None The Nature Conservancy in Colorado Press Releases Search All Press Releases Mallory Dimmit Phone: (970) 728-5291 Email: mdimmit@tnc.org

Landowners Donate Conservation Easement in Disappointment Valley

Property is habitat for imperiled Gunnison Sage Grouse

Durango, Colorado—24 November 2003—Two landowners in the Disappointment Valley have very generously donated conservation easements on their lands in Dolores County to The Nature Conservancy. Last year, Pete Skartvedt and Anne Rilling purchased a 360-acre parcel in Disappointment Valley which already had a conservation easement on it. Their recent donation will protect an additional 640 acres. Also, Bitten Skartvedt and Charles Schwaebe put an easement on the 160-acre Valley Hunting Lodge property located in the Valley. These easements cover a large part of the private land in Upper Disappointment Valley and a lengthy stretch of Disappointment Creek, which is an important tributary to the Dolores River. Both parcels are bordered by public lands to the north and the south and thus are key to eliminating fragmentation of a large conservation area which provides habitat for Gunnison prairie dogs, wintering bald eagles and also globally significant plant communities including sagebrush and greasewood shrublands and pinon juniper woodlands.

The Nature Conservancy has a detailed action plan for the Southern Rocky Mountains to ensure protection of the plants, animals and natural communities that make a place unique. This plan directs where to work, what actions to take on the ground, with whom we work and criteria to measure conservation success – all with science-based priorities and considering the needs of the local communities. Through this planning process, these parcels have been identified as critical and irreplaceable and threatened by altered fire and hydrologic regimes and energy development.

"The Skartvedt families have been wonderful partners," said Mallory Dimmitt, the Conservancy’s San Miguel and Dolores Rivers project director. "Their commitment to conservation and their generosity will certainly help our conservation efforts in southwest Colorado."

A conservation easement is a legal agreement voluntarily negotiated between a private landowner and a land trust. Through this agreement, the landowner extinguishes certain property rights, in order to protect habitat, open space and other values important to the land owner and the land trust. Specific rights retained by the landowner or limited by an easement vary with each property.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading international, nonprofit organization that preserves plants, animals and natural communities representing the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 101 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. In Colorado, working with local communities and partners, close to 600,000 acres have been protected. Visit us on the Web at nature.org/colorado.