5,000 acres in Catron County protected
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 16, 2006

RESERVE, N.M. (AP) – Some 5,000 acres of the Horse Springs Ranch in Catron County and a vital wildlife corridor that it provides are being protected under a new conservation easement.

The easement was arranged by The Trust for Public Land and will protect property at the heart of the 16,000-acre ranch in southern New Mexico, the trust and its partners announced Tuesday.

The easement will let rancher Jay Platt and his family work the land, but will protect it from development in the future.

The easement was funded with $2.7 million from the state-administered, federally funded Forest Legacy Program and a $900,000 grant from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish.

“Some of the things that made this ranch desirable to the Forest Legacy Program the wildlife, the water, the forests are the things that make me love ranching it, and make me proud to one day pass it on to my sons,” Platt said.

The legacy program’s administrator, Bob Sivinski, said the ranch was chosen because it includes crucial water and a vital wildlife corridor between the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest to the west and the Bureau of Land Management’s Horse Mountain area of critical environmental concern to the east.

The trust’s state director, Jenny Parks, said the transaction “preserves a way of life, it promotes smart growth and it provides a vital wildlife corridor between two federally owned land tracts.”

The easement project was supported by government and nonprofit groups, including the forest on the Arizona-New Mexico border, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the state Land Office, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation and the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.

The Trust for Public Land, founded in 1972, is a national nonprofit conservation group dedicated to conserving land for parks, gardens and other natural places. Its Working Lands Initiative protects farms, ranches and forests that support rural ways of life.

___

On The Net:

The Trust for Public Land: http://www.tpl.org