| To this day, rancher
Jim Williams is not entirely sure what motivated him
to raise his hand.
He'll admit that a combination of
curiosity and desperation caused him to attend a small
gathering in Pie Town, N.M., in June 1998 to hear
a presentation on progressive ranching from The Quivira
Coalition, a nonprofit based in, of all places, Santa
Fe.
"I wanted to know what those 'greenies'
had to say to us down here in Catron County,"
Williams recalled with his easy smile. "My curiosity
got the best of me."
"I'm a 'show me'
– Jim Williams,
Catron County rancher
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The meeting had been organized by three
local women who despaired over the social and economic
cost that constant conflict had brought to their communities.
Over the years, Catron County had gained a notorious
reputation as a hotbed of anti-federal, anti-environmental,
anti-everything (it seemed) emotions – attitudes
the women considered to be an ultimated dead-end.
They were looking for another way.
So were Jim and Joy Williams, but for a
different reason. The Williams Ranch was in trouble.
In 1995, the Forest Service reviewed the
Williams' grazing allotment and decided to cut
the number of permitted cattle they could run on the
forest. It was the first time the permit had been cut
in the lifetimes of Jim OR his father, Frank, who had
assembled the ranch, located a few miles south of Quemado,
back in the 1940s.
"It wasn't the cut so much that
bothered me as the choices they gave me," said
Williams. "They only gave me two: a straight reduction
in numbers, or less time on the forest. There was no
flexibility in management or anything. It was their
way or the highway."
As is too common these days in the West,
communication, and trust, had broken down.
Williams took the option of less time on
the forest, which had the consequence of causing him
to graze his private ground too hard. Angered, he joined
a class action lawsuit against the Forest Service. He
also closely tracked another court case, this one brought
by environmentalists upset at the government over cattle
grazing on public land.
"I thought the only answer was to
fight," Williams recalled. "Well, we lost
both of those cases, and so I thought that was pretty
much the end of everything."
One Ranch
Financially struggling, and with their up-and-down
relationship with the Forest Service at an all-time
low, the Williams family, the last full-time ranchers
in the Quemado area, began to seriously contemplate
the one option that remained: accept the offer of a
subdivider to buy their private land.
Instead, Jim Williams raised his hand at
the end of the meeting in Pie Town. If nothing else,
he was willing to keep listening.
Two months later, he invited representatives
of the Quivira Coalition for a tour of his ranch,
and
liked what he heard in their message of land health,
progressive ranch management, and collaboration. When
the Catron County manager, who was also on the tour,
took Williams aside to talk him out of cooperating,
Williams ordered the manager off his land.
There was something new in the air in Catron
County.
If Jim and Joy were willing to try something
new, so was John Pierson, the new Forest Service range
conservationist on the district. Born and raised in
rural New Mexico, with family roots in private and
public
lands ranching, John began his career with the Forest
Service in 1988 as a biologist on the Cibola National
Forest. He transferred to the Kiowa National Grasslands
where he gained valuable experience in planned grazing
methods, fire and watershed management, and wildlife
protection.
He also picked up law enforcement training
along the way, an important skill to have in Catron
County, where a few years earlier the county commission
had passed an ordinance requiring all citizens to carry
a sidearm.
The third member of the team was Kirk Gadzia,
a well-respected ranch consultant and holistic management
educator from Bernalillo, N.M. Gadzia brought extensive
experience from around the West (and around the world)
in designing and implementing progressive ranching
programs to the table – literally Jim and Joy's
kitchen table.
Before they sat down to talk, however, the
first thing the team did was put the Williams Ranch
on a map. By pinning topographic maps to a large sheet
of plywood, Jim Williams had, for the first time in
his life, a birds-eye view of his whole ranch, which
is half public and half private.
Through a series of conversations, Williams,
Pierson, and Gadzia set goals for the ranch and began
to sketch out a new plan of cattle management. Using
existing fences and natural boundaries, they divided
the ranch into smaller pastures and planned rapid moves
of cattle through them. One of the key objectives was
to decrease the amount of time cattle spent on "cool"
season grasses (spring and fall), which the Forest Service
considered to have been hit hard over the years.
The moves were carefully plotted on a chart.
"The idea was to give Jim much tighter control
of the timing and intensity of the animals on the land
and to give the plants sufficient recovery time,"
said Gadzia, "while also ensuring enough flexibility
to make adjustments as conditions require."
"It worked," said Pierson of
the strategy. "The public land under Jim's
care has steadily improved through one of the worst
droughts in memory."
The key was communication. "By talking
we realized we weren't so far apart," said
Pierson. "There'll always be disagreements,
but Jim and I respect each other, and we're keeping
in mind what's best for the ground. Putting the
ranch together as one unit really helped. It helped
the Forest Service, it helped Jim, and it helped the
land."
Looking For Hawks
With good communication came greater trust,
which had the collateral effect of opening new opportunities.
The Williamses began to host tours and workshops on
the ranch, which were well-attended, and they took
advantage
of Quivira educational activities around the state.
And as trust grew, relationships were strengthened –
slowly.
"The trouble with trust is that it
takes patience," said Pierson. "And that's
hard today because we're kind of an impatient
society. But letting things develop is the real key
to success."
In an example of trust-building, the Williamses
opened their private land for a major riparian restoration
project in 2001. Directed by Bill Zeedyk, and manned
by numerous "greenie" volunteers from Santa
Fe and Albuquerque, the project focused on restoring
ecological function to degraded stretches of Largo
and Loco creeks through a low-tech, low-cost strategy
Zeedyk
created called "Induced Meandering."
Jim and Joy Williams didn't have to
do it. There was no financial incentive for them to
get involved in a restoration project – it may
have even cost him money, in time and labor. The
didn't
have to let Hawks Aloft, a nonprofit group hired by
The Quivira Coalition to do avian monitoring on Largo
Creek, on their private land, either. After all, who
knew what they would find?
But they welcomed them. It wasn't
just a matter of trust - Jim and Joy had become eager
learners.
"I'm a 'show me'
kind of guy, so I was skeptical at first," said
Williams, "but Kirk and Bill's ideas worked.
It was just a whole new way of looking at the ranch,
and I liked what I saw."
He was having fun too. In fact, Jim Williams
was so impressed by the folks from Hawks Aloft that
he joined them on their surveys.
"I got a real kick out of looking
for ferruginous hawks on my place," Williams
said, referring to an elusive and sensitive species.
That's probably not something a Catron
County rancher would have said a few years ago.
Benefits of Trust
Through all the changes, Jim, John and Kirk
enjoyed the strong and steady support of the Forest
Service. Again, the key was better communication.
"We're not good communicators,"
said Janice Stevenson, Quemado District Ranger. "Most
folks in the Forest Service are natural introverts,
that's why we go into natural resources in the
first place. But this is changing."
"It wasn't the cut so much
For Steve Libby, whose tenure as Resources
Staff Officer for the Gila National Forest stretches
back to the "bad old days" of the lawsuits,
the biggest lesson learned on the Williams Ranch was
how to do a better job of understanding each other's
needs.
"Through the work of Quivira and Kirk,
we gained a better understanding of Jim's concerns,"
said Libby, "including his worry that we were
out to ruin him, which wasn't the case. By working
together we learned a lot about each other's motivations."
"We all learned we need to be more
flexible, in management, in what we do on the ground,
and in our relationships," he said. "By
working together we do more than by acting independently."
"It's been great to work with
Jim," said Stevenson. "He sees the positive
in things, and is willing to take action. Jim has
been
a big help on the district. He's been the voice
of reason at many meetings."
Dave Stewart, the "range boss"
for the Forest Service's contentious Region III,
which includes all the forests in Arizona and New Mexico,
echoes their observations.
"We're starting to see more
situations like we have in Quemado, where people are
willing to talk and try different things," said
Stewart. "It's encouraging and a hopeful
sign for the future."
For his part, Jim Williams thinks the changes
have been positive, too, though the severe drought
set
him back economically.
"I'm still here," he said,
smiling again, "and I guess that counts for something
these days."
Williams also maintains a bit of skepticism
– a product, he will admit, of a long and rocky
relationship with his federal neighbor. But for now,
he's happy.
"The best thing that came out of this
was reestablishing a good relationship with the Forest
Service," he said. "And that means a lot
to me."
John Pierson's role in the improvement
of the land and the re-establishment of trust on the
district was acknowledged in 2002 when he won the Forest
Service's national Chief's Award
for Outstanding Achievement in Rangeland Management.
Pierson thinks it was a team effort.
"The best part of working with Jim
and Joy is that our families have become good friends,"
said Pierson. "It's been an honor and a
pleasure to work with them."
That's not something a Forest Service
employee in Catron County might have said a few years
ago, either.
Although he's still not sure why he
raised his hand at that meeting in Pie Town all those
years ago, Jim Williams is glad he did.
"We all learned something new,"
said Williams. "We learned what can happen when
you stop fighting and start listening."
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Courtney White writes