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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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Leave a Comment:
We should all thank Louis Bacon for showing us that having a few billion dollars does not automatically make you a bona fide robber baron or a despicable capitalist cretin ; that the über rich can in fact have hearts and a conscience and a sense of altruism in applying real world wealth towards intrinsic values that cannot be measured in dollars
Too bad he is mostly a One Percenter in the One Percenter ranks of the robber baron caste. I sincerely hope the Koch Bros. and THEIR plunderous greedy ilk are having an apoplectic breakdown somewhere.... why the nerve of Bacon to cast us in such golden light !
Do you have any idea how many people the Koch Bros employ? Care to explain how they are plunderous and greedy. Or, are you just writing these words for dramatic effect.
Have you asked some of their employees how they like their wages and benefits?? OR should I say their lack of decent pay and benefits???
This is a true selfless person what a great thing to do for our country and for the wildlife and for the preservation of resources that someday will become far less common as we rapidly over populate this planet. Bacon your a hero and definately one of the classiest people around a dying breed we need more people like you ..
Another idiot thinking this is a selfless act! Read the fine print,this land was mostly useless and he is leveraging the laws in his favor. Which there is nothing wrong with that as we are capitalists and this was a great oppotunity for him. Hero !! Hell no.
Another conservation easement....in Texas.
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/newsmedia/releases/?req=20120126a
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/state-parks/devils-river
It is good when land is protected. If I won the Powerball lottery and got tons of money, I daydreamed about buying up a bunch of land and forbidding the ruination of it....
But alas, I can only dream....
This is definitely good news for once. The wildlife do speak, and they say thank you.
Great idea. Obama can go live there after his sorry a** gets thrown out of the White House.
Call Pres. Obama NOW at 202-456-1111 and tell him that you are outraged that he announced an Executive Amensty for millions of illegal aliens against the will of Congress! (If the comment line is not working, please call the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414.)
The Forbes family? I am pretty sure they are conservatives.
All I saw was the headline and "tax breaks" popped into my head. Good deal for him. Not likely to be developed anyway and he can still keep everyone the hell off the property... didn't even have to buy a cow and goat for an agricultural tax exemption.
That is really generous. Thank you for the gift.
Politics aside...... since politics has nothing to do with this gentleman's gesture in my opinion, and ya'll asked for opinions here...Thank you Mr. Property owner for doing such a wonderful thing for wildlife and wild lands conservation. I think it's just purely wonderful!
Worth considering:
1. These "huge tracts of land," were in place as land grants given by the Spanish governors to individuals to encourage settlement and development in frontier regions, before the Louisiana Purchase. So these land grants were never United States public land.
2. Great Sand Dunes National Park is adjacent to but not part of Trinchera. Two national forests are also adjacent to Trinchera, as well as many smaller parcels of BLM public land.
3. As noted above, conservation easements do not automatically allow public access to private property. The public benefits from conservation easements on private property because large expanses of habitat and wildlife are preserved; watersheds are maintained; viewscapes are uninterrupted; clean air reserves continue; trophy home and resort development are precluded, which prevents massive property tax inflation for existing rural subsistence residents (poorest county in Colorado includes Trinchera), and undeveloped lanscapes remain to interrupt mining, drilling, logging and other consumptive "development" of private and public lands.
Sweet! I need to look into the definition of "conservation area" but I hope there will be at least some access to the public to enjoy this beautiful area. Additionally, who and how will the wildlife be managed? I'm not a hunter but that creek looks awfully inviting for a fly line.
I think what he did is a good thing, with financial side effects that are bound to piss some people off. Regardless of what makes people mad, if more of the wealthy would contribute to society in some way, the world would be a much better place.
All people can contribute to society regardless if financial staus. How many of us really do???
Ya gotta love the sniveling little snot noses on here who go out of their way to look for something to whine about no matter how good the news.
It wasn't enough that the guy is conserving 90K acres. Oh no, to some, he shouldn't have "been allowed" to own that much to begin with. Of course, if it wasn't owned by just one person, the liberals would have had no problem with going in and forcibly removing the people from their land. That's been demonstrated many times in the past. To some, the fact that he is a billionaire, or a hedge fund manager is what gets them frothing at the mouth.
In any event, it is behavior typical of the jealous, greedy, incessantly sour liberal who always have a look on their face as if they've got a four inch diameter pine cone stuck up their a$$. I get so sick of the "everything is always sh!t all the time" liberal crowd.
(If, by chance, you're a liberal who doesn't think everything is sh!t all the time, then I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the depressed all the time, nothing is ever good, nothing will ever be good, liberal.)
I like your handle, i get it, and agree with what you wrote.
billybob: Thanks for the kind words. Some people get it. Others are sometimes perplexed by it. Some just outright hate it. Any of the three are fine with me as I don't live my life seeking the approval of others. I understand that sometimes I'm about as subtle as a three engine freight train at full throttle, but hey, that's just me.
Here are some important distinctions:
One: I hate modern day post FDR liberalism with every fiber of my being. (Not to be confused with the classical Jeffersonian small government version of liberalism which any genuine American will appreciate.)
Two: I am NOT an anarchist. I want a Constitutionally limited government that works efficiently to serve the people, not a people who exist to serve the government.
Three: I want to make it clear that I don't hate liberals. I have several liberal friends, some of more than 20 years. But, I do have them pretty well trained not to discuss politics with me, unless they can take the heat.
They know I don't hold back, and I make many of them uncomfortable with the truths of their chosen ideology. Ironically, I think that's one of the reasons we stay friends. They know I'm not going to blow smoke up their a$$, and they can trust me not to tell them anything but what my honest opinion is. Of course, that doesn't mean that we'll necessarily ever agree on anything, it just keeps the relationship honest.
Billybob, again, thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated.
@conservative thanks for putting my thoughts into words. It amazes me how many posters have said he should not be allowed to own that much. Imagine what they would be screaming if he had developed it!!
wghky:
Now now, you're just trying to give some liberal a heart attack aren't you. Taint nice I tell ya!! Plus lines like that will be more effective after Obamacare is declared unconstitutional ;-)~
A thumbs up to your post conservative. WE really need another party in my opinion. AT least you speak your piece without being a basher. Gotta aprreciate that.
skrewdworld: We need something for sure. What we have today has gotten so far away from what the founding Fathers intended, that it is almost unrecognizable in many instances.
I fear that my kids will be stuck with the bills from promises made by long dead politicians who thought they were smarter than those that founded this nation. If you love your kids, that's a scary thought.
As I read the story I could see the complaining coming about how the rich guy gets the tax break. In the last few years it has become a crime to be rich in this country.
High five to this billionaire! Most rich people are too greedy to share even a little.
And your proof of this is.....?
So I guess that Obama likes Hedge fund managers now. What will OWS say?
What a Great Gift to America.....well done
I hate to take the negative side, but you can bet he made money on the deal--likely in tax breaks. Where his rate was 15%, likely he will get far more back.
Well all I know is that on Monday I'm going to find the forms needed to apply for a conservation easement for my land. I'm tired of paying property taxes on it. I think anyone with over 1/4 an acre should check this out. I have a pond so I'm sure it's wetlands too...
Do it!! I hope you succeed!!!
One human being can "own" that much land? That feels wrong.
You have to understand that if you have cattle on that land, there's not a lot of grazing like there would be in other places. So it takes a lot more land to raise cattle out west than in the Midwest or most other places. I lived in Wyoming in the early 1980's, one ranch sold that was one of the largest in the state-- about 80 miles long, bigger than this one. It was over 100K acres and had been around for many years.
Why?
I had 3 weeks of field camp in August 1978 in the mountains in the background of this photo as a student of the University of Iowa. We could hike up out of the valley we were in and look down right at the Sand Dunes. Just an awesome place.
Yes , that is a great place. But has nothing to do with this land in the article. Duh!
Wow this is a whole lot of tax benefit: For landowners with little income subject to state taxation, a tax credit is a hollow reward for reducing the value of real property by donating a conservation easement. To respond to this, Colorado conservationists made their state tax credit transferable in 2000—that is, the donor/landowner can sell her/his credit to other parties; the buyers then use the purchased tax credit to pay their Colorado income tax. This is appealing to buyers because the credit is sold at a discount from face value....In the states where credit for conservation land donations is transferable, free markets have arisen. Brokers assist landowners with excess credit to contact buyers, and the brokers often handle payments and paperwork to protect the principals, and to ensure that transfers are fully reported to the state tax authorities. The federal and state tax treatment of profits from sale and use of transferable tax credit have been the subject of extensive discussion and the issuance of several guidance documents by the Internal Revenue Service.[4]
All right. The media has mislead the sheeple once again. The picture was taken hundred plus miles away from this location. From an economic stand point this is worthless lands that he is going to turn into a better stategy for his manipulation of tax gains. Most of us in the west would love this land. Just go to google and do a fly over of this area. This is not the kind of lands that would be national forests or parks. Just more of the common lands the BLM and state lands already control. Most of which were handed over to the country for being negative producing property.