Creatures Of Habitat. Mark Hengesbaugh. Published by Utah State University Press. For additional information about this book

Transcription

1 Creatures Of Habitat Mark Hengesbaugh Published by Utah State University Press Hengesbaugh, Mark. Creatures Of Habitat: The Changing Nature of Wildlife and Wild Places in Utah and the Intermountain West. Logan: Utah State University Press, Project MUSE., For additional information about this book No institutional affiliation (26 Aug :09 GMT)

2 CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Nature Conservancy of Utah Wheeling and dealing in race with extinction. Unless you re a bug or a biologist, this swamp is not pretty. But the Nature Conservancy of Utah s Layton Wetlands Preserve a sweep of mudflats, pickleweed, and brine flies that smells of rot is paradise to birds; they come here to rest and nest by the millions. The preserve, six miles along the Great Salt Lake s eastern shore, hosts some of the largest concentrations of wildlife ever counted on a lake that s teeming with birds: for example, a million northern pintail ducks, a half-million sandpipers, a quarter-million American avocets. Utah s wetlands are comparable to rainforests in the number and variety of species they support, so the Conservancy s Salt Lake office snatches them up whenever they re for sale. The Nature Conservancy isn t in the business of buying pretty scenery. Organized forty years ago around what was then a little-known branch of earth science called ecology, its mission is to preserve native plant and animal species and the natural communities that support them. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Conservancy has protected over nine million acres of ecologically important land that s larger than Connecticut, New Jersey, and Delaware combined. Because property rights rule, the Conservancy buys private land to protect nature. They offer the carrot of hard cash, not a stick, only buying from willing sellers. The Conservancy s low-key negotiators such as Salt Lake field office s Chris Montague frequently spend years building up trust with owners and neighbors and write contracts that satisfy the concerns of each party. 139

3 The Conservancy has toiled quietly in Utah for 16 years. Despite achievements, they re not exactly headline news. For example, the Conservancy expanded the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, by 10 percent with one transaction. Few Utahns heard about it. Long before that purchase, Montague called on the private owners of nine square miles of wetlands next to the refuge. Then, for seven years, Montague kept in touch with them and developed a rapport. The Conservancy finally bought the marsh in They resold it within days as agreed to the Bear River refuge. The Nature Conservancy is very professional and skilled at what they do, says Al Trout, manager of the Bear River refuge. That adjacent land purchase was very complicated. But because they re a private organization, they bring a perspective and leverage that we in government don t have. The Nature Conservancy s scientists set land protection priorities. Then its field offices find the best ways to preserve targeted areas. Later, Conservancy land managers tend purchased landscapes and experiment with ways humans can live and work there without harming native plants and animals. In the West, that means they work to make ranching an Earthfriendly enterprise. While rhetoric and confrontation fuel the political debate over wilderness on Utah s public land, the Conservancy finds ways to work and play well with others in preserving natural areas. Wilderness is not our issue, explains Libby Ellis, the Salt Lake field office s director of development. We don t need the legislature to do our job. The Conservancy s stand that nothing should go extinct is spurred by knowledge that at least three plant or animal species disappear each day. That pace is 1,000 times faster than the background rate shown in Earth s fossil record. We are in a race with extinction. We couldn t possibly buy all the land that needs protection and most of it is not for sale anyway. So we know we have to cooperate and form partnerships, Ellis says. On Utah s Book Cliffs, for example a forested plateau-and-gulch landscape with few humans but plenty of black bear, elk, and cougar four ranches control all grazing rights. In 1990, the Conservancy brought together the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, ranch owners, the federal Bureau of Land Management, and the Utah Department of Wildlife Resources to create a conservation plan. The Conservancy bought one ranch along with its water rights and grazing permits; the Rocky Mountain 140 CREATURES OF HABITAT

4 Elk Foundation bought another. Both intend to maintain them as working ranches but to repair damaged streamsides and allow more forage for wildlife. The remote Book Cliffs is home to a dozen rare and endangered plants and animals. But why is the Nature Conservancy trying to save every kind of bug or rare herb? The Earth is a machine like an airplane, Ellis comments. You can pop out a few rivets from the airplane s hull, but eventually removing one more rivet will bring the airplane crashing down. It s the same way with species on Earth. We don t know which species lost may finally bring down the whole system. When one species goes extinct, biologists say, others that depended on it also die out. Ecosystems become unstable as they lose species and subspecies: one type of parasite or virus may wipe out an entire race. A wide range of plant and animal species in an environment biodiversity brings self-regulation to a biological system. Whether or not it is morally wrong to cause a species to go extinct, each species holds a wealth of information to scientists, Ellis points out. For humankind, allowing unknown plants to go extinct is like throwing out nature s medicine cabinet. About 25 percent of our pharmaceuticals come directly from plants, and many more from studying plant chemistry. Even so, relatively few known plants have been studied for beneficial drugs, and many more plants are thought to be unknown than are known to science. Viruses and bacteria, which prey on humans, evolve at a much faster rate than the human immune system. As a rare plant goes extinct, we may be losing a medicinal compound that cures an evolving disease. Also, wild plant foods, such as native species of corn, contain traits that modern farmers eventually need. Two decades ago, scientists had to mix strains of wild corn with field corn because 20 percent of American farmers crops withered from a disease to which cultivated corn had no resistance but its wild cousin did. Saving Earth s biodiversity, as a goal, grew over time for the Conservancy. Before 1975, the Conservancy bought or collected through donation small patches of land with no particular ecological significance or economic value. Often these parcels were undisturbed because they were too steep to farm or too wet to subdivide. A Conservancy scientist, Bob Jenkins, convinced other members that they should be preserving the gene pools of species, subspecies, and unique biological communities that are disappearing because of human activity. The Conservancy soon found that 141

5 the idea of buying a small parcel of land like a spring with an endangered flower or a pasture with a rare kind of prairie dog was flawed. Small, isolated populations of plants and animals suffer high rates of extinction, and they are easily overrun by aggressive, nonnative species. The Conservancy began to look for complete biological systems that were large enough to host their full complement of species over time. In Utah, preserving a complete biological system was one of the things that attracted us to Dugout Ranch, said Montague. The Conservancy purchased this ranch adjacent to Canyonlands National Park several years ago. The property includes 42 miles of cottonwood and willow riverside and the water rights to keep a steady streamflow from the nearby Abajo Mountains. This kind of intact streamside habitat is rare in southeastern Utah. The ranch and its quarter million associated acres shelter at least four globally rare wildflowers. Ellis says, We try to protect species before they re put on the endangered list. It s costly for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to do their job of preserving plants or animals under the Endangered Species Act after populations are decimated and their habitat is biologically unraveled. Nature Conservancy biologists survey and identify rare plants, animals, and biological systems; then they decide which ones are in danger of disappearing first. To help states keep track, the Conservancy developed the State Natural Heritage Inventory Program. It s a computer catalog that allows you to type in real estate survey coordinates and get back a list of rare plants and animals in the area. The government has taken over the system in most states, including Utah. Once Conservancy scientists target critical areas, field offices find the best ways to preserve them. Because so much land needs protection and because funds are limited, the Conservancy is always looking for ways to leverage its efforts. Field office personnel policy was finding people who like to get a good deal, according to Pat Noonan, an early director. Conservancy field officers don t have to know an oriole from an Oreo, but they quickly become experts on real estate law, gift tax incentives, and public land management. Frequently the Salt Lake office will do all the legwork on a property find a seller, survey, appraise, and title search so another buyer can preserve it. The Salt Lake field office has been especially clever in preserving wetlands using the Central Utah Project s (CUP) money. As part of Congress reauthorization of CUP four years ago, it required states to replace in other 142 CREATURES OF HABITAT

6 areas to mitigate wetlands habitat destroyed by dams. The Conservancy s Salt Lake field office draws up protection proposals for Great Salt Lake wetlands, primarily in Davis County, and the CUP Mitigation Commission purchases them. This CUP mitigation money is especially helpful now, said Montague. The population of Davis County is expanding rapidly, subdivisions are creeping closer to the lake, and land prices are skyrocketing. Ten years from now, most of this land would be gone. Each Conservancy field office is responsible for raising all the money for projects in its state. The national organization does have a fund of over $150 million from which Utah can borrow for a quick purchase if necessary. But the loan must be paid back with interest. After a field office has found donors to purchase land, the Conservancy s stewardship branch takes over. However, the Conservancy itself only manages property if it makes sense for us to do so, notes Ellis. For example, in February of 1996, the Conservancy bought a 700-acre parcel in the Snake Creek drainage at the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon that was threatened by Brighton ski resort s expansion. The Conservancy immediately turned around and sold the mountainside to the Utah Department of Parks and Recreation, which manages Wasatch State Park next door. This way they avoided duplicating land management efforts. Whenever the Conservancy resells land, the contract includes a conservation easement that permanently protects the land. In the Snake Creek purchase, the easement protects the acreage in perpetuity for watershed and wildlife habitat. Increasingly the Conservancy buys conservation easements to ranches and farms. The Conservancy pays the rancher or farmer an agreed-upon price. In return, the rancher or farmer will continue to graze or farm their land but cannot sell it to be subdivided. It s either cows or condos in the new West, according to Dave Livermore, the Conservancy s Utah State director. We can t afford to buy all the land that needs protection and strip malls, subdivisions, and ranchettes will replace ranches unless we work with the best rural stewards of the land. Next door, Colorado loses 90,000 rural acres each year over 140 square miles to suburb creep. Rural communities in Utah are under tremendous pressure from the forces of development, Ellis says. Expanding suburbs can cause property taxes to rise for rural residents and force them to sell to real estate agents and construction companies. We want to work with rural property owners, she says. On the Conservancy s Book Cliffs 143

7 ranch and in the Dugout Ranch deal, the Conservancy will continue to work the properties as ranches. This makes the Conservancy a good neighbor in two ways: local businesses get money from ranching purchases, and the property stays on the county tax rolls, continuing to pay property tax. Successful examples of sustainable ranching that make money but also take care of the land and can teach others to do the same would be real leverage in these purchases, Livermore observes. Dugout Ranch has had a reputation of excellent land stewardship, notes Montague. Heidi Redd, Dugout s long-time owner, found ways to keep her quarter-million acre allotment of grazing land in good condition, even during drought years. Heidi moved her cows frequently, and covered lots of ground so no one area was hit too hard. She has always been open to new ideas, was interested in native grasses, and never tried to eliminate predators, such as cougar and coyotes. She figured that some livestock losses are part of the deal, Montague says. The Redds sold the ranch to the Conservancy at a substantial discount from its appraised value of $6.3 million. Even when protecting entire biological systems, the Conservancy has to worry about long-term global changes affecting large preserves. For example, acid rain may kill all the fish in a preserved lake; a temperature increase from the greenhouse effect may kill plant species blocked from spreading north; or the reduction of Earth s ozone layer may kill off all the frogs in an area. And ultimately the interests of nature and humans are the same. Everything plants and animals depend on, such as clean air and water, humans depend on too. We re part of the food chain, Ellis emphasizes. With vast natural landscapes to protect and climbing real estate prices, the Nature Conservancy of Utah is raising its profile to bring in more donors. Contributors get results for their money the Conservancy is known for action, not talk. To a donor, the way the Nature Conservancy works makes a lot of economic sense, says Scott Lee, professor of finance at Texas A&M University and long-time Utah conservationist. Instead of paying legislative lobbyists each year, the Conservancy buys property rights to critical natural areas. When you buy land to protect it like they do, it s like money in the bank. 144 CREATURES OF HABITAT