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Rewilding Earth Podcast
Episode 134: Rewilding Pitchfork Ranch – On The Ground With AT Cole
00:33:18
Before he and his wife Lucinda began rewilding work on the Pitchfork Ranch 20 years ago, A Thomas Cole spent thirty-two years as a small-town lawyer in Casa Grande, Arizona, successfully defended two death-penalty murder cases, a dozen homicide cases,
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- [00:07]
A
I was just up there yesterday with three fish people from federal and state. We've had a Gila top minnow here and I was showing them some of the pools and I was shocked at there are not hundreds, but there are thousands now of milkweed plants and there used to be only, I don't know, several dozen. Now the milkweed is everywhere and we saw quite a few monarchs and only 10% of the milkweeds have flowers yet, so I assume we're going to see more. So the changes are pretty dramatic. Foreign.
- [01:02]
B
You'Re listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast. Chris Tompkins said in a recent episode, if you're not thinking about work that won't get done in your lifetime, you're not thinking big enough. Today we have an example of that credo in a couple's work to restore a ranch in southern New Mexico at Cole joins me today to talk about what 20 years of rewilding on Pitchfork Ranch looks like and what rewilding work must continue beyond his time. As you're listening, you can check out the Pitchfork Ranch link and other materials@rewilding.org pod Episode 134 Give Me a Lay of the land what are we looking at in terms of acres and the types of land that you're dealing with?
- [01:55]
A
We're an hour south of Silver City, New Mexico, and we're three hours from Tucson and it's a cross between Sonoran and Chihuahua Desert. The ranch is a checkerboard. We have some BLM state leased land and some deeded land. It's 11,000 acres total. It's been in cattle production. The McDonald ranch, which this was the Pitchfork was part of, was founded in 1904 and there were cattle here from the late 1880s. It's we're right in the middle of cattle country. All of our neighbors are ranchers. But we, we found a place we really didn't appreciate how special it was, but we have an ecologically functioning, properly functioning Cienega and Cienegas. They're a threatened type of water. And as we exhaust the water on this earth, the Sienegas become more important. There were, depending on who you asked, there were hundreds if not thousands of Cienegas in the Southwest before European arrival. And there's only 500 that are known to exist and less than a hundred of those have water and there's endemic plants and animals to them. So we've got an important piece of ground here.
- [03:08]
B
And you say you have been at it for around 20 years?
- [03:13]
A
Yeah, we moved here in 2004. And then right away we on a vacation and came back and there was a head cut that took out, oh, a couple of football fields worth of sediment. And so we were pretty shocked. So we realized that we had to get with it right away and we did. And so we've had 19 government grants over the last 19 years doing a variety of restoration. 87% of the restoration we've been, we've accomplished here has been done with public money. So we get grants and compete with other people that are doing something similar and, and we've made some progress.
- [03:53]
B
Does the success of attaining these grants indicate also the value of the place that you've been restoring?
- [04:02]
A
It's.
- [04:02]
B
That seems like a really good track record. We don't get government grants at the Rewilding Institute, but grants of all kinds are difficult to get.
- [04:10]
A
Yes, they are competitive. It obviously helps that we have a wet CNEGA here. So it's a threatened ecologically significant area and they know that when they look at what we're doing. But then we have same location photographs that we take around the same day in September every year for the last 20 years. It's gotten really pretty easy. Some you still get out competed sometimes. But now it's pretty easy to put together an application because we can demonstrate with photography the changes. A person that's evaluating this application can look and say, boy, they've gained five feet of sediment behind those three tiers of grade control structures and look at the growth and et cetera. So it's really now, it's much easier now than when we were starting because we've got a track record just to.
- [05:05]
B
Complete the picture a little bit more. What kind of wildlife are we talking about in this area? And then also, if you want to anecdotally just talk about how wildlife numbers have returned or anything that you've been excited about, surprised about over the last 19, 20 years in terms of wildlife.
- [05:23]
A
Yeah, we've got cameras and so we've got photographs of lion. We do not have a photograph of the jaguar, but we've got photographs of lions and deer, antelope. We had a friend who came and visited the other that a couple of weeks ago and I've been here 20 years and I've never seen a bear. I know the bears are here. He was. He spent the night and saw a bear out back. And so he was here one day and saw a bear and I have yet to see one. And we've got a coat that's currently a pregnant coat who's visiting us and so Cinda keeps her fit. So there's lots of snakes, we have lots of diamondbacks and co tail rattlesnakes. And elk have arrived. That's one of the things that's in terms of the habitat change. You build it and they will come. So we now have ELK the last two years that we'd never had the first 18.
- [06:18]
B
Wow. I would imagine that there's a pretty decent bird population different times of the year as well. Especially with the Cienega.
- [06:27]
A
Yes, it's really a bird spot. In fact, we've got, we commissioned a local artist, a bird guy ornithologist, who's recently died. But he used to bring his students here when he was teaching at the university in Silver City. And so it is a, an important birding area. And that's one of the strengths of it. It's a. And frankly it's a flyway and it's been a flyaway for eons.
- [06:52]
B
Okay. I think people are probably getting a little bit better of an idea. Of course, everyone knows by now, unless you're a new listener, that if you, wherever you're listening now, if you go to rewilding.org pod and look for this episode, there are a lot of as many photos as I can get at to send me of the land and so you can get more familiar. I think a lot of people would really like to know what's this kind of been like from a technical side to do all this restoration work.
- [07:18]
A
Okay. This is not a pitch because your organization is rewilding, but that's what we're doing. Basically. We've got nine miles of the 48 mile long Burrell Cienega that traverses this ranch and there's 32 side channels that drain into it. And of course, over the last two or 300 years, those, all those channels are incised. So the bottom line of what we're trying to accomplish is, is we're trying to shallow the landscape and make it less in size. So anytime there's a divot or an incision, a trail, we install grade control structures. And there's probably a dozen different kinds, but essentially we have three or four that we. That dominate our work. And we either pound in post in a Cienega and then we weave them so that when water flows down in a flood or even in a just a regular water flow, we capture sediment that's suspended in the water and it causes the bottom of the water course to a grade or to, to. To increase and be and become less. The whole thing becomes Less, less deep. So we've got some places where we have measured five feet of captured sediment. So that's essentially what we do that in one rock dams. And then we've also. Bill Zdike is a habitat restorationist whose template we follow and he's come up with this idea of hinge felling. So we take willow trees and we notch them and then cut them, basically cut them in half and lay them down so they're horizontal, either across the channel or off channel. And then those branches of the hinge felled tree grow in the trees. So we've got some hinge felling that we did in 2011 that now have a row of trees that are 25 and 30ft tall. So that when a flood, when floodwaters come down, those trees might bend, but they spring back up. So now we've got a. We've got a perpetual gray control structure that doesn't need much additional work and it's inexpensive. Sometimes gray control structures can cost anywhere from 300 to $2,000. And these take two guys in 20 minutes and $50 worth of time in a chainsaw.
- [09:39]
B
I'm just trying to clarify some of the terminology. Are you also talking about erosion from lack of plant cover from all of those many decades of ranching the old way, like head cuts and things?
- [09:53]
A
Yeah, that's exactly what we're talking about. It's all these head cuts. To be clear, the absence of fire, the introduction of sheep. One thing that people don't appreciate, that in 1880 there were 37 sheep to every cow in New Mexico. So the sheep caused a lot of the damage initially. But then the cattle, in the absence of beaver and the absence of fire and even agricultural recontouring, that's one of the major causes of the problem here. They, the previous owners put up a Bermuda to to keep the water from flowing onto the historic Cienega and pushed the water off of the side. And then it got it started because it was rushing and because there was so much water, it stuck, it incised and down cut and then it downcut. And when we arrived, the incision of our Cienega was 10ft. And Cienegas, a lot of people think Cienegas are, are like a crick, but they're not a Sienna. Healthy Sienna gas, slow moving water. It's a marsh. And they're really from the toe of the mountain on one side to the toe, an entire valley and maybe only an inch deep. But unfortunately our scenic. At least before we did any restoration, it functioned much like A creek, because it was so incised, it was only 2ft wide. In many places, just a trickle.
- [11:16]
B
So what are the dynamics now? What's it look like to you in terms of the day you arrived and to today?
- [11:24]
A
That's a hard thing to conceptualize because we see it every day.
- [11:29]
B
Yeah.
- [11:29]
A
And you notice. But people that are. That have visited and they come back and they're stunned. We've got one area that's about 2 miles long that had two ash trees in it that were stubbed because they'd been hammered by the cattle. And we put up a fence and now those 200 trees are now anywhere from 12 to 15 foot tall. And so it's a huge, dramatic change. And every time we go up there now, maybe a month apart, we notice a change. I was just up there yesterday with three fish people from Federal and State. We've had a Gila top minnow here and I was showing them some of the pools and I was shocked at. There are not hundreds, but there are thousands now of milkweed plants and there used to be only, I don't know, several dozen. Now the milkweed is everywhere and we saw quite a few monarchs and only 10% of the milkweeds have flowers yet. So I assume we're going to see more. So the changes are pretty dramatic and the photographs are really quite persuasive. There is a Pitchfork Ranch Facebook Pitchfork Ranch website. That's Pitchfork Ranch N m dot com and it's got all this comparative photography on it so you can see what's happened over a period of 20 years. Some of the places that we took photographs we had to stop because there was just leaves in your face. There's been so much growth. They didn't even. They didn't serve any purpose anymore.
- [13:06]
B
Yeah, I imagine. Yeah. And the photos really do speak for themselves. Yeah. And that website will be linked in the extra credit on this episode episode@rewilding.org pod but for those of you who are in a hurry and want to just jot it down, it's again, Pitchfork Ranch in as in New and m as in mexico.comnm.com I also noticed another form of wildlife that your ranch seems famous for attracting and that's academics like archaeologists and just like you have a whole page just for that form of wildlife that you attract.
- [13:42]
A
Yeah. We've tried to make the land available really to anybody. We don't permit hunting, but other than that, we like to boast that we, we. We never, we've never said no. So Southwest Archeology in Tucson has identified 34 member sites here, one of which is 5.6 acres that was continuously occupied, so says archaeologist pat Gilman, from 7:50 to 11:30. So that's well documented. And of course, there's all kinds of plant people that visit and bird people that visit. So we've got lists of. We have species lists of mammals and plants. And the Native Plant Society in Silver City, Grant County, Native Plant Society, they discovered a plant here previously unknown to science. Euphorbia ray turnderi. And we used to boast to people that if you wanted to see that plant, that the Pitchfork Ranch was the only place on the planet where it was known to exist. They've now identified it at two other places in New Mexico, so we can't brag that one anymore. But. But still, that was. It was located, was identified here. It's on the. It's on the red list. And it's obviously a rare plant, like the CNN itself.
- [14:58]
B
Yeah, for plant people, that might be their jaguar. I wonder about some people seeing that and going, I've got to. I've got to go see this place just for that. But, yeah, you've got hydrologists, you've got professors of aquatic ecology. That level of attention right there just proves there's something really special going on here. And I just think that's really cool that there's that much interest in the land and that you're so welcoming to people. There's another page I want to talk about a little bit on your website that discusses cattle and how you guys refer to yourselves. And it's not ranchers.
- [15:36]
A
No, we make it very clear that we are not ranchers. We are. We happen to be ranch owners, and we're happy to do that. But this ranching business is. It's not easy, and it's not for the elderly. We. We do have a dozen cows, and we have Charolais cattle. And we have cows because we want to take advantage of the agricultural tax rate, which we were told it was substantial. And I can tell you, I happened to go to the assessor's office just last week for reasons that I won't bother you with, but it's. The tax rate is for agriculture. If you lose your tax rate, your tax is 435 times worse. Whoa. And so when they say substantial, I had no idea that substantial meant 435 times, but that's what it is.
- [16:31]
B
Wow. A dozen cows. I imagine you. You work them a heck of a lot differently than the traditional rancher might as well even though there's only a dozen, we sure do.
- [16:42]
A
We obviously rotate them and we've done that for several years although we're doing less of that now because there are six wells on this ranch and all six have gone dry. And that last year we waited 11 months to get a well driller out here. And then once we drilled two wells, five fifty and two fifty feet deep and they only produce one or two gallons a minute. We're really water insecure now. When we came here the, all the windmills were operative. The steel rims big, big dough by swimming like swimming pools were full. The overflow ponds had water in them. And now we can't get our, our, we can't even get our cistern to fill up and to take care of our showers and the plants around the headquarters, we're starting to be really careful. I, I haven't urinated inside in months.
- [17:45]
B
What do you attribute to that? I'm sure there are several factors contributing but maybe you can as the man on the ground take us through what do you think is happening there?
- [17:55]
A
It's the human driven climate crisis we have ecologically. We're hammering this planet. I think we're on the crossroads of survival and extinction. And it's just no doubt in my mind that the changes that we've seen here, not just in the, in the water but it's the, the time of year that the certain birds arrive, they've changed because the temperature has changed. We, the first decade we were here we had on average we on average we had 10 rain a year that were 0.06 or less. Now we have 20 on average a year. So we have double the little tiny rains that much of it evaporates. And then the, the big rains, we used to have one or two and it rained in front of the headquarters here. We're at like at mile three of the nine miles here water ran in front of the headquarters. The longest it ever ran was 73 days. Last year a flood lasts in front of us 156 days. So we have more water that runs off the ranch and we have more water that evaporates. So if we get 11 inches a year here, 12 inches like we have historically, we're actually have less water that hits the ranch, that stays on the.
- [19:25]
B
Ranch just due to flow of fast moving. It just doesn't, it doesn't get the sink.
- [19:31]
A
That's right. It goes by fast and plus the little rains, so much of it evaporates so it doesn't really sink in. So we have 20 of those little range and lose a lot of that. And then we have a couple of big ones and we lose more of that. I don't know what that number is, but I know that if it's 11 total, it's less that stays on the range. I had an old rancher tell me when we first bought this place, he said, do you want every drop of rain that lands on your ranch to stay on your ranch? Yeah, the goal. But we realize now that we're going backwards on that particular account.
- [20:10]
B
Yeah, I think maybe people don't take into consideration you can be very lucky and begin 20 years ago to start rewilding a place and doing restoration. But it's not a guarantee. Just because you're doing that, you're not going to run into challenges directly related to climate. And I'm not sure that a lot of people know this is happening in real time. This is not a future thing anymore. It's not for you. It's happening right now. And. And it's not a simple matter of just saying, hey, we, we found this piece of land, we're going to rewild it and everything's going to be great because when it rains, we're going to be able to soak up a lot more water. It's not that clean, cut and dry. I don't want to make anybody sad, but you guys are out there. Anybody that's doing the work that you're doing, and you're facing pretty considerable challenges just beyond the hard work of doing restoration due to climate change.
- [21:01]
A
Yeah, it's pretty frightening. This place had. Even up where there's water, of course, there's the goodings willow trees is twice as big as they used to be. So it's stunningly beautiful. And so I don't. We're not depressed or anything, but when we came here, we were. We were going to fix the land for what? And then we realized, oh, no way did we have a Cienega, so we really need to focus on that. And then. But about seven or eight years ago, we realized that, wait a minute, this climate crisis is really impacting us. And it wasn't a consideration initially. Now, there are studies, there's two recent science papers, one that says that sweet spots like marshes and bogs and cienegas, they capture five times more carbon than forest and 500 times more carbon than oceans. So now when we look at our template of what we're trying to accomplish here, it really hasn't. It's changed because it's expanded we're still under wildlife, we're still under the cnega, but now we're also on the carbon drawdown is a third of our, at least how we think about what we're trying to accomplish here.
- [22:17]
B
It seems the focus matches that perfectly on your website too. So if people are wondering more about what your plan is and, and you're dealing with this, they can check out your website, Pitchfork Ranch NM.com and read about that as well. I really appreciate the depth that you've gone into. The moment of truth page is really an eye opener and it's different than reading it. The typical stuff that we conservationists read from scientists and people that are nowhere near on the ground, the way that you are, the way that ranchers are traditional and you a very untraditional ranch owner. And it's really neat to read the way you see it because it's a different angle and it's much appreciated by me. I think a lot of people are really going to enjoy that. As depressing as it can be. You're really keeping a good face about this. But it's, it's a little scary.
- [23:15]
A
It is. And, and with the politics the way they are of, of late, sometimes I have to pretend to be hopeful because if I get too serious, it's hard to be hopeful. But wife says that hope is not a plan. But my thinking is that without hope, you, you won't have a plan. So we remain hopeful or at least we function as if we are hopeful, whether we are or not.
- [23:40]
B
Yeah, it's all we can do. And I, I, that's a, that's an acknowledgement I think most people are making now in our lines of work, related work is what else are we going to do? Giving up is not an option.
- [23:51]
A
So we go, if you're not part of the solution and you are part of the problem, and then you start looking at, are you an enabler and a collaborator and are you complicit morally and practically? And if you're not doing something, frankly, we are.
- [24:08]
B
Yeah. There's a ray of sunshine out there that I wanted to talk about. You mentioned something about a monument. Can you talk more about that opportunity that's befallen you?
- [24:19]
A
Yes, yes. We've gone through a series of exit strategies, if you will. We're pushing 80. We can't be here forever and we can't. We realize now that we cannot complete the restoration in our lifetime. So we have to do something with this place. And we've looked at a lot of options and one option Required an endowment of half a million dollars, which we don't have other options, don't want the place because we don't allow hunting. So we have landed on a Cienega National Monument because one, we think Cienegas are so important that they deserve some kind of a monumental stature so that people will start appreciating them. Because not just anybody can do restoration. You can do it on your rental lot if you want to. So we're trying to encourage people to do that. But if we're not successful with the national monument, and we might not be with this recent debate debacle and the assassination attempt. So we're concerned about that and we do have a plan B. But there's a small ranch north of us that has 3.4 miles and the headwaters of the Cienega. And a couple years ago, Lucinda and I coughed up a down payment to our actually was a fee that we paid to have an option to purchase that ranch. And we don't have the money to purchase it, but we have found a foundation that's willing to give us the $900,000 that it's going to take to close the escrow on that place. If we buy the Prevost Ranch and then add that 3.4 miles to our 9 miles, we have the alluvial fan or cork that creates the CNEGA, about 2 miles, mile and a half down on our range. So we're going to have virtually the entire historic Cienega. And so we're hopeful that we'll get the government to make a Cienega National Monument. But if they don't, we've got a plan B and we'll try to come up with a refugium or some way that we'll take a life estate here, hopefully and continue the restoration as long as we can. And then somebody will have to take over and finish, finish the plan.
- [26:39]
B
I'd also love to hear about your dream for unfinished business on this land. Whether it's or someone in the future putting the final pieces together. What are those pieces? What are the things you, you dream about manifesting into reality on this ranch?
- [26:55]
A
Yeah, it's going to be maintenance. There is a process of restoration that we haven't quite attained. But you reach a point where when you do sufficient restoration, then the land starts to self heal. And we think we're pretty close to that. So that our successor and who lives here is not going to have to do the really the hardcore habitat restoration that we've done. That'll be done. I think It'll be maintaining the damage that occurs naturally to the great control structures. That's going to be a function of maintenance and the land's pretty much going to start to. To heal on its take off on its own self. Healing is something that we haven't seen, but I've read about it, we've talked.
- [27:42]
B
About that with engineers and landscape architects and other people, especially at biohabitats and, and I always ask them where do you. They go in and they have to do very intensive stuff, much like you've described to restore an area to get things moving. But there's that sweet spot that I always like to hear different people's ideas on where you just know it's time that nature has to take over. Because we literally have done everything we know how to do and there's just some little magic that nature has to sew everything back together. And it's the difference between that picture of the year before when it's all maybe looks like a construction site and the year after or the years after when it looks restored and quite remarkably different. What's that sweet spot like to you? You're describing it now. The hard work has been done and that maintenance is really the next phase. And what's this phase you're in like?
- [28:39]
A
I don't think we're quite at that sweet spot yet. But for example, yesterday when I saw all those milkweeds, I was really shocked to see the explosion. So I think I don't know this because I've never seen a sweet spot before. But I think we're very close and yesterday was a good example of that. It just seems we're close. And I wouldn't be surprised if after this current large restoration project that we're doing now, if we won't basically just transition into a repair maintenance approach rather than installation of grade control structures, one.
- [29:22]
B
Of the biggest shifts could be that you and your successor have to become more of what you've already started being very vocal about the things that are affecting this land that are out of your control climate.
- [29:37]
A
And that's why we do a Facebook and that's why we have a website. And that's why I wrote the book, because we are trying to persuade others. The book contains six different examples of as small as a rental property in Silver City and as large as 200,000 acres in the boot hill. And different size projects in between where people are doing basically the same thing. Installing grade control structures, slowing down the flow, capturing sediment, increasing wicking of water and trying to hold on to keep it. To keep the water from running downhill. There are scientists who maintain that we only have 60 years of agriculture left. If we don't start growing our food differently because it's in the ocean, the sediment's in the ocean, we just gotta do something different. We've gotta make a transition. I think that the environmental movement basically has to make a pivot from conservation into restoration if we're to. If we're going to fix this place.
- [30:46]
B
Yeah. And all hands on deck, right?
- [30:49]
A
Yeah.
- [30:50]
B
There's. All of the biggest chunks, of course, have all been fought over and won or lost. And that's why Dave Foreman wrote Rewilding North America. He recognized that he was one of the few people on the continent who had counted every single acre of wilderness and roadless areas. And while there are more targets out there, everything's become so contentious. There's no guarantee when you can make a big success, and then there won't be any big ones like back in the rare one in two days and where there were huge chunks, and I'm always excluding Alaska, there are still big wins yet to be had there, and there are still fights very much worth having. But other than that, for roadless areas or for pretty wild areas that are fairly roadless, it really is a restoration period now. And that's why I'm so excited to talk to you and people like you, any chance that I can possibly get, because we need to know, outside the theory, outside the books and the papers, what's it really like out there and how. How can we do more of it and how can we encourage more people to do it? So I really love your mission. I love what you're doing. Everyone, of course, remember, you can go to rewilding.org pod check out this episode. You can just do a little search for Pitchfork Ranch. You'll also see the book review that was done by John Miles, our excellent book reviewer. And all the other resources will be available in this episode's extra credit at. Thank you so much for making the time and for all the work that you've done. You are really appreciated. I wish everybody who listens to this podcast especially would leave comments on this particular podcast. And I will point at there so he can see and Lucinda can see that your work is very much appreciated and we thank you very much.
- [32:43]
A
You're more than welcome.
- [32:45]
B
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