RODEO, N.M. — When ranchers and environmentalists were fighting each other over the future of Western rangeland a generation ago, a group of families here along the U.S.-Mexico border joined to seek a middle path.
They founded the Malpai Borderlands Group, working with big-money foundations to put conservation easements on tens of thousands of acres. The agreements protected critical desert habitats from development and industry while providing tax breaks to allow traditional ranching to continue. The model was hailed as a breakthrough.
William McDonald, a fifth-generation Arizona cattleman who led the effort, received a MacArthur “genius grant” in 1998 that cited his “efforts to create ecologically responsible cooperation among government regulatory agencies, conservationists, scientists, and commercial ranchers in the West.”
Today, a few miles from the site where bulldozers and excavators are building President Trump’s border wall, McDonald, 67, said he feels defeated, and filled with regret. Decades of political wrangling and consensus-building — his life’s work — are being flattened.
