SAN LUIS VALLEY— 2019 marks the Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust’s (RiGHT) 20th anniversary.
It has been an amazing 20 years, and it all started with the germination of an idea by RiGHT founder Cathy McNeil. Twenty years ago there was a major effort going on to take water out of the San Luis Valley by a group called American Water Development Inc. (AWDI). It was a true David vs. Goliath story and people in the Valley rallied together and fought and won that fight, and it got Cathy thinking about how the Valley could protect its water. One of the tools that was emerging at that time were conservation easements, which tie water rights to the land when a conservation easement is completed with a landowner. So Cathy McNeil got together with some other forces in the Valley at that time, Karen Henderson, Christine Canaly and Susan Pierce and together they dreamed up RiGHT.
The Valley still has serious water issues facing the San Luis Valley and more recently another attempt from an outside group to export water out of the Valley, but what residents have been able to accomplish in the last 20 years has been a testament to the community, founders, board members, donors and funders and staff.
RiGHT’s very first conservation easement was in 2001 and protected the 220-acre Clark Ranch southeast of Monte Vista next to the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge. At the time there were fewer than 10 conservation easements held by other organizations in the whole Valley, so making this commitment to a new program was a big leap of faith. This ranch continues to be a shining example of conservation and what it can achieve.
To date, RiGHT has worked on over 43 projects and protected over 26,000 acres in the Valley, with much of that work occurring along the Rio Grande and Conejos rivers as part of the successful Rio Grande Initiative. The Rio Grande Initiative began in 2007 as a landscape scale effort to protect as much intact private land and water along the Rio Grande river corridor and its major tributaries in the San Luis Valley as possible. As the Valley’s lifeblood, the Rio Grande is pivotal for the conservation of agriculture, wildlife habitat, and the Valley way of life. Conserving these river corridors allows RiGHT to get more “bang for our buck”, since it is conserving sizeable ranches and their associated senior water rights, wildlife habitat, and scenic landscapes.
Equally as important to number of projects and acres, is the 6,581 acres of wetlands RiGHT has protected, which only occur on 3 percent of the land base, but support 75 percent of the wildlife in the Valley. Just as what got RiGHT started, it is protecting water rights, which continues to be a major focus. It’s the families RiGHT has worked with to help protect their family ranches, the Kester’s, Garcia’s, Knoblauch’s, Garcia’s, Espinosa’s and so many others. It is the ranching heritage the organization is helping to preserve through this work, and it is the community, whether they own a ranch or not, who cares about protecting the special places in this amazing landscape. And it is about passing all this down to future generations.
RiGHT is excited to look back on what it has accomplished and equally as excited to embark on the next 20 years.

Nancy Butler is conservation manager and longtime executive director of RiGHT.