RODEO, N.M. — When ranchers and environmentalists were fighting each other over the future of western rangeland a generation ago, a group of families here along the U.S.-Mexico border joined to seek a middle path.
They founded the Malpai Borderlands Group, working with big-money foundations to put conservation easements on tens of thousands of acres. The agreements protected critical desert habitats from development and industry while providing tax breaks to allow traditional ranching to continue. The model was hailed as a breakthrough.
William McDonald, a fifth-generation Arizona cattleman who led the effort, received a MacArthur “Genius Grant” in 1998, citing “his leading efforts to create ecologically responsible cooperation among government regulatory agencies, conservationists, scientists, and commercial ranchers in the West.”
Today, a few miles from the site where bulldozers and excavators are building President Trump’s border wall, McDonald, 67, said he feels defeated, and filled with regret. Decades of political wrangling and consensus-building — his life’s work — are being flattened.
“I feel like I’ve let down the generations to come, because we’re going to have that ugly scar out here,” McDonald said. “It just makes me sick.” Though Trump often has depicted border residents as the biggest beneficiaries of his signature project, the arrival of construction crews and heavy equipment to this region has brought mostly bitterness and resignation. Trump’s barrier is turning longtime friends against each other and is dramatically — and perhaps permanently — altering one of the wildest and most storied areas of the American West. The Malpai founders, several of whom are conservative Republicans like McDonald, insist they continue to support strong border security, pointing out their many years of close cooperation with the U.S. Border Patrol to report illegal activity and grant access to their properties.
What they oppose is the decision to put the massive steel barrier here, where they say it is unnecessary, wasteful and destructive. Border Patrol officials argue that the new fencing will safeguard the country for decades to come, but many of the ranching families who live here — and who have spent their lives trying to strike a balance between wildlife and cattle, tradition and regulation — say they have been pushed aside...After Krentz, 58, was found slumped in his four-wheeler with gunshot wounds, Glenn and a neighboring rancher tracked a single set of footprints southbound toward Mexico through a wash. They stopped where the footprints crossed the border. Krentz’s attacker was never found. His son, Frank Krentz, still raises cattle on the family homestead where
his father was killed. He is one of the few Malpai ranchers who support
Trump’s plan to build the wall here. Now 37, Krentz said he grew up riding horses and running all over the mountains, describing his childhood as a time of total freedom. That world was lost with his father’s killing, he said, and it is something that he said his children will never experience.
Krentz acknowledged that there have been tensions among the Malpai families about the border wall, but he said other members are respectful of his views. He said he agrees with the critics who say the barrier will not stop determined border-crossers from getting through, but he said it will be worthwhile if it brings a degree of security and peace of mind.
“The Malpai are trying to keep open spaces, but open spaces are a view-scape,” Krentz said. “Why should citizens be scared because one tool wasn’t used?”...
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