Tuesday, 2 June 1998Douglas rancher-conservationist earns MacArthur `genius' prize
A Douglas rancher who helped found a conservation-minded group to protect 1 million acres was recognized yesterday as one of 29 new MacArthur fellows nationwide. William McDonald is the first rancher to win the prestigious fellowship, often awarded to university scholars and called a "genius grant" for its emphasis on unique and world-altering ideas. He will receive $285,000 over five years - no strings attached - from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. "This is a guy who's able to bring together other people around a common cause in a very productive and effective way," said foundation spokesman Ted Hearne said. "He's able to bring conservationists and ranchers together and put 'em all in a cage and not kill each other. "He's really a very spectacular guy." McDonald, 46, is a fifth-generation Arizona rancher who wears blue jeans to work and delivers speeches to the National Academy of Sciences. He helped found the Malpai Borderlands Group to preserve about a million acres of land in southeastern Arizona and western New Mexico. "We live in an area of practically unfragmented open space," McDonald said from his family's Sycamore Ranch, about 20,000 acres of cattle ranch that lie 30 miles east of Douglas. "We were concerned about the future of the land - development, that kind of thing moving in." As it turns out, environmentalists worried about the same thing. But tradition puts conservation and ranching on opposite sides in the battle for open space. McDonald threw tradition to the wind. "Bill really went out on a limb to try to work with people that historically were not working together," said Wendy Glenn, who with her husband, Warner, owns the Malpai ranch that provided the name and original meeting place for the group. Ranchers and a few friends from the environmentalist community started meeting informally in 1992 to discuss open space and conservation issues. Slowly, McDonald and others started including representatives from the scientific and government communities - eventually attaining non-profit status in 1994. McDonald calls it "building the radical center." "We were all, as it turned out, very concerned about the same thing," he said. "We are able to work together to try to accomplish something, rather than simply (allowing) gridlock and waiting for forces beyond our control to define the future of the area." Today, the organization is credited with reintroducing controlled burning to preserve the ecosystem - even in areas where multiple landowners required complex public-private agreements across state lines. It is responsible for starting a "grass banking" program that allows ranchers fighting drought to graze their herd on New Mexico's Gray Ranch, in exchange for transferring their development rights to the ranch's non-profit owners. McDonald "really stepped forward and tried to come up with a different way of moving through these polarized issues," said group member John Cook. " Cook is a national vice president for the Nature Conservancy and co-director of the Malpai group. In part, the rancher-turned-negotiator credits his political science degree from Arizona State University for his training. ``I actually thought I might be an attorney when I started (college), but I looked around and there seemed to be plenty of them out there," McDonald said. But the degree ``has served me well in ranching, because there are a lot of issues involving politics and law, amazingly enough." Turning foes into friends on such issues has become a McDonald hallmark. ``He has a wonderful ability to bring people together and reduce contention," said Malpai member Raymond Turner. Turner is a retired U.S. Geological Survey botanist and Malpai board member who has studied Sonoran vegetation for more than 30 years. McDonald said he hopes to use part of his new award to expand the Malpai group's programs. And others predicted the additional publicity and prestige of the fellowship will only further the group's reach. "I see some indications that this idea of collaboration is spreading all over the West," said Larry Allen, a U.S. Forest Service employee who works with the Malpai organization. "The spirit of cooperation and collaboration works better than fighting, and you have to be willing to compromise," Allen said. "Bill is a guy that figured that out."
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Tuesday, 2 June 1998