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The Malpai Borderlands Group:
Ecosystem Management in Action
Bill McDonald 1
BACKGROUND
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The Malpai Borderlands Group, a grassroots, landowner-driven organization, is attempting to
implement ecosystem management on nearly one million acres of virtually unfragmented
open-space landscape in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. The area involved is
roughly pyramid-shaped, with the base of the pyramid running just east of Douglas, Arizona into
New Mexico to the far eastern boundary of the 500-square mile Gray Ranch. The apex is just south
of Rodeo, New Mexico, on the Arizona-New Mexico state line, and runs go the Mexican border .
The elevation for this area ranges from 4,500 feet, which is characterized by desert scrub and
tobosa grasslands, up to 8,500 feet which features Arizona Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir.
Within this diverse area of mountains, canyons, and valleys are numerous riparian corridors with
Sycamores, Cottonwoods, Oaks and Black Walnuts.
Several rare, threatened, or endangered plant and animal species are found here. In addition,
it is the only area in the United States where Gould•s turkey and white-sided jackrabbits occur
naturally. It is also home to such popular big-game species as Coues deer, mule deer, pronghorn
and Desert Bighorn sheep. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this huge landscape is that
fewer than 100 human families reside on it. Except for two small wildlife preserves, this is cattle
ranching country.
The diversity of the land ownership is nearly as great as the country itself. The patchwork of
ownership includes 53 percent private and 4 7 percent made up of state trust land in New Mexico
and Arizona or public land managed by the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land
Management.
CONCERN FOR THE OPEN-SPACE FUTURE
On the surface, little has changed since the homestead days of the turn of the century when
many of our families established ranches in the area. It was a time when a regime of survival of the
fittest set the carrying capacity of the land for people and their livestock, although not without cost
to the land. •Today, however, change is in the works.
In 1990, several area ranchers met at the Malpai Ranch in the San Bernardino Valley. The
ranch is so named after the volcanic malpai rock prevalent in the area. We met to discuss what we
saw (Is a deteriorating situation. Cattle ranching in the West, especially grazing on public lands, is
under attack and on the defensive. Also, we were concerned about the future of the resource we
depend upon for our livelihoods. The grassland with some shrubs were moving inexorably to
shrublands with some grass--for many reasons, a principal one of which is the absence of a crucial
natural element: fire.
Living on our remote ranches, we felt ill-equipped to deal with all this. It seemed as though the
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The Malpai Group, Douglas, AZ
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dig in your heels11 approach was doomed to failure, so we decided to embark on a different
approach -- to reach out to our critics and find common ground.
For two years, a small group of ranchers and environmentalists, together with scientist Ray
Turner, met to discuss our mutual concern for the health and the open-space future of our land.
We called ourselves the Malpai Group. Eventually, we drafted a Malpai Agenda, which addressed
two major concerns: first, the threat of fragmentation of the landscape. Already, some of the
ranches on the fringe of our area had been subdivided. Fragmentation would permanently limit
future options for a desired sustainable condition for the land. Second, we were concerned about
the declining productivity and loss of biological diversity accompanying the encroachment of woody
species on grasslands. We felt that more government regulation was not going to help. At best, it
would replace one set of problems with another. The inevitable result of the free market would
seem to be 20-acre ranchettes. This was not the future we wanted to see for this land.
We were not sure what we needed, but we knew that whatever it was should be driven by good
science, contain a strong conseNation ethic, be economically feasible, and be initiated and led by
the private sector, with the public agencies coming in as our partners rather than with us as their
clients.
Two subsequent events took us to the next step. One was the suppression of a small brush fire
just inside our area. The fire was suppressed, at great expense, by the land management agency in
authority over the objection of the private landowner whose land intermingled with that managed by
the agency. The fire was burning in some three-awn grass interspersed with creosote brush. The
fire was bounded on one side by a road and on all other sides by bare ground and creosote brush.
It wasn•t going anywhere.
The ranchers felt strongly that this fire should not have been put out. Fire suppression was
believed to a be a major factor in the encroachment of brush which has accelerated in this century,
and many ranchers, as well as others, felt it was time for fire to regain at least some of its naturally
occurring role in the ecosystem.
Another, larger meeting was held at the Malpai Ranch. Out of that meeting came a request for
the land management agencies to work with the ranchers on a comprehensive fire management
plan for the area. Before long, ranchers and agencies -- the Coronado National Forest, the Bureau
of Land Management in Safford, Arizona and Las Cruces, New Mexico, and the State Land
Departments of New Mexico and Arizona--committed to work toward coordinated ecosystem
management for the whole area. After all -- fire crosses land ownership boundaries, and is just
one tool in managing landscapes. Clearly, it was time to figure out how to work across political
boundaries to improve the land.
The second event that transformed our group was the purchase of the Gray Ranch by the
Animas Foundation from the Nature ConseNancy. The ConseNancy had purchased the ranch in
1993 from a Mexican national to protect its outstanding biological diversity. Following the
purchase, the ConseNancy began to look for a buyer. The community, fearful that the buyer might
be the federal government, went to the Hadley family, which has owned the Guadalupe Canyon
Ranch for 20 years, and asked them if they would be willing to purchase the Gray.
The Hadleys, who have substantial resources beyond their cattle operation, were able to create
a private organization, the Animas Foundation, with which to purchase and manage the Gray. It
was important to the ConseNancy that the Gray be sold to a party which would keep its open-space
character and preseNe and maintain it's natural beauty. The ranch was purchased, therefore, with
conseNation easements on the private land guaranteeing that it would never be subdivided and
with conditions establishing monitoring procedures to record the health of the range land habitats.
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To help manage the Gray, the Animas Foundation has invested in a Geographic Information
System and has offered to extend its use to ranches involved with the Malpai Group. The
foundation has also provided some seed money to the group to help start up its operations. The
Conservancy became interested in our group and its goals and assigned the senior vice president,
who had negotiated the Gray Ranch purchase with the Animas Foundation, to work with our group
and the Foundation at the request of the ranchers.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MALPAI BORDERLANDS GROUP
The upshot of these events was the establishment, in 1994, of the Malpai Borderlands Group
as a 501-C3 nonprofit organization. Our nine member board includes local ranchers, a scientist,
and a businessman. Our cooperators include ranchers in our planning area in Cochise and Hidalgo
counties, the State Land Departments of Arizona and New Mexico, the Coronado National Forest,
U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Natural Resource Conservation Service in
two states, the Bureau of Land Management in two states, the Hidalgo Soil and Water Conservation
District, the Whitewater Draw Natural Resource Conservation District, the Game and Fish
Departments in two states, The Desert Laboratory of the University of Arizona, The Nature
Conservancy, and the Animas Foundation.
The goal statement of our group reads as follows: .. 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 land for generations to come ...
The following is a checklist of our progress to date in specific program areas and an assessment
of the challenges which remain:
Land Protection
We have moved aggressively in this area using grassbanks and land use easements. To date,
four different ranchers have completed agreements with the Malpai Group and the Animas
Foundation, owners of the Gray Ranch, to convey land use easements to the Malpai Group which
will preclude sub-division development on private land of their ranches i.1 the future. In return for
the easements, the Malpai Group is paying for forage on the Gray Ranch which is being made
available to the ranchers livestock. The amount of forage made available to each rancher,
measured in animal unit months, will be equal to the development value given by each ranch.
The challenges which have arisen to this approach are many. First, the cost of the forage is great.
It will require large amounts of capital to be raised by the Malpai Group in the future in order to
continue grassbanking for easements, even at this level of participation. Clearly, this model has
limited application for the long term. Variations on the theme are being explored, but are still in the
talking stage to date. Additional uses for grassbanking, focusing solely on its benefit as a range
restoration tool, are being discussed. Two grass bankers have combined their herds for a time and
this suggests some interesting possibilities. The Malpai Group also stands ready to consider
holding donated land use easements, or even purchasing the land itself, in the case of an
emergency (for instance, pending sale to subdivision within our working area). Hopefully, this will
not be necessary, as these monies would be difficult, if not impossible to replace. They must be
used with extreme care.
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Science and Research
This arm of the Malpai program is moving forward on several fronts. The research that is being
done as a result of the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Station grant has graduated from a
research literature review to the establishment of experimental plots on different sites within the
working area. All sites are chosen with the full consent and cooperation of the landowner, or in the
case of state and public land the lessee or permittee. Most of this research will center on different
approaches to addressing woody species encroachment. A vegetative survey is being conducted in
coordination with this research.
The Malpai Group has also contracted to have baseline monitoring conducted on the ranches
which are being rested as a result of use of the grassbank. Again -- this is done with the full
consent and cooperation of the landowners.
In addition to these efforts, several independent survey and research projects are being
conducted in the planning area. The group has contracted a position to track and coordinate these
efforts so that useful information can be made available to landowners and managers. This
position reports to the Malpai Group•s Science Advisory Committee and ultimately to our Board of
Directors.
The Malpai Group will continue to try to find ways to get the best scientific information available
to landowners and managers while, at the same time, zealously guarding private property rights and
aggressively addressing any risks (perceived or real) which landowners may encounter by allowing
research efforts on their property.
Fire Management
This group came together around the issue of fire management and it continues as a major
focus of the Malpai Group. The regional fire map, put together by private landowners after our first
meeting, has been updated on a Geographic Information System. The government agencies with
which the group works, are becoming more familiar with how to use the map.
Communication, rancher to rancher and rancher to agency, has increased on fire-related
issues. As a result, thousands of acres have benefitted from a more thoughtful response to fire
starts, a thousands of dollars in suppression costs have been saved. Meanwhile, the Coronado
Forest has taken the lead on a programmatic approach to prescribed burning in the area. The
success of the Baker Burn, both in overcoming the complexities of jurisdictions and regulations
involved in the approval process and in the execution of the initial positive results of the burn itself,
has increased the confidence of all. Planning on the next burn, the Maverick Burn, which will
involve the Coronado Forest and three private landowners, has been initiated. The Malpai Group
feels confident that opportunities for the use of fire as a positive land management tool will
increase as a result of our efforts so far.
Conservation Action
This is as a catch-all for what are traditional on-the-ground land management projects. Already
completed is as a 310-acre brush removal and reseeding project. The success of this native
reseeding has, so far, exceeded everyone•s expectations. This project will be monitored closely; we
continue to grapple with what can or cannot be done successfully and economically in range
restoration.
The group is currently engaged in gathering support for an effort to replace 13 miles of
deteriorated boundary fence which borders one of the ranches being rested from grazing. This will
prevent trespassing by cattle from a neighboring ranch onto the rested land. The Malpai Group is
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working with the landowners involved, the lead agency (Bureau of Land Management) and other
groups and agencies which might be able to contribute support to this project.
The Malpai Group is intent on initiating a watershed restoration project involving multiple
ownerships in the near future. The willingness of the landowners and agencies is there and only the
commitments of time and resources to other projects has delayed the start of this particular effort.
Endangered Species
The Malpai Group has helped a local ranch family establish permanent water at a site on their
ranch which is home to the threatened Chiricahua Leopard Frog. This action will also enhance the
rancher's grazing management by establishing a more dependable water for livestock Another site
where the frogs reside is still in need of a more secure water source. The group is working with the
rancher, nationally renowned herpetologists, and the Arizona Game & Fish Department, using funds
from their Stewardship Program to establish this second permanent water. We are hopeful that this
may set a precedent for more cooperative private landowner-public agency endeavors to benefit
wildlife species and improve land management for the future.
The riparian restoration efforts taking place on several ranches will help decrease soil erosion,
improve herbaceous cover and forage conditions, and increase ground water infiltration as well as
benefit songbirds migrating through our ranches We are also working to make research biologists
available to any interested ranchers who would like more information on the rare, threatened or
endangered plants and animals of the region
We believe that putting ranchers and biologists together can yield tremendous results. For
example, one ranch in our group has, for the past eight years, allowed the Fish and Wildlife Service
to monitor the tiny Cochise Pincushion cactus found on their property. This is an extremely rare
cactus, coveted by cactus poachers throughout the world. It lives in a highly specialized habitat on
an extremely small range. The result of this lengthy monitoring, close to a record in Arizona, has
shown that grazing does not appear to have a negative effect on the plants and the population is
stable. It's likely that the constant presence of the ranchers on the land will continue to deter
cactus collectors from harming it. Another survey by a scientist working with our group showed
that burning areas with agaves ( a flowering, desert plant) in the summer did not affect that plant's
ability to meet the need or endangered, nectar-feeding bats which use it as a food source.
Agency Participation
The enthusiastic participation of agency personnel in the Malpai Group•s efforts continues to be
a hallmark of our progress. Turnover in key agency positions results in much of the Malpai Group•s
private landowner's time being occupied with bringing in new personnel 11 UP to speed .. o our effort.
A familiarity with our project grows within the agencies we are hopeful that this aspect of our
partnership will become less burdensome.
Economic Development
The future of an unfragmented open space landscape depends upon the existence of a stable
economic underpinning. In our area, livestock grazing remains the principal livelihood capable of
sustaining such an environment. The Malpai Group is exploring ways in which cooperative ventures
by area ranchers might be able to yield higher returns for their product than are now obtained
through traditional market routes.
This is obviously a very challenging area. It is nothing new for cattle producers to attempt
.. niche marketing... There are a few success stories, but many more failed attempts. The group is
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currently having market research conducted on different possible approaches. We intend to
proceed cautiously.
In addition, we are investigating possibly marketing low impact recreational opportunities as a
supplemental source of income for private landowners. Low impact recreation brings with it the risk
of overexposure of the area and the resulting unwanted impacts associated with large numbers of
people. We remain in an investigating and planning mode here, on the theory that having a plan in
place is better than simply reacting to changing circumstances.
Operations
Probably the biggest challenge of all is simply to keep this effort moving ahead and in control of
its destiny. Our quick success has brought us attention and support beyond expectations as well as
opposition from a small, but very vocal segment of our community. Individually, we are
experiencing the exhilaration of finding .. something that works .. , and the anxiety and frustration of
trying to keep up with the effort required to make it work. The correspondence, bookkeeping and
reporting requirements of a non-profit group, receiving the support we have received, have become
quite a load for people already engaged in full-time enterprises. Our isolated location and the
distance of the participants, one from another, puts a heavy reliance on electronic technology to
keep up with communication needs. This, in an area which had no electric lines coming in 5 years
ago, no telephone or television 10 years ago.
We continue to spend a considerable amount of effort on outreach beyond the boundaries of
our working area. We think this is important, not only because it helps others, but the exposure to
other efforts and ideas contributes to our own growth. However, hosting a seemingly endless
stream of folks from outside the community who can help and trying to filter out those who wish
only to use our name, time and resources for their own agendas can be taxing. 'Traveling to talk
about what we are doing, to touch base with supporters or potential supporters, and to keep key
political players informed can also be wearying.
In order to keep the wheels on the road in the years to come, the group must come to grips
with the issues of how to avoid burnout of those who handle the bulk of the workload, and how to
keep enthusiasm and interest high for the rest. Turnover of positions, compensation for time and
personal expenses expansion of the board, contracting work out, formation of committees and
advisory positions, holding regular meetings of different size and purpose these are some of the
things the Malpai Group is trying to tackle. At our last board meeting, the group agreed to put more
money into permanent positions to solidify our work. We now have a paid Director, a paid
Financial Coordinator and Communications Coordinator to help us build long-term stability into our
operations. We hope we can find and build the right balance. We are proud to say that we have
completed a three year plan of work. This process was initiated by a brainstorming meeting of
what we call the ngreater board .. , which takes in most of our active participants. Coming out of the
meeting, committees were formed and issued draft plans for their assigned categories (i.e., land
management, community outreach, etc.). This approach to planning was very fruitful for both
getting good community involvement and for getting out a good product. If offers a lot of promise
for the future.
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CONCLUSION
The group feels good about where we are at this time, but we are realistic about the enormous
challenges ahead. Our initial trepidation at drawing attention to ourselves and the area, has
partially given way to the job of trying to handle all the consequences of that attention while
simultaneously moving ahead on the task we have set for ourselves. We remain very optimistic.
One of our principals calls what we are doing 11 God•s work. 11 If by definition that is work that brings
good people together for a noble cause, then 11 God•s work11 it truly is.
In conclusion, the success of this effort so far has resulted from the local community, the
landowners, being the drivers. The enthusiasm, support, and participation at this point exceeds our
expectations. In a political climate where the traditional position on this issue of land use is usually
to be at one end of the spectrum or the other, we find ourselves in the nradical center.~~ We invite
you to join us right there.
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