National Park Service
The Sangre de Cristo Mountains, seen here from the Great Sand Dunes National Park, are the backbone of a proposed conservation area announced Friday with a billionaire's pledge to protect 90,000 acres from development.
A billionaire hedge-fund manager on Friday pledged to protect 90,000 acres of his Colorado ranch from further development as part of a much larger planned conservation area. The Obama administration said it would be the "largest single conservation easement" ever provided to the federal government.
The easement, which would include tax benefits for New York-based Louis Bacon, provides "the foundation for the proposed new Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area," the Interior Department announced.
Should the conservation area happen, Bacon said Friday, "I will place approximately 90,000 currently unprotected acres of the Blanca portion of Trinchera Ranch into a conservation easement."
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who grew up in the area and announced the deal with Bacon at his side, said the ranch "is in one of the most beautiful places in the country" -- and home to three peaks above 14,000 feet that are in the center of the longest U.S. mountain chain.
Conserving the land will protect the region's water and wildlife, Salazar told reporters. The region is used as a corridor by bison, cougars, black bears, bighorn sheep, elk and deer, and borders the Great Sand Dunes National Park.
The proposed conservation area -- which would be much larger than Bacon's ranch -- "remains largely unchanged and is a place where wildlife can migrate between the high prairies of eastern New Mexico and the high mountain valleys of central Colorado," an Interior team that scouted the area last year reported.
Department of Interior
The circled area of interest represents the 3,000,000 acres studied by the Interior Department for the Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area.
"Maintaining such an open corridor is important for species survival and overall ecosystem health," the team added. "There are few other places in the southwestern United States where such an open and unchanged landscape exists."
Bacon, ranked by Forbes as the 312th richest American with a $1.4 billion estimated net worth, bought the 172,000-acre Trinchera Ranch from the family of billionaire Malcolm Forbes in 2007 for $175 million -- which media reports at the time called the most expensive single property ever sold in the U.S.
The Forbes family had earlier placed more than 80,000 acres of the ranch in a conservation easement.
Easements allow continued ranching and hunting but no construction of significant structures. They also provide tax incentives to property owners.
"The conservation incentives are incredibly efficient ways of conserving land," Greg Yankee, policy director for the Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts, told msnbc.com.
Colorado grants a maximum $375,000 tax credit for any easement, he added, and a property owner who meets all the criteria could also list the easement as a federal income tax deduction.
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for how much Bacon could expect.
Billionaire Ted Turner, founder of CNN, owns the largest parcel inside the proposed conservation area -- the 600,000-acre Vermejo Ranch.
Salazar told the Denver Post that while he's had conversations with Turner, there were no specific proposals in the works.
"It'll happen over the next several years," Salazar said of the larger conservation area. "It's important that, as the conservation efforts move forward, that it be done with full cognizance of the need to honor water rights and property rights on the valley floor."
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These forums are the most depressing thing I have come across. All you people do is complain and moan about rich people. I'm embarrassed for you, really I am. Complaining will get you no where. You have no right to tell someone how much money they can have. If they attained the money illegally then of course lock them away, if not, STFU!!!!!! Let people be!! It's not like if they didn't have the money it would automatically end up in your bank account!! This has become a crusade against rich people and it is absolutely ridiculous. Are there bad, corrupt rich people? YES! There are also bad and corrupt poor people!!
If someone donates $1 million you would say why didn't he donate $2 million? You ungrateful SOB's!! Go make your own money and donate it all if you want! Stop complaining about other people's money!
Very nicely said. Couldn't agree more.
all i can say is wow. cant believe he is donating all that land.
So, let me get this straight. Bacon pledges not to build any structures on land way out in the mountainous boonies where no structures are likely to ever be built anyway, gets to keep the land and use it for his own benefit, presumably ranching, can sell it for a profit (with the easements intact, of course) and gets a really nice annual tax credit from Colorado and a really nice annual federal tax deduction. I wonder how much he gets in federal farm subsidies on top of this and other benefits? Another giveaway to the wealthy passed off as a philanthropy. We are such suckers.
Goodness sakes the drama. He agrees never to build on the land, so that it will be preserved for generations to come, and in turn he pays lower taxes on that portion of his land. It is a nice, if mutually beneficial, thing to do, I am sure he didn't NEED the tax credit, and also didn't NEED to build on all that land, so he decided to do something to better our nation's conservation areas. Why do you have to make it some big negative thing? No one is GIVING him money, they are not TAKING as much money away, because he gave up his RIGHT to build on the land. Would you rather there was no system in place to encourage conservation?
i could care less about what politics any politics does or does not have to do w/ this insulting or at least myopic pursuit of effectively just another self agrandising pat on the back. a great deal of us are just barely squeeking by in this carnivorous culture if we're lucky. these gestures whether they of genuine good intent or not , mean nothing at best to the average working stiff or even worse guys like myself stranded in a community experiencing severe economic if one were to use an accurate analogy to describe it "a doldrums of sorts" borrowing from a navigation lexicon. i'm not entirely convinced obama OR rom"nut sac" have a clue about even just the most basic essentials of daily existence require JUST to subsist at what is becoming a pretty darn minimal and depressing existence. PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!! need that damn land. hell, even just a little damn space would be like a slice a freakin heaven for goodness sake ,man.i realize a great deal of us folks put out on the curb and rightly so for some of us nevermind the meaningless, excessively, deliberately vauge legalese, and crazy math in most if not all real property documents, are not likely to magically , instantaneousely goin to adopt a traditional way of agrarian subsistence lifestyle even if they knew how. however EVERYONE needs SOMEPLACE to be. for lack of a more eloquently put state of affairs. humans such as we obviousely are, do not thrive or benefit from the "idiculously"congested spaces we typically findourselves in. seriousely who the hell BUT a money mad developer would design the typical tract house neighborhoods we've so conveniently become accustomed to. call me mad, insane, lost, dreaming ....whatever. but i firmly believe it's more likely the other way around. maybe we've sufficiently brain washed ourselves into reasoning that our society and culture are for the most part fairly healthy. if u value clarity whatsoever u better think again folks. i suppose it's possible to convince your self ur HAPPY living right smack dab in the middle of ur own wastes. as for myself i'd quite literaly be even happier than a pig in @!$%# just to actually be able to call even ONE lousy acre of GOD FORSAKEN land truly mine. i don't mean some ridiculously puny fraction of an acre lot most families consider home. all the while somehow not understanding property quartered that densely and usuall without the benefit of ample green ways or parks is not really ownership of hardly ANYTHING at all! how close do we have to park ourselves up each others normally privately managed arses before we understand THIS is not SUSTAINABLE. i understand it's become the new vogueish, faddish, whatever eco, green concern it's suposed to be addresing however , really it's absurdly late in the game now to even bother trying to reverse massive processes that "hint" did not initiate yesterday. not to say we should entirely f*** this planet up, but the majority of our concern is incredibly unrealistic even if we knew PRECICSELY what cascade of events and time frame we were dealing w. people are making ridiculous overblown statements and incredibly over dramatic. overemphasised issues over processes we largely have little cdirect control over. what we have and most likely will continue to do is screw more economically disadvantaged people over with our incredibly blunt aimless, and carelessly sloppy "GOODINTENTS".!!!
TL;DR
If you want to live on one acre in the middle of no where in America's Heartland, no one is stopping you, and unless the statistics lie, no, people do NOT need this land, since only a TINY amount of America's live in the expanse between the Mississippi River and the Rockies. But you are right, this does nothing to help YOU and YOUR situation today, nor is it supposed to. It is about PRESERVING the natural beauty and resources of this nation for many generations to come, which is more important than giving you more handouts to WHINE about.
Now the 0.1%ers are buying entire Hawaiian islands, mountain ranges and elections. What kind of screwed up country do we live in?