Letters

From the January 2000 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

The authors' gratuitous reference to "a grim sea of failed federal management" betrays their operating prejudice. While current management of Ted Turner's Vermejo Ranch may indeed be exemplary, it does not follow that private management ipso facto is better than public. The Taylors themselves have furnished proof to the contrary, as have many greater and lesser names from Charles Hurwitz to the anonymous proprietors of any number of farms, ranches, and subdivisions throughout the nation.

If the free market were a silver bullet for wise stewardship of the land, we would never have had a Dust Bowl or Love Canal, and non-point-source pollution would occur only on public land. The good work of the authors toward transforming matters at the Taylor Ranch is an important story and deserves telling, but their ax-grinding obscures the story's essential message: that shared good will and willingness to adapt can improve any management situation, public or private.

William deBuys
Santa Fe, NM

Tom Wolf and Karl Hess Jr. reply: Whether in life or in politics, there are no panaceas. Neither private nor federal ownership guarantees good conservation. However, the right incentives and institutions make private land a more promising setting today, especially when private lands can lead to better management of adjacent public lands, as they do in northern Colorado's Owl Mountain Partnership.

A century ago, the federalization of public lands may have been the right solution to an unregulated tragedy of the commons. But today, when conflicting political agendas and value systems gridlock management of our public lands, we look to private and communal lands for innovations, especially ones that are market-based. Mr. deBuys is correct that private landowners have rights as well as duties, but he ignores how both government and local politicians conspired to restrict the property rights of the owners of the Taylor Ranch to the point that no market solutions were possible because no clear title existed. Recent events at the ranch show that such a stand off is not inevitable and that both the ranch owners and their neighbors can benefit if they respect each other's property rights and work to expand their share of common resources through market-based solutions.

The quest by Ms. Quintana's group for more local and private solutions to New Mexico's Baca Ranch may actually get some attention if a bill passes to fund acquisition of the ranch and put its management in the hands of a board that is more locally responsible. People unfamiliar with the history of New Mexico may forget that what are now "public" lands were often once part of Mexican and Spanish land grants. How those grant lands found their way into the public domain is a subject that Congress should perhaps look at. In the meantime, a federally funded buyout of the Baca Ranch may move us a step closer to local solutions.

Finally, we are proud to be putting our own theories into practice through a conservation effort we call The Long-Term Landholder Monitoring & Stewardship Project. This 10-year experiment will go a long way toward developing answers to critics like Mr. deBuys--and also perhaps satisfy the longings of those who, like Ms. Quintana, think that conservation is better served if it is part of a sustainable local economic and ecological effort.

Limited Market

Thank you for the informative and interesting article, "Truth, Terror, and David Trimble," by Michael McMenamin (October). I wish to clarify one point made, and that is that at no time since publishing The Committee: Political Assassination in Northern Ireland have we sold this book in the United Kingdom or Ireland.

Kalen Landow
Press Officer
Roberts Rinehart Publishers
Niwot, CO
[e-mail]

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