By Anya Kaats.
When Susan Pierce-Platais moved to the San Luis Valley (SLV) in 1996, she was eager to use her experience and background in nature conservation to help protect the Valley’s natural resources. A few years later, Pierce-Platais along with like-minded friends including Cathy McNeil, Christine Canaly, and Karen Henderson established The Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust (RiGHT) to help landowners protect and preserve their land through sustainable and regenerative management. Pierce-Platais currently serves as RiGHT’s executive director.
“When I moved here, I approached The Nature Conservancy to ask what was most needed in the area in terms of conservation, and they said that people were coming to them with lands that they wanted to preserve, but which didn’t qualify for The Nature Conservancy’s protection,” Pierce-Platais explained. Without lands meeting specific criteria, like having endangered species, The Nature Conservancy couldn’t step in to protect property that otherwise still deserved to be protected.
Hoping to fill the gap within existing conservation efforts, Pierce-Platais, McNeil, Henderson, and Canaly spent some time educating themselves about land trusts, going to conferences, and speaking to local landowners, before founding the land trust in 1997 and officially becoming accredited in 1999. Twenty-five years later, RiGHT now protects 32,000 acres across the SLV through 57 conservation easements.
Land trusts help landowners protect private land, similar to how federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife protect and conserve public areas. Through various conservation easements, RiGHT helps protect land in perpetuity, even if the current owner decides to sell their property later. The conservation easements that RiGHT helps secure for landowners stay with their land indefinitely, helping protect it from any risk of residential development, subdivision, surface mining, or changes to water rights and native habitat.
While about 95% of RiGHT’s conservation easements protect working agricultural lands such as ranches and farms, non-working lands that feature scenic, recreational or educational value, wildlife habitat, wetland, or riparian zone also qualify. RiGHT considers water preservation and the restoration of local wetlands and riparian zones to be a priority.
Before RiGHT, local property owners were struggling to pass their land on to the next generation due to inflated taxes that valued their property not on the agricultural value they were using it for, but on the value if it were subdivided and developed.
By placing a conservation easement on their property, landowners can receive up to 90% of the difference in value between the land encumbered with a conservation easement (without development rights) and the value based on subdividing and developing the land. RiGHT raises funds via grants, donations, and other fundraising efforts to compensate landowners and help with transaction costs.
“Colorado has one of the best incentive programs for conservation easements in the nation.
“Land is really important to people here, whether they hunt, fish, hike, or just enjoy the outdoors,” Pierce-Platais explained. While RiGHT primarily works to help protect privately-owned land, they have also helped spearhead projects to foster resilient communities and protect historical and cultural heritage, working cooperatively with other organizations and agencies like the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council, Great Outdoors Colorado, Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project, the Colorado Department of Public Health, and the Sangre de Cristo National Heritage Area.
In recent years, in addition to helping landowners secure conservation easements, RiGHT has also helped to develop an ecological restoration program, helping owners enhance their land through stabilizing eroding streambanks, improving water delivery, planting trees, spreading native seed mixes, and fencing off sensitive habitat areas. In addition to protection, land restoration has also become a priority for RiGHT in “responding to water shortages and shifts in climate patterns.”
During the pandemic, RiGHT expanded their reach even further by helping to develop a program called the Local Farms to Local Families program, which helped connect SLV agricultural producers with local citizens to provide food security during Covid. With the help of the High Valley Community Center, Boys and Girls Club of the San Luis Valley, Windsor Hotel and Restaurant, Valley Roots Food Hub, local agricultural producers, and funding from individual donors and foundations, RiGHT was able to help supply 1,000 families with meals during the pandemic, all supported by local businesses, farmers, and ranchers.
While other land trusts work in and around the Valley, RiGHT is the only land trust that works exclusively in the SLV, serving all six counties. As a result of their focus on the Valley, RiGHT’s perspective is comprehensive and considers the collective features and diversity of the region overall, which includes staying informed about local water usage, preservation, legislation, and any proposal aimed at exporting SLV groundwater elsewhere.
RiGHT’s staff regularly attend the Rio Grande Basin Roundtables every month to stay up to date about the latest news related to water preservation in the Valley. “We feel really strongly about making sure the San Luis Valley
is able to keep its water sources for local use. We’re already over-allocated here, and propositions to send our water to other basins, or to the Front Range when we’re already so stretched, is a huge risk to the health of the land and the communities and wildlife that rely on a healthy ecosystem,” Platais-Pierce explained. “A lot of the work we do comes back to water.”
In May 2022, the Colorado Legislature passed Senate Bill 22-028, also known as the Groundwater Compact Compliance Fund, which allocated $60 million to retire 40,000 irrigated acres by 2029 in the Republican and Rio Grande basins to help them comply with interstate river compacts.
If a voluntary reduction isn’t reached by 2029, the state may need to resort to issuing mandatory reductions. In an area that is already over-allocated in water usage, this presents a challenge.
“These compacts were made many years ago when they never dreamed there’d be this many people living along the river, and this much demand for local water,” Pierce-Platais explained. “Often when you dry up land, it doesn’t necessarily re-vegetate in a desirable way. Without proper management, dried up land can produce dust bowl-like conditions, and attract invasive species,” she said. “We don’t like to see working or productive lands dried up, but it’s clear that we need to figure out how to reduce our water usage overall, and improve sustainability.”
Pierce-Platais emphasized the importance of supporting the preservation of working lands, as they are often home to wildlife and ecosystems vital to the overall ecological and economic health of the SLV. “Most of us can find common ground in what we value and hold dear about living here, and protecting local working lands benefits the whole community” Pierce-Platais added.
RiGHT’s office is located in Del Norte and welcomes visitors. Their team consists of Laura Cusick, land protection director, Matthew Peterson, stewardship director, Joe Sims, ecological restoration director, Sandra Aloisi, office assistant, and Pierce-Platais. The Rio Grande Headwaters Trust is always looking for donations and for volunteers to help with events and marketing, in addition to grant writing, plus assisting the team in going out in the field to monitor current and future easements.
To learn more about the RiGHT and to support their work, visit: www.riograndelandtrust.org.