Column: Along the Frontier
A Carbon Ranch: an Alternate Vision for the Valles Caldera
In this, the third in a series looking at the future of New Mexico's Valles Caldera National Preserve, Courtney White makes the case for turning the preserve into a working ranch, instead of a national park.By Courtney White, 6-23-10
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If the mission of the Valles Caldera National Preserve is going to change, let’s make it what I call a ‘carbon ranch’ and give it the goal of fighting climate change.
After all, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and nearly every leading environmentalist in the nation agree that confronting climate change is a crucially important challenge. I agree. I say, let’s take on that challenge on the Valles Caldera.
A carbon ranch fights climate change in three ways: (1) by increasing carbon sequestration in vegetation and soils; (2) by actively reducing greenhouse gas emissions on the property; and (3) by creating a variety of climate-friendly co-benefits, such as watershed restoration and local food production, which contribute to an overall carbon-negative landscape.
The inspiration for a carbon ranch came to me last summer when I saw a new publication from The Worldwatch Institute titled “Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use” by Sara Scheer and Sajal Sthapit (see http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6128).
They argue that since more than 30% of all greenhouse gases arise from the land use sector, no strategy for mitigating climate change can be successful without reducing emissions from agriculture, forestry, and other land uses. Moreover, only land-based or ‘terrestrial’ carbon sequestration offers the possibility today of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, through plant photosynthesis.
Scheer and Sthapit identify five strategies for reducing emissions and sequestering carbon:
“Improved land management could offset a quarter of global emissions from fossil fuel use in a year,” they write. “In contrast, solutions for reducing emissions by carbon capture in the energy sector are unlikely to be widely utilized for decades and do not remove the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.”
In other words, to have any prayer of reducing atmospheric CO2 from its current level of 390 parts-per-million (ppm) down to 350 ppm, as environmentalist Bill McKibben and many climatologists say we must, then we need to manage the surface of the planet for increased CO2 sequestration.
Which brings me to the Valles Caldera National Preserve. It’s ideally suited for a carbon ranch demonstration site because of its ecology, geology, and high visibility. Here’s my vision:
- All vehicles must park at the entrance to the Preserve and every visitor and employee reaches his or her destination by hiking, biking, horseback riding, horse-drawn wagon, or via a government-supplied biodiesel truck.
- All energy use inside the Preserve is provided by renewable sources – wind, solar, biomass and geothermal – generated on the property.
- Structures are retrofitted to ‘green’ architecture standards as much as possible. All services, including food preparation and administrative activities, are redesigned to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.
- Livestock are managed to enrich soil carbon (pulling atmospheric CO2 down into plant roots by photosynthesis) via rotational grazing and herd effect. The increased carbon storage is scientifically verified. (For more information on all this see www.amazingcarbon.com).
- Livestock are part of a local, grassfed food system that reduces food-miles substantially while supporting local ranchers and a local economy.
- Forest and wildlife management activities are directed at increasing carbon sequestration in vegetation and improving habitat health and species diversity, a key to improving the overall ecological resilience of the Preserve.
- Watershed restoration activities, especially those that restore or maintain wetlands, are aimed at building soil and storing carbon.
- Science and research are directed at measuring, monitoring, and analyzing the emission/sequestration challenges faced by the Preserve.
- Interpretive and educational activities explain the various parts of a carbon ranch, including its goals, successes and failures.
- All activities are tested against the question: “Will this increase the carbon footprint of the Preserve?” If the answer is “yes” then the activity is modified or not undertaken.
This may sound pie-in-the-sky, but each piece of the pie already exists. We know how to measure carbon footprints, we know how to reduce emissions, we know how to graze cattle to improve soil health, we know how to restore creeks, we know how to manage forests sustainably, and we know how to make a profit from some of these activities.
What we don’t know is how to put the pieces – hunting, fishing, hiking, grazing, wildlife, forestry, science, education and administration – together into a whole that works. That’s why we need a demonstration project. The time for action is upon us. Instead of talking about climate change, let’s do something.
The Valles Caldera, with its deep soils, abundant grasslands, inspiring beauty and high public profile, is the perfect place to try.
How about: the Valles Caldera National Carbon Ranch?
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of guest columns on the future of the Valles Caldera. Click on the headlines below for previous installments.
A Step Backward: the Valles Caldera National Park, by Courtney White
Former National Parks Director: Valles Caldera Bill a Step Forward, by Roger G. Kennedy
Valles Caldera: What Would Stewart Udall Think?, by William deBuys
Courtney White is the executive director and co-founder of the Quivira Coalition and the author of Revolution on the Range: the Rise of a New Ranch in the American West as well as countless articles and essays on the region. His Along the Frontier column runs on NewWest.Net twice a month. Read more from Courtney at his Web site, www.awestthatworks.com. The Quivira Coalition’s 9th Annual Conference is coming up in November, the 10-12th, 2010, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The conference is titled, “The Carbon Ranch: Using Food and Stewardship to Build Soil and Fight Climate Change.”
NewWest.Net welcomes guest columns of all stripes. Guest columns are not written by New West staff and do not represent the opinion of the New West organization or staff. You can submit guest columns to editor@newwest.net.
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Comments
“Almost anywhere and everywhere you go in the American West you find hordes of [cows]…. They are a pest and a plague. They pollute our springs and streams and rivers. They infest our canyons, valleys, meadows, and forests. They graze off the native bluestems and grama and bunch grasses, leaving behind jungles of prickly pear. They trample down the native forbs and shrubs and cacti. They spread the exotic cheatgrass, the Russian thistle, and the crested wheat grass. Weeds. Even when the cattle are not physically present, you see the dung and the flies and the mud and the dust and the general destruction. If you don’t see it, you’ll smell it. The whole American West stinks of cattle.”
~ The late Edward Abbey, conservationist and author, in a speech at the University of Montana in 1985
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The public doesn't see the VCNP as a "ranch" for ranchers and cowpokes anymore. Many public opinion surveys relative to the VCNP show people want it quiet, wild, and accessible for quiet recreation and study.
Besides, his idea is way too late. The train has left the station.
That being said, Mr. White and others in the livestock industry need to understand that the public is tired of having cows on public lands everywhere they go. The Jemez Mountains of New Mexico are overrun with cattle and the streams are polluted with their feces, the vegetation is mowed to a weedy lawn and feces cover the land. Streams have been dewatered and wildlife is rare because cattle have absorbed the life from the land for decades.
Further the public is demanding high quality recreation. People don't want to give public lands over to a handful of ranchers so they can collect subsidies from the Dept. of Ag. anymore. The world has moved on from the old cowboy past, the collective poverty of public land ranching. Further, beef is one of the worst things you can eat in terms of heart disease.
Sorry Courtney. Try your carbon livestock ranch somewhere else. And don't miss the train next time if you are serious.
but you have the beef-haters aligned against you already.
Never mind that cattle run right are beneficial to vegetation and profitable as well. That doesn't matter, not when there is the possibility of yet another fantasist utopian money pit being dug for the imagined benefit of the ideologically pure.
What a shame.