Rancher-Led Grassbanking to Save the Borderlands' Open Range

Formed in 1994 by ranching families straddling the Arizona-New Mexico-Sonora-Chihuahua border, the Malpai Borderlands Group pioneered grassbanking: ranchers place a conservation easement on their own land in exchange for the right to graze cattle on a shared "bank" ranch while their home pastures rest and recover from drought. The model has protected tens of thousands of acres from subdivision while keeping working cattle ranches — and the wildlife habitat they underpin — economically viable. Members have also hand-built thousands of erosion-control structures in eroded arroyos to slow water, rebuild grassland soils and reverse a legacy of overgrazing and fire suppression. The grassbanking concept the group invented has since been replicated at more than a dozen sites across the western United States.