We are a GRASSROOTS, landowner-driven nonprofit organization attempting to implement ecosystem management on nearly one million acres of virtually unfragmented open-space landscape in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.

     Our goal is to restore and maintain the natural processes that create and protect a healthy, unfragmented landscape to support a diverse, flourishing community of human, plant and animal life in our borderlands region.

      Together, we will accomplish this by working to encourage profitable ranching and other traditional livelihoods, which will sustain the open space nature of our land for generations to come.

The Malpai Borderlands area (click here for map) includes the San Bernardino Valley, the Peloncillo Mountains, the Animas Valley and the Animas Mountains. It is roughly pyramid shaped, with the base of the pyramid beginning just east of Douglas, Arizona along the Mexican Border to just west of Antelope Wells, New Mexico. The apex is just south of Animas, New Mexico.

With elevations ranging from 3500 to 8500 feet, the Malpai is a diverse area of mountains, canyons, valleys and riparian corridors. Several rare, threatened, and endangered plant and animal species are found here. It is the only place in the U.S. where Gould's turkey and white-sided jackrabbits occur naturally. It is also home to popular big-game species such as Coues deer, mule deer, pronghorn and Desert Bighorn sheep.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this huge landscape is that fewer than 100 human families reside on it. Many of the families who live here have been here for generations. Except for two small wildlife preserves, this is cattle ranching country. As ranchers, we have been concerned about a key resource we depend on for our livelihoods and way of life - the diminishing quality of grasslands for grazing. Fragmentation of the landscape, beginning with the subdivision of some ranches in our area, has also been a looming threat.

We formed a nonprofit organization to bring ranchers, scientists, and key agencies together, and today the Malpai Borderlands Group now carries out a series of conservation programs and activities, including land restoration; endangered species habitat protection; cost-sharing range and ranch improvements; and land conservation projects.

We invite you to explore our website and learn more about our efforts.

Over the past eight months the Malpai Borderlands Group has worked with the Cloudt family to complete two important conservation projects on their ranch: 1) permanently protecting the ranch from subdivision with a conservation easement and 2) replacing over 8 miles of old hazardous livestock boundary fence with new all-steel "wildlife-friendly" fence.

The Cloudt Ranch lies south of Rodeo, New Mexico in the San Simon Valley and straddles the New Mexico/Arizona line. Part of the ranch runs up into the Peloncillo Mountains. Over the years, the family has worked very hard to return the ranch to a healthy grassland state. At the same time, they have watched in dismay as acreage around them was sold into subdivision. The ranch owns frontage property along Highway 80 and contains an irrigation well. It would have made an ideal target for subdivision, but the Cloudts had other ideas. The family first approached the Malpai Borderlands Group about protecting the ranch in 2002. The Malpai Group and the Cloudts began the process by getting an appraisal of the property's development value and negotiating the terms of the conservation easement. Just prior to closing, however, the Cloudts were informed by their accountant that accepting payment for the easement would violate terms of an estate agreement made with the Internal Revenue Service four years previous which prohibited them from accepting non-agricultural income from the ranch for another six years. The purpose of the agreement was to keep the ranch in agriculture, which, ironically, is what the easement would have done (only permanently). The Cloudts than retained the services of a tax attorney who drew up an agreement that allowed the Malpai Borderlands Group to purchase an option to buy the easement