The state Land Office and New Mexico Land Conservancy announced Monday they’d entered into an agreement to protect more than 60,000 acres in southern New Mexico from future large developments for the next 75 years.
Under the agreement, known as a “conservation easement,” the New Mexico Land Conservancy will pay the State Land Office to protect a roughly 100-square-mile parcel of land in Socorro and Torrance counties known as Turkey Ridge. Early last year, the conservancy entered and the Land Office agreed to protect an adjacent, 60,000-acre parcel known as Chupadera Mesa.
The combined 120,000-acre parcel is the second biggest property protected by a conservation easement in New Mexico, according to the State Land Office. The largest is the Armendaris Ranch, owned by billionaire philanthropist Ted Turner, also in southern New Mexico.
Joey Keefe, a spokesperson for the State Land Office, told Source NM on Monday that the Conservancy will pay the Land Office roughly $3.2 million for the easement, an amount that represents how much the Land Office would have received had the property been leased to developers to construct large, obtrusive projects like wind turbines, for example, he said.
The funding will go toward New Mexico education and other public institutions, according to the Land Office.
The agreement does not affect existing grazing leases in the area, and it allows the nearby officials at the nearby White Sands Missile Range to continue testing and training missions nearby, according to a news release Monday from the State Land Office.
In a news release Monday, Brian Knight, the range’s Environmental Division chief, said the agreement safeguards “vital testing airspace while providing permanent protection for the cultural heritage and natural beauty of the Land of Enchantment.”
Keefe told Source NM on Monday that the agreement shows the benefit of allowing state or federal entities tasked with overseeing public lands to place conservation on an equal footing with oil and gas extraction as beneficial uses.
On a federal level, the Interior Department last September announced it intended to rescind the “Public Lands Rule,” which ensured conservation of public lands received due consideration along with mining, timber, grazing, recreation or other uses on federal public lands.
But in New Mexico, Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard continues to value conservation as one of many valid uses of state lands, Keefe said.
“It’s something that not a lot of states are doing,” he said. “It’s just kind of a cool approach to conserving state lands and ensuring that beneficiaries get some payment for it.”
