Feds' Takeover Of New Mexico's
Baca Ranch Pleases Green Types

(Editor's note: The following is another of those "balanced" stories in which the mainstream press takes pride. In this case, the "balance" consists of offering different viewpoints as to what should be done with a coveted ranch once the federal government takes possession. It would probably come as a sincere shock to those folks to discover that some people do not believe the best owner of any piece of land is the government. For them, the supremacy of "public" ownership is gospel, a belief they cannot conceive of doubting. It would be cruel, we suppose, to remind them that the former Soviet Union was once all "public" land, and is now a collosal environmental disaster area that will be generations healing. Likewise, most of this country's biggest messes are on "public" land — land everyone owned, thus no one owned. The Baca, by contrast, is pristine precisely because it is privately owned, and thus managed by people with a personal stake in its protection. That, it appears, is coming to an end. Pity.)

BACA RANCH, N.M. —(AP)— A golden eagle preens in the dazzling autumn light. Elk graze damp meadows. Fiery aspens fleck slopes carpeted with spruce, fir and ponderosa pine. In remote canyons, bears and mountain lions stalk their prey.

Around it all, a strand of barbed wire punctuated by imposing signs: 'POSTED: No Trespassing.'

This is the Baca Ranch.

To the public it is a paradise lost — 95,000 acres of National Park-quality scenery that has been privately owned for more than a century. In scenic pullouts along Highway 4, carloads of people gaze and point and peer through binoculars at this off-limits natural wonderland.

``It's a kind of high altitude Rocky Mountain Eden,'' says New Mexico author and conservationist William deBuys.

The ranch has been well cared for by its current owners, the Dunigan family of Abilene, Texas. But as New Mexico's urban population explodes and the canyons of the Jemez mountains fill with weekend homes and ranchettes, the temptation to subdivide or sell the ranch has grown. Both Santa Fe and Albuquerque, two of the nation's fastest-growing urban areas, are within a two-hour drive.

``We've seen it in New Mexico all over the northern part of the state,'' says Bill Huey, who used to run the state Fish and Game Department. ``You take 95,000 acres and put a road to every 100 acres, and that's just for starters. And then you fence it and do what you please with it, and pretty soon it's going to look pretty different from what you started with.''

Congress just took a major step toward saving the Baca from such a fate. This year's budget bill allocated $101 million to purchase the ranch. The only issue remaining to be settled before the ranch becomes public is how the government will manage the property.

``This may be the last chance to get the ranch into public ownership in a largely undisturbed state,'' says Dave Simon, Southwest Regional Director for the National Parks and Conservation Association. ``It's really an opportunity that we had better not blow.''

This is the fourth time the U.S. government has talked about buying the Baca, and the third time it has tried. In every previous case, misfortune or political strife has torpedoed the purchase.

``You would think these guys would learn,'' says Simon. ``But they just don't.''

The most recent time the government came close to buying the property, negotiations ended when its owner, James P. `Pat' Dunigan, died suddenly.

The first time, back in the '60s, conflicts arose over which federal land management agency would get to run the place. The U.S. Forest Service had a natural claim because it already owned all the land surrounding the ranch. But two features made the Baca a natural for the National Park Service — incredible scenery and textbook geology.

``It's as splendid a high mountain backdrop as you can find,'' deBuys says.

To see what makes the Baca special, book a flight from Albuquerque to Denver. On the left side of the plane just before it reaches cruising altitude, the coniferous green of the Jemez Mountains opens up into a sea of golden meadows.

The ranch sits in a perfect ring of mountains called the Valles caldera. A million years ago there was a volcano taller than Mount Everest here. But a pair of colossal Mount St. Helens-style eruptions emptied its magma chamber, hollowing out the volcano. It collapsed into its hollow center, creating a hole more than a half-mile deep and 15 miles across. The whole ranch, all 95,000 acres, nestles in that giant bowl.

Over the millennia, more hot lava has risen from below and punched through the caldera floor, creating little peaks inside the bowl. The result is a network of grassy valleys, or Valles, separated by forested peaks and ringed by the mountain wall.

``It's beautifully self-contained,'' deBuys says. ``You can be in it on the property and see nothing but the property.''

The ring of mountains makes the place feel like a land of the lost, a paradise tucked away from the outside world for eons. Simon calls it ``New Mexico's Yellowstone,'' and the Baca has all the elements of America's most famous national park, albeit on a smaller scale. There are even hot springs, signs that there is still molten magma deep beneath the caldera.

The government granted the land to its first owner, Luis Maria Cabeza de Vaca, in 1860. For most of the early years it was a sheep ranch. But by 1962, when James P. Dunigan bought the land from Frank Bond and Son, Inc., the Baca raised cattle.

There were elk, too, reintroduced to the area in 1947 after decades of absence. In the 1970s the elk population boomed, and today the Dunigan family runs a lucrative hunt on the property. Hunters pay up to $10,000 for a shot at a trophy bull.

On a chilly evening in October, hunt manager Dave Collis is doing a little business development — cruising around the ranch roads in a red-and-white pickup, checking on the herd.

A few days ago, the biggest bulls would have been hanging out in the trees, running off at the first sign of a human. But now it's the day after the trophy hunting season has ended, and the big bulls seem to know it. Ten and 12-point giants are blithely grazing out in the meadows, secure in the knowledge that they've made it through another season. They'll graze here for a few more weeks, then head to lower elevations for the winter.

When the elk return to the Baca in the spring they won't have hunters to worry about, but they won't have the place to themselves either. Five thousand steers graze the property each summer.

If the public gets its hands on the Baca, there are some people who would like to see the elk hunting end and the cattle go. But in New Mexico, where ranching is as much religion as business, not many people expect or even want to end hunting and grazing on the Baca.

``People persist here in ranching not because of the economics but in spite of them,'' deBuys says. ``There's really something important about having a working relationship with land.''

New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici couldn't agree more. In exchange for his support of the Baca purchase, Domenici has insisted that under public ownership the place should continue to be operated as a working ranch.

The current legislation calls for a board of trustees that would be required to run the ranch as a self-sufficient moneymaking enterprise, much the same way it is today. But both deBuys and Simon warn that such an arrangement could open the door to overgrazing, destructive timber harvesting and generally poor land management.

While politicians, environmentalists and federal land managers debate the best way to manage the Baca, and the people of New Mexico eagerly await the day that the gates swing open, most of the people who work and play on the ranch today have mixed feelings about the impending sale.

Albert Vigil has worked on the Baca since 1992. He has devoted two summers of his life to repairing the property's perimeter fence, and lived here alone all winter as the ranch's caretaker.

Vigil grew up not far from here in Jemez Pueblo, where the Baca's Redondo Peak is considered sacred. This summer he took his 93 year-old grandmother for her first visit to the mountain.

As he drives his pickup along the ranch's narrow dirt roads, Vigil's expression saddens at the suggestion that the sale of the ranch could cost him his job.

``I don't want to leave,'' he says. ``Because I love this place.''