None The Nature Conservancy in New Mexico Press Releases Search All Press Releases Kelly Cash Phone: (510) 601-9367 Cell: (510) 407-1529 E-mail: kcash@tnc.org Tamera Skrovan Phone: (602) 322-6996

The Nature Conservancy Acquires Diamond A Ranch Easement

Local Ranching Community Celebrates Conservation Milestone in Open Space Protection

ANIMAS, NEW MEXICO — May 12, 2008 — Today local ranchers and state biologists applauded the conservation of approximately 12,349 acres of the New Mexico ranching landscape.  

The Diamond A Ranch (which includes land formerly known as the “Gray Ranch”) is located in the southwest corner of New Mexico. The ranch is operated by a long-time ranching family and is owned by the Animas Foundation, a non-profit that seeks to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the Animas region.  The area is a haven for wildlife in the North American southwest, and sits at the confluence of the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts, the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madre Occidentale of Mexico.  Over 320 bird species and 80 species of mammals appear here including the coati, Coue’s deer, antelope, ring-tailed cat, bears, lions and the occasional jaguar.

With a lead grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Nature Conservancy recently purchased a conservation easement, or voluntary land preservation agreement, from the Animas Foundation for $2.3 million. The Animas Foundation contributed over $400,000 in value to the easement transaction.  This action supports the New Mexico Department of Game & Fish’s Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy (CWCS) – which identifies the region as one of the top three habitat conservation priorities in the state.  

“We’re proud to work in partnership with The Animas Foundation to help protect this extraordinary landscape, along with the wildlife and way of life that it supports,” said Terry Sullivan, Executive Director of The Nature Conservancy in New Mexico.

State CWCS’s, or Wildlife Action Plans, such as the New Mexico CWCS are the nation’s strategies to protect all wildlife in the places they live. These plans allow states to work pro-actively to keep species off the endangered species list by protecting important habitat while it is still cost effective.  

“We’re grateful to the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation for providing the lead funding to allow us to move forward on this collaborative conservation project,” said Sullivan. 

Edward Elbrock, a lifelong resident of the area and neighboring rancher said, “I’m just so glad that the Animas Foundation will now be the owner of this property and that it’s in conservation easement, so it’s going to stay as open country and never be subdivided.  I just drove past the area this morning and I saw thirty head of deer.” Elbrock continued, “it’s just great to have a big block of land that can be managed for ranching and wildlife, without having to work around forty acre subdivisions -- I support this 100%.”

Elbrock is also a principal of the Malpai Borderlands Group, a sister rancher-led non-profit in the region that has used conservation easements to protect land in the Animas Valley as well as the San Bernardino Valley.  

“Many ranchers throughout the West are implementing innovative management on their ranches in ways that protect the best of the past and also address the new demands of the present,” said Seth Hadley of the Animas Foundation. “We’re proud to be a leader in this trend.”

The Animas Foundation  is a private, rancher-led entity created to own, operate and protect in perpetuity the unique landscape that comprises the Diamond A Ranch and to further the cultural heritage of the Animas region. In 1993 The Nature Conservancy sold land to the Animas Foundation and continues to hold an easement covering 200,000 acres and will also hold the new easement over an additional 12,349. The Diamond A comprises over 474,000 acres of desert grasslands, pinyon-juniper sanvannas and woodlands, evergreen oak forests, and montane woodlands along the Continental divide. Long a trail-blazer in the field of marrying conservation biology and ranching, the Ranch is the site of the largest scientific grassland experiments and private prescribed fire initiatives in North America. The Foundation works closely with the Malpai Borderlands Group, both as a partner institution and a participating ranch.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (www.ddcf.org) supports a mission to improve the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and the prevention of child maltreatment, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke’s properties.

State wildlife action plans were first conceived in 2000, when Congress mandated that each state develop a comprehensive strategy for conserving its wildlife in order to receive federal funds. The states submitted their plans to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the fall of 2005, and they were all approved by Congress in February of 2007. In developing these plans, the state wildlife agencies were careful to consider the broad range of wildlife, including game and non-game species, common species as well as endangered ones. They identified and prioritized key wildlife habitat, in many cases using the latest technology to map these lands.