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It sounds good on paper, doesn't it? But when multi multi-million dollar ranches are benefitting from the federal government at the taxpayer expense, and your average Joe barely owns .10 acres, it's not really fair is it? So they create some grant and tax breaks for themselves, hoard the land, raise cattle, open up hunting clubs, it's really just a good ole boys' club with all the tax perks. It's not right.
Here's one of the Quivira lands that was for sale, notice it's value, $11,000,000.00. Notice what they stress on the listing to sell the property--that there were hundreds of cattle, that there was the potential for hunting clubs with antelope, etc.
If very wealthy people want to conserve land, do good for the planet, they don't need to hide behind "conservation" while financially benefitting at the taxpayer's expense, all the while running a good ole boys hunting club and cattle ranch with hundreds of heads of cattle. They can just DO IT, good environmental moves, with No tax breaks to the stinkin' rich necessary.
I don't necessarily disagree with you. But for the record, I think that's a different Quivira...the Quivira Coalition doesn't own ranchland for the most part, they rehabilitate habitate and help other ranchers - large and small - learn to manage it sustainably. I don't see "Gran Quivira Ranch" mentioned anywhere on the Quivira Coalition website.
Beyond that, the biggest reason I find efforts to engage ranchers in rangeland conservation encouraging is the one I stated already: ranching in the west is simply not going away anytime soon. And frankly, the big vanity ranchers, who don't have to worry about a bottom line, are likely to be the last ones standing.
I spent most of my earlier years raging against ranching (especially on heavily-subsidized public lands), but then I realized a couple of things: First, ranching in most of the interior west hasn't really been economically viable for a couple generations or more, but limps along because it's part of the region's rural culture and self-identity. Even if it takes holding down a job in town as well, there will always be people who continue to run cattle on whatever land they own or control because it's part of how they see themselves. And (at least in largely rural states like New Mexico) those people will most likely continue to find sympathetic politicians who keep the public land policies that benefit (if not enable) ranching in the west in place. Change may slowly come to that system, but in the meantime, it makes sense to try to ensure that ranchlands are managed sustainably.
The second, and more important, point is that there are a lot of other uses for rangeland that are worse for the environment than ranching. Ranchers living anywhere near a city may sell out to subdivision developers...I've seen it happen a lot. There are also plenty of petroleum companies willing to pay cash for subsurface mineral rights and start fracking. Instilling ranchers and rangeland managers with some semblance of a conservation ethic helps push back against both types of development a bit.
The Gran Quivira Ranch was sold, so some homework would need to be done to see if it ever was part of the same Quivira that you speak of. The same name though is a bit of a far reaching coincidence, isn't it. I'm going to assume that it was land they owned and sold, for now.
Ensure that ranchlands managed sustainably? Why? How does the general public benefit from this?
As for subdivisions and sprawl, well, that's always going to continue. Farmers are always going to sell at some point when the price is right. In NM, there's probably less of it simply because of the water shortages, else NM would have a lot more than 2 million people living there.
As for the mineral rights being sold and fracking, who's to say that isn't going on within these mega-ranches? How would we know? I could try zooming in on google earth, but I doubt I'd see it all.
I'm not convinced anybody is benefitting besides the ranchers.
The Gran Quivira Ranch was sold, so some homework would need to be done to see if it ever was part of the same Quivira that you speak of. The same name though is a bit of a far reaching coincidence, isn't it.
No, not really. "Quivira" was the name that Spanish conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado applied to an area on the Great Plains that he explored in 1540-1541 during his search for the mythical Seven Cities of Gold. It shows up in lots of place names and businesses in New Mexico and elsewhere. There's a Lake Quivira , a Quivira Boy Scout council, and a Quivira wildlife refuge in Kansas, a Quivira Drive and a Quivira Estates subdivision in Albuquerque, a Quivira vineyard in California, even a Quivira resort in Mexico. It's not particularly unusual. Most relevantly, "Gran Quivira" is the name the Park Service applies to a ~14th-17th century Pueblo village that's part of a National Monument between Mountainair and Claunch, New Mexico, which is more or less the same neck of the woods as the ranch you found. The ranch took its name from the ruins, which took their name from Coronado along with the Quivira Coalition and all this other stuff. No other connection...
I already told you that the Quivira Coalition for the most part does not own land directly. Their website goes into quite a bit of detail about what they *actually* do, but I can't force you to read it, can I? Nor can I do anything to shake up your preconceptions about responsible rangeland management, it would seem.
I already told you that the Quivira Coalition for the most part does not own land directly. Their website goes into quite a bit of detail about what they *actually* do, but I can't force you to read it, can I? Nor can I do anything to shake up your preconceptions about responsible rangeland management, it would seem.
Ok, I did read it, I had already read it. I didn't know the name Quivira was used extensively. No need to get angry at me. Now that I understand Quivira is used by many, I can see how they are not connected. As for my preconceptions about responsible rangeland, I have none, because I know nothing about it.
So did the OP find a place yet? People need to know so they can visit and make noise. I know someone else who asked for the same thing somewhere in Arizona or Utah and once the word got out it wasn’t so quiet anymore haha. The person was some entitled d bag and it encouraged people to disrupt them. Some people even took their private planes and flew low like 500 feet above the ground and no less then 500 feet from their rural home. And guess what.....that’s perfectly legal to the aviation regulations and said owner couldn’t do jack about it.
So did the OP find a place yet? People need to know so they can visit and make noise. I know someone else who asked for the same thing somewhere in Arizona or Utah and once the word got out it wasn’t so quiet anymore haha. The person was some entitled d bag and it encouraged people to disrupt them. Some people even took their private planes and flew low like 500 feet above the ground and no less then 500 feet from their rural home. And guess what.....that’s perfectly legal to the aviation regulations and said owner couldn’t do jack about it.
Well they asked the question in NM, OR, WA, CA, UT NV and MX and maybe other places so maybe they found a place.
Its hard to blame them for wishing for such a place. But what most people don't realize, or don't give a damn about as long as they get theirs, is that once they find such a quiet/dark/remote/isolated/unpopulated place its no longer a quiet/dark/remote/isolated/unpopulated place.
I was up at Rio Grande del Norte National Monument near Cuesta on a weekday in early May. There were no other people that we saw out and about. There were a few campers. It was absolutely without human generated noise. You could hear the river rapids several hundred feet below the rim of the gorge. The wind whispered through piñon pines and the ancient junipers, possibly 2000 years old. Hawks soared along the canyon walls. No airplanes, no traffic, no chain saws or lawn mowers, no flags flapping in the wind. It was much as it was 1000 years ago or more.
I don't know about New Mexico overall, but there is west of Socorro the famous Very Large Array of radio telescopes. Radio astronomers like quiet, not just electromagnetic, but also no airplanes in the sky, or industry that could put pollution in the air leading to "OMG!! It's ALIENS!! Oh wait it's just the ol' factory putting out toxic metal smoke again." OTOH there's no place to live right in that area. Not sure how far the nearest residential area is.
For a small town in the region, there's Magdalena. I'm not sure it's big enough to call a "town" actually. They have an optical telescope, one where they do interferometry, very sensitive instrumentation, so they're not fond of big rumbling trucks. But then, big trucks don't have any reason to be out that way anyhow. See if there's any "suburbs".
Generally, the whole southern part of NM is pretty quiet, and I don't recall if any trains ever went by anywhere.
There are actually a few train tracks all over Southern NM. You got the ones that area parallel to I-10, the one that goes through the Tularosa Valley near WSMR along I-70 and up to Vaughn, the one that bisects Belen going E-W across the State. There even used to be a border train that connected Douglas, AZ with El Paso, though that has been torn out for a long time now. If you go into the Gila there's plenty of solitude there, not to mention the Bootheel; however, from my own experience there's sadly not as much solitude down there as there used to be 15-20 years ago due to the beefed up Border Patrol/Smuggler presence nowadays. Otero Mesa is the other large area where you will find silence.
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