SALT LAKE CITY -- Nearly 900,000 acres of land on two ranches between the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and the Utah border were purchased by the Grand Canyon Trust and Conservation Fund Wednesday in an effort to preserve wildlife habitat, open spaces and cattle grazing land.
The $4.5 million purchase will include 1,000 acres of deeded land and 850,000 acres in grazing allotments managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service and the Arizona State Land Department.
The Kane and Two Mile ranches lie about two miles northwest of Grand Canyon National Park's Marble Canyon Section and 25 miles north of the park's North Rim. It is just west of northern Arizona's Vermillion Cliffs National Monument.
"The purchase of the Kane and Two Mile ranches demonstrates one of the most important and innovated public-private conservation efforts of our time," Mike Ford, the Conservation Fund's Nevada and Southwest director, said in a statement.
The purchase from the Kane Ranch Land Stewardship and Cattle Co. got a boost last April from a $1 million donation from Wal-Mart, which identified the ranches as a "priority wildlife habitat" and one of six projects it donated to as part of a $35 million partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The purchase was finalized Wednesday.
The Conservation Fund raised $3.5 million toward the purchase. The Grand Canyon Trust raised $1.5 million and will manage the property as a working cattle ranch.
"There are a lot of potential opportunities to work with them," said David Boyd, spokesman for the BLM's Arizona Strip District Office. "But because there have been some concerns, we want to emphasize that these allotments will continue to be grazed. They won't be taken out of circulation.
"But it's certainly a new era for these (conservation) groups. They're in the cattle business now."
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D4.
