by Nathan Sayre
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Product Description
Which is worse, cows or condos? Can the public lands be "saved" if the private lands are paved? What does the future hold for the West's vaunted open lands, its ever more precious water, and its fire-prone forests? Is ranching a doomed myth—as its critics charge—or the key to real conservation?
The Western range is America's most legendary landscape. It is also among its most threatened and most fiercely contested. More than 400 million acres of the West are used to raise livestock: half of the land privately owned and half of it public. In recent decades, the private lands have been rapidly converting to residential development, both around booming cities and in remote, scenic, "exurban" areas. The public half of the range has become mired in political battles and lawsuits between environmentalists, ranchers, and public agencies. In Working Wilderness Nathan Sayre examines an unusual alliance that has worked for ten years to answer these questions and preserve the wide open range: The Malpai Borderlands Group. 50 color & b/w photos.
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Average Customer Review:
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Saving Land from the Developers , 2007-09-13
In the early 1990s the Nature Conservancy purchased the Gray Ranch in the bootheel of New Mexico, the most ecologicially diverse area of the United States. I've always resented that the Conservancy resold the ranch to a private foundation and thus denied public access to a huge (321,000 acres) and spectacular wilderness. This book explains the factors leading to the sale and resale of the Gray Ranch. I now understand the Conservancy's motives -- but I still think the Gray Ranch should have been made accessible, at least on a limited basis, to a public hungry for wide-open spaces.
The owners of the Gray Ranch and a dozen other big ranchers make up the Malpai Borderlands Group in the high, wide, and lonesome country of southwestern New Mexico and adjacent Arizona. The ranchers have put their land in conservation easements to protect it from one of the worst environmental threats to the West: sub-division of big ranches into five acre ranchettes. The Malpai ranchers are also in the forefront of developing new and improved practices of managing rangeland. All in all, they're a damned good bunch of people. I would hope that their dedication to preserving open space would spread, especially to the ranches just across the border in Mexico.
Not mentioned in this book is another huge threat to the environment along the border: the proposed Wall to keep out illegal aliens which will also inhibit the movement of jaguars, ocelots, antelope, deer, and a host of other creatures who need to pass back and forth over the border in search of water and food.
"Working Wilderness" features wonderful photographs -- alas, not all of them labeled -- and an informative text about the Malpai Borderlands and the people who live and work there. There are sections about preserving, endangered species, the use of fire as a management tool, profiles of ranchers and conservationists, and a message that cooperation is possible between cowboys and environmentalists to preserve the greatest asset of the Western United States: open space and room to breathe.
Smallchief
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Land management issues in the West: hotbed of contention, 2006-04-22
WORKING WILDERNESS: THE MALPAI BORDERLANDS GROUP AND THE FUTURE OF THE WESTERN RANGE may sound so specialized that one would think it limited only to college-level regional holdings - but it's not. The Western range covers the extent of America's western landscape and its history reveals it's one of the most fiercely contested areas in the country when it comes to land management issues. Private lands have lately been changing to residential development, further involving political and social issues conflicts, which are chronicled in WORKING WILDERNESS. Here geography professor Nathan Sayre examines the alliances that have worked to preserve the open range, The Malpai Borderlands Group, and provides an unusual expose of their efforts.
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