Why We Cannot Buy Our Way Out of Environmental Dilemmas : Conservation: The Nature Conservancy owns millions of acres. Is it any better than the government at managing them? Consider the Gray Ranch.

The system of resolving disputes over the environment maximizes conflict. Pugnacious people on both sides use tax-deductible donations and tax dollars to carry on a fight that is really about values. When people make values political, values suffer.

So why fight when we might switch? Remember capitalism? Why not sell public resources, at fair market value, to private conservationists and let them do the managing?

Yet what happens when a wealthy and powerful private organization, like the Nature Conservancy, does buy a piece of the West? Do environmental values suffer as badly at its hands as they do in the political arena?

The basic principle of capitalism is the time value of money. At the 502-square-mile Gray Ranch in New Mexico, the money clock ticks wildly toward some undetermined alarm. Someone apparently blundered. In buying the ranch in 1990 for $18 million, the conservancy paid roughly $2 million above the land’s appraised value. Furthermore, the land, once part of the Hearst ranching empire stretching across the Southwest and into California, is not home to any federally endangered species worth preserving--such as bears and wolves.

As a result, heads have rolled like bowling balls in the Nature Conservancy’s highly secretive upper management. Laurel Mayer, head of the Gray Ranch project team and former Western regional director, has been “reassigned.” The entire regional office, which orchestrated the deal, has moved from San Francisco to Colorado, where it is supposed to be closer to financial and biological reality. Will donors or taxpayers have to bail out the world’s wealthiest environmentalists?

With a net worth in the hundreds of millions and an annual budget that would make your eyebrows jump, the Nature Conservancy specializes in making the environment safe for Republicans. It ducks controversy, stays out of political fights and loads its state and national boards with the power and wealth needed for big real-estate deals like Gray Ranch.

If you believe the organization’s propaganda, the Nature Conservancy protects the environment the old-fashioned way--it buys biologically important lands and manages them for endangered species.

What the Nature Conservancy does not say, of course, is that 80% of its buys in the West are resold to Uncle Sam or to state land agencies. For example, the conservancy bought, in the 1970s, a badly overgrazed 225,000-acre ranch along the Rio Grande in New Mexico and briefly managed it. Then it resold the land to the taxpayers. Today, the ranch is the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, where grazing is strictly forbidden. But environmental conditions remain desperate.

The conservancy maintains offices in every state and powerful lobbyists in Washington, just to make sure it does not get caught holding the bag--that is, the land. And, of course, it makes money as Uncle Sam’s realtor.

None of this would be troubling if government agencies managed public land well and fairly. But the opposite is too often true. The conservancy owns thousands of preserves and millions of acres nationwide. Is it any better than the government at managing them?

That’s one of the reasons why the Gray Ranch is important. That and the fact that its wide-open spaces are perfect homes for some of the West’s most endangered species. The last grizzly bear in the Southwest was driven off the Gray Ranch’s Animas Mountains and shot in Mexico in 1921. In 1965, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife trapper slaughtered the last Mexican gray wolf on the ranch. Why not bring these creatures back home?

Originally, the financial gnomes at the conservancy aimed for easy money: a federal buyout in the form of quick resale and conversion to management by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the Animas National Wildlife Refuge. At the conservancy’s request, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) drafted legislation asking for $8 million to finance government purchase of the land.

Inexplicably, the private organization changed its mind. An embarrassed senator ate crow, and an enraged Fish and Wildlife Service said it no longer wanted the ranch. After a flurry of contradictory statements from various staff members, the Nature Conservancy retreated into official silence.

Then it announced it was keeping the ranch. Keeping it for what? In the Carolinas, the conservancy is involved in reintroducing red wolves. In Florida, it contributes to efforts to save the Florida panther. As for the Gray Ranch, the organization piously insists that it is not in the business of reintroducing endangered--especially controversial--species.

What is going on? Bill Huey, a longtime conservancy official and former head of the New Mexico Game & Fish Department, said, “We think of Gray Ranch coverage the way we think about Persian War coverage. We know how to protect this place. The less said, the better.”

Like why does the ranch still host 7,000-10,000 cattle chomping on the West’s most expensive private grass? Yes, the Nature Conservancy is operating a working cattle ranch. So what wildlife is it “saving?”

Pigs. Everywhere they ranched in oak country, the Hearsts let European pigs go wild, living off the acorns. One of the few people who has recently been on the Gray Ranch returned with a tale of 300-pound wild boars, with tusks like steak knives. Their primary meal--cows.

Why should this be alarming? Because Gray Ranch may answer questions about whether we can live with domestic grazing in the Southwest--even on private lands. And yet the Nature Conservancy has erected a barbed-wire wall around the ranch. This is not only poor public policy. It is bad science. We need answers about whether--and how--desert landscapes co-evolved with large grazers (like bison), with fires and with humans.

In addition to the quality of its mountains and grasslands, the Gray Ranch is home to hundreds of archaeological sites, dating to the Casas Grandes civilization of 1,000 years ago. Depending on what digs might yield, endangered-species managers might learn when and how to prescribe fire or to bring back bison. In the interim, they might even use cattle grazing as a tool to maintain certain endangered-plant communities and species. Or as transition prey for wolves and grizzlies.

As a private organization, the Nature Conservancy has the right to do largely what it pleases with its property. Rumors abound that it may even sell all or part of the property to the J.G. Boswell family, associated with the California branch of the organization. This would be ironic, indeed, since Boswell is one of the prime beneficiaries of federally subsidized irrigation water badly needed for recovering endangered fish populations in the Colorado River.

Still, shouldn’t the Nature Conservancy have a larger responsibility to taxpayers and to endangered species?

While people throughout the West tear each other and the land to pieces over endangered species, the Nature Conservancy sits on its prize, officially fat and happy. After months of fumbling and indecision, it will soon open parts of the Gray Ranch to private tours. But be prepared to pay for the privilege. Costs continue to mount, raising the obvious question of whether a wolfless and bearless Gray Ranch is worth it.

Reports persist that wild wolves from Mexico have moved onto Gray Ranch, which makes rancher, politician and environmentalist nervous. If the report is true, what would the conservancy do when it had a valid environmental reason to hold onto the ranch?

The values represented by wolves and bears will never be safe on public lands, where values always suffer in political fights. With time running out for endangered species, the buck stops at the Gray Ranch. The Nature Conservancy may raise millions of dollars. It may make the environment a safer issue for Republicans. But does it have the will to make the West safe for big, fierce animals?