Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Salazar creates Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar established a conservation area in the San Luis Valley on Friday after billionaire Louis Bacon committed to protect more of his vast landholdings in southern Colorado. Salazar said the designation of the Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area marked a “glorious day for our nation, for the state of Colorado, for the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. … It is the spirit of Louis Bacon which allows us today to say that the southern Rockies are in fact a landscape of national significance and one that will be protected for generations to come.” Bacon, a hedge fund manager, is adding a conservation easement to protect nearly 77,000 acres of his 81,400-acre Trinchera Ranch from development. He announced plans in June to add a perpetual conservation easement on his 90,000-acre Blanca Ranch if the federal government moved ahead with plans to create a new 5 million-acre conservation corridor in Colorado and New Mexico. The Blanca Ranch easement is expected to be finalized later this year and, with the Trinchera land just south, will represent the largest easement donation ever to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It creates “a contiguous mosaic of privately held and publicly protected lands that will stay in perpetuity in creating one of the longest migratory wildlife corridors in America,” stretching from the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve to New Mexico, Bacon said...more

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