On EC Bar Ranch, Conservation Increases Profits
Posted: 24-Feb-2005; Updated: 12-Sep-2006
Jim Crosswhite's relentless hard work and passion for restoration have not only restored an impaired creek and upland pastures, but also created a beautiful landscape. The above native vegetation, including young willows that he planted, is part of his work. (Courtesy Jim Crosswhite)
Where the White Mountains rise above arid eastern Arizona, three miles outside the tiny town of Nutrioso and 15 miles from New Mexico, lies the EC Bar Ranch. And where conservation practices and ranching economics intersect, stands the ranch's owner, Jim Crosswhite. His goal is not only to restore an impaired creek and degraded pasturelands, but also to show that water quality and wildlife habitat improvement practices can boost income.
Rural Arizona needs success stories. Statewide, cattle inventory and sales declined between 1992 and 2002, and the drop was steeper in Apache County, where EC Bar Ranch is located. With less public land acreage available for grazing leases, ranchers crowd more cattle onto their own land, trying to eke out a profit. Meanwhile, drought bakes the land year after year and invasive species push out native plants, making water and forage even scarcer for both livestock and wildlife.
In 1996 Jim Crosswhite purchased 275 acres in Nutrioso Valley and named his new ranch for his parents, Eula and Ernest. The former international financier, commodity trader and adventure tour operator who had traveled to 70 countries was now a rancher, focusing on a smaller landscape, but bigger challenges.
Running through his new ranch was a two-mile stretch of Nutrioso Creek, part of seven stream miles that the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) classified as "impaired" due to turbidity. Most of the stream channel was rated "non-functional." Because the riparian vegetation had been eaten or trampled during decades of heavy use by livestock, elk and other wildlife desperate for food and water, most riparian wildlife was long gone, including the beavers that gave the creek its Indian name ("nutri"-beaver, "oso"-bear). Accelerated erosion, rising water temperatures and plunging aquatic oxygen levels imperiled its three species of native fish, including the federally threatened Little Colorado River spinedace (Lepidomeda vittata), a rare minnow. Every year, the 100-year-old earthen irrigation ditches lost up to 100 million gallons of water to seepage and evaporation during the five-month irrigation period.
Upland, the situation was worse. Forage quantity and plant composition declined during more than a century of unrestricted grazing. Invasive rabbitbrush, worthless as forage, dominated the pastures, which could, at best, support only about 50 head of cattle on 200 acres. Migrating elk herds from nearby Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest competed with livestock for scarce forage and water.
To deal with these problems, Crosswhite initiated several separate projects, supplementing his own financial outlay with grants and technical assistance from several state and federal agencies. He juggled projects, but remained focused on one overarching goal: restoring two interrelated components of the landscape, the impaired waters of Nutrioso Creek and the degraded upland pastures.
After decades of over-grazing, invasive rabbitbrush dominated these pastures. Crosswhite used state cost-share monies to treat his property (right of fence), which now produces 3,000 pounds of hay per acre. According to Crosswhite, forage production is only 300 pounds an acre on the untreated neighboring property to the left. (Courtesy Jim Crosswhite)
Eight years and an alphabet soup of agency acronyms later, Crosswhite has changed the landscape. A partial list of his achievements includes:
Using cost-share funds from Arizona's Stewardship Incentive Program, he installed riparian fencing to control livestock grazing at Nutrioso Creek. The fencing allowed continued access to the creek by wild antelope.
With partial funding from the Arizona Water Protection Fund and advice from Arizona Fish and Game on travel routes of area elk herds, he installed alternative water sources for wildlife and livestock.
To replace the inefficient, wasteful earthen ditch irrigation system, he installed conveyance pipe, a 250,000-gallon water storage tank, a diesel-powered water pump and a more efficient sprinkler irrigation system. By relying more on groundwater than surface water, he increased in-stream flows.
Crosswhite added stream grade stabilization structures to reduce water velocity and create floodplains in deeply gullied channel reaches. The ADEQ's Water Quality Improvement Grant Program (under the Clean Water Act) covered part of the cost. On-site assistance came from several beaver families, which built more than 15 dams.
He then re-vegetated the stream corridor by planting native grasses, 100 cottonwoods and 25,000 willows to reduce further the streambank erosion. The sprinkler system helps maintain riparian vegetation and livestock forage.
With matching funds from USDA's Environmental Quality Incentives Program, technical assistance from USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and seed and fertilizer supplied in part by the state Game and Fish Department, Crosswhite controlled and eradicated invasive rabbitbrush and re-seeded upland pastures with native grasses. The more substantial root mass of the grasses further slowed erosion.
With funding from several sources, including U.S. Fish & Wildlife's (FWS) Partners for Fish & Wildlife program, he further protected water quality and habitat improvements by installing additional riparian fencing, buffer strip fencing and elk proof fencing to control large ungulate activities.
Crosswhite purchased more Nutrioso Creek and buffer areas downstream, bringing a total of three stream miles under his conservation plan.
In 2003, he entered a Safe Harbor Agreement with FWS to benefit the Little Colorado River spinedace and the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher (Empidonax trailii extimus). With several agency grants, Crosswhite is planting thousands of riparian trees and shrubs, as well as native grasses. The Safe Harbor Agreement provides legal assurances that these habitat improvements will not increase his Endangered Species Act responsibilities. Although he has no plans to alter his use of the land, he can return to the 2003 baseline for woody plants if unforeseen circumstances arise.
Conservation has improved Crosswhite's bottom line in several ways. Some of the benefits include:
EC Bar Ranch's forage production in upland pastures has soared from 300 pounds an acre in 1996 to 3,000 pounds in irrigated upland pastures and 5,000 pounds in riparian pastures. Crosswhite uses an NRCS-recommended livestock management plan with rotational grazing of all pastures and dormant season-only use of riparian pastures.
By following an NRCS-recommended irrigation and nutrient management plan, he saves millions of gallons of water each year, much of which remains in the creek.
Rapidly growing willow pole cuttings can be sustainably harvested and sold to federal and state agencies for replanting in other riparian areas, the restoration of which Crosswhite sees as inevitable to ensure water quality for humans and protect wildlife.
Healthier wildlife populations offer other potential income sources, such as ecotourism aimed at the growing numbers of birdwatchers.
Ranch tours are part of Jim Crosswhite's conservation outreach. This group is learning how a livestock bridge, built with a state grant and Crosswhite's own funds, reduced erosion and turbidity in Nutrioso Creek. Cattle now cross without damaging the stream banks or vegetation. (Courtesy Jim Crosswhite)
Not all the payoff is economic. Crosswhite recounts a rewarding moment in 2003, when the ADEQ relocated the "reference reach" for Nutrioso Creek -- the stream section that the state uses as a model for desirable water quality -- to Reach 3 on his ranch. Transforming a hydrologically non-functional stream section into the designated water quality example reaffirmed for Crosswhite the need to restore and protect it for the well-being of both humans and wildlife. Once again, Nutrioso Creek is a perennial stream on the ranch, even in recent drought years when it's dry upstream and downstream.
Crosswhite says that successful use of grant programs has been key to his achievements. Estimating that he's worked with 50 agency staff to date, he avows that he's never met one not "dedicated to their job -- helpful, cooperative and supportive." He says technical assistance was "critical," and what he learned from NRCS, consultants, contractors and writing grants has been "similar to receiving a Ph.D in conservation practice."
Crosswhite's restoration work doesn't stop at his ranch boundaries. Outreach is one of 14 conservation practices detailed on his extensive web site. He encourages other landowners to use state and federal programs to help conserve natural resources, leads group tours of his ranch, talks extensively with media and participates in a local watershed group.
And Jim Crosswhite isn't done yet. His response to a life-threatening blood clot Thanksgiving 2003 was to resume work at a harder, faster pace. He's eyeing USDA's new Conservation Security Program, under which he expects to someday qualify for Tier III payments -- the highest level -- which reward longterm conservation practices. He is working on a conservation easement that will permanently protect Nutrioso Creek from real estate development, as he continues to restore even more riparian areas.
To learn more about Jim Crosswhite's conservation work, see his web site at www.ecbarranch.com/.
Margaret McMillan
Endangered Species Specialist
Center for Conservation Incentives
Environmental Defense
