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Courtesy photo
A view of the Ivins Ranch is shown. The Montezuma Land Conservancy recently secured two land conservations easements with Crescent Land and Cattle and Melvin Adams Livestock for the Crescent and Ivins ranches in the Groundhog-Glade area of Dolores County. |
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Easements protect ranches
Land conservancy helps secure Ivins, Crescent ranches
Closing its two largest conservation easements ever, Montezuma Land Conservancy protected 11,500 acres during the first week of December.
The Cortez-based land trust now holds 64 conservation easements totaling 30,551 acres in Montezuma and Dolores counties - forever ensuring these lands remain available for agriculture, wildlife habitat, and scenic open space, according to a statement from the land conservancy.
"This achievement is a testimony to the power of partnerships. Without landowners placing their trust in MLC, we could never achieve the results you are seeing today. We are proud and humbled by the investment our landowners and granting partners have placed in Montezuma and Dolores county land protection," Juniper Katz, MLC executive director, said in the statement from the land conservancy.
Two conservation easements were signed with Crescent Land and Cattle and Melvin Adams Livestock for the Crescent and Ivins ranches, respectively. Funding for both these projects was provided by Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund, the NRCS Farm and Ranch Protection Program, the Packard Foundation, the Gates Family Foundation and Montezuma Land Conservancy. The properties lie just west of the 4,119-acre Brumley Ranch easement completed in 2008.
Located in central Dolores County's Groundhog-Glade area, the 6,700 acres Ivins Ranch is the largest easement held by MLC. The ranch supports the family's fifth-generation livestock operation, which was started in the 1930s by DeAnn Ivins' grandfather and great-uncles, the Adams Brothers.
"There were four of them and they split up the ranch. This is the piece my grandfather got," DeAnn Ivins said in the statement from MLC.
When Ivins' parents married in 1946, they committed to continuing the family's ranching tradition.
"We raised sheep," Ivins said. "It was sheep all the time until I was a teenager. The ranch was our base, and we had summer pasture on Lizard Head, Silverton and all the way to Lake City. Then you couldn't find herders anymore and the coyotes got bad and we started moving over to cattle. Four years after I got married we started running the ranch, and now our son (Justin) does it. It has gone on for that long. Of the four ranches from when the Adams brothers split, we are the only one that is still a ranch like it was."
This heritage is behind the Ivinses' decision to conserve the ranch.
"It is hard to run a ranch on what we make off the ranch," Ivins said. "The conservation easement is a really nice way to keep the ranch running as it is and not have to sell off pieces for development. We believe in conservation. There are deer and elk, bear and turkeys, and mountain lions up there. We want to keep it as it is, and it is the best way in the world to raise children."
"Conservation at this scale is meaningful," MLC Director of Conservation Initiatives Nina Williams said in the statement from MLC. "These properties are large enough to support working agricultural operations while providing functioning, resilient habitat. Central Dolores County's Groundhog-Glade region contains remarkably large and unfragmented private parcels that are interconnected with more than 100,000 acres of surrounding public lands."
The Ivins Ranch ranges in elevation from 9,400 feet at the top of South Mountain to 7,400 feet in Disappointment Valley. Vistas of the property from public roads and lands are breathtaking, according to MLC. It contains a variety of aspen, spruce-fir, and ponderosa pine forests, oak and juniper woodlands, mixed mountain shrublands, high-quality native grasslands, wetlands, open water and rock and shale outcrops that provide prime habitat. The property is a critical linkage between elk calving grounds and winter range in Disappointment Valley, important black bear summer and fall habitat, and habitat for at least 30 species of greatest conservation need as identified by the Colorado Division of Wildlife.
Just next door lays Crescent Ranch. The 4,847-acre Crescent Ranch comprises two parcels: summer range adjacent to Ivins Ranch and winter range in the southwestern corner of Montezuma County just west of Sleeping Ute Mountain. On the summer range in the Glade, aspen forests dominate, and oak woodlands, native mountain grasslands, mixed mountain shrublands, isolated pockets of old-growth spruce-fir, scattered cliff bands, springs, ponds, and intermittent drainages form the rest. Conservation of this ranch extends the protection of the wildlife corridor and adds a connection to Lone Mesa State Park and the Plateau Creek watershed.
Conservation of both the summer and winter range for Crescent Ranch will allow a traditional way of ranching to continue. In the landowner's words, "This project keeps the land all together just like Dad wanted from the beginning."
"This has truly been a neighborhood effort," Dave Nichols, MLC director of land protection, said in the statement from MLC. "These ranches are in a unique area where traditional ranching remains the dominant use. Since Mr. Brumley decided to conserve his ranch, neighbors have been talking to neighbors who wish to see this area retain its historic character. Three families have now taken action towards this end, and two other families are exploring the possibility."
The conservation easements were completed as bargain sale transactions, wherein MLC pays a portion of the appraised value of the easement and the landowners make a charitable donation of the remaining value, according to MLC. Conservation easements are voluntary agreements that landowners use to protect important farm and ranch lands, wildlife habitat, and scenic open space by limiting subdivision and residential development. Lands remain in private ownership.
In addition to the funds mentioned above, letters of support for these projects were provided by Montezuma and Dolores counties, Colorado State Parks, Colorado Division of Wildlife, the Dolores Public Lands Office, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Colorado Conservation Partnership, Trout Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy.
In other news, MLC closed its seventh conservation easement on the Dolores River this fall, nearly wrapping up the conservancy's second San Juan Skyway Legacy grant. An eighth easement scheduled to close in early 2011 will bring more than 1,000 acres along the river under protection.
This highly successful initiative, in the works since 2003, has focused on protecting working ranches and scenic properties with important riparian habitat, according to MLC. An eight easement in this multiyear project will close in early 2011.
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