Bill McDonald talk about his earlier in the
conference. Some of the pastures on the Gray Ranch have been made available to cooperating
ranchers who have conveyed a land use easement over the deeded land on their own ranches to
the Malpai Borderlands Group. The value of these easements is determined by an appraisal
process and the Malpai Borderlands Group enters into an agreement with the Animas
Foundation to provide a number of animal unit months of grazing that is determined by the value
of the easement and the value of an AUM. The "home ranches" are rested, usually for a term of
approximately three years, permitting them to benefit from rest and natural reseeding. Most of
these ranchers are engaged in conservation planning in conjunction with an Natural Resources
Conservation Service range conservationist, planning for better management, prescribed fire and
other conservation practices. The grassbank ranchers manage their own livestock while they are
on the Gray, with the foundation assigning them pastures and a desired rest-rotation grazing
schedule. The foundation has also begun to purchase cattle to build its own cow/calf herd and
will begin producing calves for sale sometime next year. These cattle will be used both for
demonstration grazing and for research into the effects of grazing as an experimental treatment
in conjunction with other management activities.
249
The fourth program area is called "Culture and Neighbor Outreach". In this program, the
foundation works with our local community to support cultural and community activities. We
also work with the ranchers who are actively involved with the Malpai Borderlands Group, and
were instrumental in starting this sister non-profit, providing funds for start-up activities. We
support local community service groups like the volunteer fire departments and the emergency
medical service. We have helped the Cochise County Historical and Archeological Society with
by hosting a fundraiser and we work with the Bootheel Oldtimers Association, too. The purpose
of this program is to help preserve the culture and the lifestyle which make this part of the
United States and adjacent Mexico unique.
Our fifth program area deals with the administration of the everyday affairs of the foundation:
personnel matters, budgeting, and other administrative tasks. However, within the umbrella of
the first four programs that I have described, we concentrate our efforts primarily on the
management of the Gray Ranch. As I mentioned earlier, our current emphasis is on grassland
management and grassland restoration, mainly through the use of fire and grazing. We have
been very fortunate so far in that we have had to use hardly any management-ignited burns. In
the years in which we have had fine fuels and wanted to burn, we have been blessed with a lot
of natural ignition. We haven't had to light many fires ourselves, so far.
We have also had a lot of cooperation from the agencies that have the responsibility for fire
suppression: New Mexico State Forestry Department, the Bureau of Land Management and the
U.S. Forest Service. These are the agencies that deal with wildfires in our part of New Mexico
and they have cooperated in establishing containment lines at natural fire breaks, backfiring off
of these and letting fires burn as they will until they reach the containment lines. In 1993, we
burned about 38,000 acres on the Gray Ranch and in 1994 we were able to burn about 78,000
acres. With a total of approximately 322,000 acres in the ranch and a preferred fire return
interval of five years, we are looking at having to burn acreages of these magnitudes in the good
years to achieve our management goals. We hope to do some more research on the effects of
fire, particularly on the effects of fire frequency in the grasslands.
We feel like we know when natural fires occurred in the presettlement grasslands, because
Mother Nature lights the fires herself at the proper time. In 1993, we had approximately 214
natural starts on the Gray that we know about, all from lightning storms. In 1994, we probably
had similar numbers. We rarely have natural starts before the middle of April nor after the
middle of July. Those fires that do start outside of this April-July window usually don't burn very
long nor do the burn very extensively.
I'll quit here and let someone else have the floor, but I'll be around for a bit if anyone wants
to ask questions about the programs of Animas Foundation and the Gray Ranch. I'll be happy to
talk with you about them. I do want to brag a bit on the Animas Foundation before I sit down.
Our foundation was one of the key ingredients in starting up the Malpai Borderlands Group and
this whole landscape/ecosystem planning effort. This was largely due to the vision of Drum
Hadley, who thought that this magnificent piece of country that we call the Gray Ranch had the
ability to leverage conservation action outside of the boundaries of what he and his foundation
could afford to buy. I think that the results so far have proven that his hopes were true. I think
that Bill McDonald will tell you that the Malpai Borderlands Group is finding that they have a
similar (and probably more extensive) ability to leverage grassland conservation and grassland
restoration efforts beyond the 900,000 or so acres that we call the primary planning area. Good
ideas are contagious.
250