Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2005 | 9:59 a.m.
A pair of conservation groups, one based in the Southwest and devoted to the Grand Canyon and the other a national land-trust group, said they have finalized a deal that would tie together some of the country's most spectacular federally protected areas.
The Grand Canyon Trust, based in Flagstaff, Ariz., and the Conservation Fund, based in Arlington, Va., said they will spend $4.5 million to buy the Kane and Two Mile ranches in northwest Arizona. The ranches themselves are only about 1,000 acres, but the groups say the purchase will give them access to 850,000 acres of public land maintained by the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Arizona State Land Department.
The land is slated for cattle grazing. With the grazing areas included, the land would stretch from the north rim of the Grand Canyon to the Utah border and connect three national monuments, two national recreation areas and eight wilderness areas.
The land includes sagebrush steppes, pinyon-juniper forests, spruce fir forests, and is home to endangered species including the California condor, Northern Goshawk and Apache trout, and peregrine falcon, pronghorn antelope, mule deer, black bear and mountain lion.
The issue of control of the lands sparked a tit-for-tat exchange between the conservationists and a spokesman for the Forest Service.
Rick Moore, the Grand Canyon Trust Kane and Two Mile ranch director, said the goal is to maintain a cattle-raising operation that is compatible with conservation.
"We want to minimize the impacts of cattle grazing on this land," Moore said. "The bottom line here is that as a conservation organization that invests in projects, we are able to take the money, and unlike a typical (grazing-rights) permittee, we can put that money back into the land."
The former land owner, the Kane Ranch Land Stewardship and Cattle Co., has not had cattle grazing on the land for the last three years, but Moore said the federal regulations require the new owners to put cattle on the land.
He said the groups would work closely with the Forest Service and BLM to ensure that the goals of public access, cattle grazing and land conservation are met.
Scott Clemans, a Forest Service spokesman working out of Arizona and Utah, said the authority to manage the 850,000 acres of public land will stay with the federal and state agencies.
"A federal grazing permit gives the permittee the right to graze cattle. Period," Clemans said. "It still is our responsibility to manage those lands."
He said that as the federal agency develops new management plans, the Grand Canyon Trust and the Conservation Fund can participate in the process as stakeholders, the same as for hunters, hikers and others who have access to the public land.
If the conservation groups took the cattle off the land, the Forest Service and BLM could turn the grazing lands over to another user, Clemans said.
He said that with some exceptions for specific needs, the permittees must have at least 90 percent of the allowed number of cattle on the land.
"I do feel the Grand Canyon Trust and the Conservation Fund are being a little overenthusiastic," Clemans said.
Moore said most of those in the federal agencies are looking forward to working with the conservation groups, which have formed a holding company, North Rim Ranch LLC, to operate the ranches.
"We can bring money and volunteers that the agencies do not have the budget for," he said. Still, he acknowledged that the agencies have "the ultimate say" over how the land is used.
"When we put cattle out there, it's going to be in agreement and in full compliance with the federal regulations," Moore said.
The old owners received a waiver over the last three years that allowed them to keep cattle off the range, but before that about 1,500 head grazed the federal public lands, he said.
Moore said that his group wants to bring "rigorous science to bear here."
"We feel as a conservation organization, we have to thoroughly understand the landscape."
Grand Canyon Trust staff and volunteers have been collecting ecological data from more than 600 points across the 850,000 acres. About a dozen people began collecting data in May and wrapped up this month in the effort, he said.
Larry Selzer, president of the Conservation Fund, said the groups would work with the federal agencies in a partnership.
"We have collective resources available to our organizations that a typical permittee would not have," he said. "We can bring sweat equity to the land on a scale that most private operators cannot afford to do."
"This is such an important ecological link. It is one of the most unique areas in the entire United States. It is literally a cornucopia of natural resource areas."
Public access, Selzer said, will remain "wide open."
"Nothing in terms of our ownership will diminish the public access, and that includes everything from the California condor release site to the Kaibab plateau," he said, listing two of the dozens of wildlife areas in the huge swath of land.
"The difference is that in some of those areas there might have been use conflicts in the past. We'll be in a position to work with the agencies to resolve those conflicts. They'll be cows out on the land, but they'll be managed in a way that will ensure compatibility with the other uses."
Dave Boyd, a BLM spokesman, said his agency is ready to work with the conservation groups.
"There's a lot of opportunity and a lot of potential," Boyd said. "We just have to make sure we're coordinating with each other. The first thing is that they have to maintain this basic grazing."
Selzer and Moore said the core buildings in the Kane and Two Miles ranches would likely be used to house researchers and volunteers working on the land.
"Those will be used over time out there as potential environmental education centers."
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