Taos groups hope for support from billionaire conservationist Bacon

In 2010, then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar’s office got a tip from a former staffer about a conservation opportunity in the San Luis Valley: A New York billionaire had bought 170,000 acres a few years back and was curious about keeping the property undeveloped. “[The staffer] told us he was very private and a Republican, but that he was a good guy,” said Ken Lane, a longtime adviser to Salazar. The Republican in question was Louis Bacon — a New York hedge fund manager and billionaire who has bought Taos Ski Valley from the Blake family, who founded the resort. With an estimated net worth of $1.4 billion, Bacon is No. 371 on Forbes magazine’s list of the richest people in America. He also is among the top 50 landowners in the country, owning an estimated 216,000 acres, according to The Land Report magazine. Hedge fund managers in the top 1 percent aren’t exactly popular these days. But Bacon has managed to garner a lot of positive press by donating conservation easements that limit development on enormous parcels he owns across the country. He also has gained the respect of organizations in rural communities by giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to local charities, schools and governments. Bacon’s purchase of Taos Ski Valley has many conservation and charitable groups in the area wondering if they can expect the same kind of support. In 2012, less than two years after Salazar’s office first met with Bacon, the billionaire donated 167,000 acres of the Blanca-Trinchera Ranch to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a conservation easement. The Trinchera-Blanca easements were key to establishing the 250,000-acre Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area — a patchwork of public and private land that runs from Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado to the Vermejo Ranch in Northern New Mexico. Bacon has donated similar easements for wildlife habitat and environmental protection in New York and North Carolina, all of which have given him a reputation as a dedicated conservationist...more