Summary
Management of Taylor Ranch near San Luis, Colorado
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Extract
TREASURE OF LA SIERRA.
Colorado's embattled Taylor Ranch is the West writ small. Here's how capitalism may conserve it.
One night in 1975, a hail of lead tore through Jack Taylor's home on his ranch on the Rio Culebra, near the town of San Luis, just north of the Colorado - New Mexico border. One bullet shattered his ankle. Years later, arsonists set fire to his house; only a scorched chimney remains today. More recently, protesters chained themselves to the Taylor Ranch's gates and proclaimed a new war against logging on private land. And earlier this year, Costilla County unsuccessfully attempted to enjoin Jack's son Zack from logging even one more tree. For a generation, the Taylor Ranch has been embroiled in what The New York Times calls "the hottest environmental dispute in the Rockies." It is a war for the ranch's resources, a battle between outsiders from North Carolina and a long-established Hispanic community. The stakes are high: herds of elk and bighorn sheep, millions of board-feet of spruce and fir, and enough water to irrigate hundreds of square miles. This isn't the only struggle over natural resources in the West. But the Taylor Ranch is different: It's privately owned. While nearby federal lands become the battlegrounds of intense wars over a shrinking resource pie, the Taylors' innovative ranch is trying to use property righ...See the full content of this document
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