In the mid-1990s, Harold Schafer, who had already put most of his fortune into the restoration of Medora, spent much of what he had left to buy a ranch near Medora. This was no ordinary ranch. It consisted of about 2,500 acres of grassland, and along with the ranch came the right to lease an additional 2,500 acres of National Grasslands from the U.S. Forest Service. Harold had no intention of becoming an active rancher. He was more than 80 years old at the time.
The reason the ranch was so special is that it was the gateway to Medora from the east, where most of the Medora visitors came from. The ranch consisted of a six mile long corridor of land, adjacent to the south side of Interstate 94, varying in width from half a mile to a mile and a half. If you’ve been to Medora, you will know it as all the land on the south side of I-94 between the Painted Canyon Rest Area and the city of Medora. Harold leased the land, which became known as the Schafer Ranch, to a local rancher, who ran cattle on it. In 1999, he gifted it to the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation. The Foundation continued to lease it to the local rancher. The Foundation, which operates the Medora attractions, is a non-profit 501 ( C ) ( 3 ) corporation. In North Dakota, corporations are not allowed to own farmland. If corporations are given farmland as a gift, they must dispose of it in 10 years. In 2009, as the 10-year limit approached, the Foundation was able to find a conservation buyer for the land, a wealthy individual who bought it and continued to lease it to the same rancher.
The point of all this is that Harold bought the ranch to keep it from being developed as a commercial or industrial enterprise. More than a quarter million visitors to the Bad Lands exit I-94 at the Painted Canyon off ramp each year. That volume of traffic would make the land Harold bought a prime spot for a gas station or restaurant or motel or some other commercial development, and the land beside the Interstate, all the way to Medora, would have been prime real estate for being subdivided into ranchettes, with houses overlooking Painted Canyon. Harold, and later the Foundation and the Foundation’s conservation buyer, wanted to avoid that. They wanted to keep that six-mile stretch of Badlands between Painted Canyon and Medora free of development, so that visitors could appreciate the beauty of the Bad Lands as they approached Medora.
So far, they’ve done that. Today, nothing mars the spectacular landscape along both sides of the interstate, because the conservation buyer owns the Schafer Ranch on the south side of the highway, and the National Park Service owns all the land on the north side. The north side is protected forever by the NPS. The conservation buyer would like to put a perpetual conservation easement on the south side, to protect it, as she says, from the possibility that an “evil grandchild” would be tempted to sell it or subdivide it. The problem is, in North Dakota (and only in North Dakota), perpetual easements are against the law. Conservation easements are limited to 99 years. The conservation buyer reasons that yet-unborn grandchildren might be nearing retirement age in 99 years, and she wants to remove the temptation.
Senator Connie Triplett has introduced a bill, SB 2362, that will change the law to help people who own grassland protect it in perpetuity. This is not the first time an effort has been made to make permanent conservations easements legal in North Dakota, which is the only state in the United States with such an archaic law. Each time, opposition from farm organizations has killed the bill. The difference this year is that Senator Triplett’s bill takes cropland out of the area that would be eligible for conservation easements. Stated another way, only grasslands and land that has been planted to grass for at least 15 years (e.g., CRP land) could use this tool. This change was made as a means of blunting the opposition of the farm groups who were unanimously opposed in the past. In an e-mail to supporters of conservation easements, Senator Triplett said “You may or may not agree with this advance compromise, but it is my strongly-held opinion that we will not be successful without making some compromises to assure the farm groups that agricultural land is not the target. We are trying to prevent inappropriate development on fragile landscapes by giving landowners a tool to stay on the land without having to sell. We are not trying to destroy production agriculture in North Dakota.”
I believe this is a good compromise, and if it helps pass the bill, it will help save some very precious areas of the Bad Lands. There are already a number of conservation buyers who have purchased ranches in the Bad Lands to stop them from being subdivided, and some of them will use this law to save those ranches in perpetuity. An example: a conservation buyer has purchased the two ranches immediately adjacent to the former Eberts Ranch. If Sen. Triplett’s bill becomes law, and this buyer chooses to put a permanent conservation easement on those ranches, which is likely, the viewshed from Theodore Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch, now owned by the National Park Service, will be protected forever. More importantly, of course, the six mile corridor from Painted Canyon to Medora along I-94 will be protected forever. Forever. That’s a very long time.
Senate Bill 2362 (you can look at it by going here) will be heard before the Legislature's Senate Natural Resources Committee this Friday, February 4th, at 9:45 AM. Location is the Ft. Lincoln Room at the far west end of the ground floor of the Capitol. If you can go to the hearing, please do so. You don’t have to testify, but you can sign the register as being in favor of the bill. And you can visit before or after the hearing with any members of the committee you know.
Here are the Committee members and their e-mail addresses. If you can’t attend the hearing, please e-mail any of these Senators you know, or who represent your district, and urge them to support the bill.
Sen. Stan Lyson, Chairman slyson@nd.gov
Sen. David Hogue, Vice Chairman dhogue@nd.gov
Sen. Randy Burckhard raburckhard@nd.gov
Sen. Layton Freborg lfreborg@nd.gov
Sen. Mac Schneider maschneider@nd.gov
Sen. Connie Triplett ctriplett@nd.gov
Sen. Gerald Uglem guglem@nd.gov
Harold Schafer took the lead in buying land in the Bad Lands for conservation purposes. A number of conservation buyers have followed his example. These are people with the means, and the will, to help save some pieces of our oft-threatened Bad Lands from development. Helping to pass this bill will be our way to say “Thank you.”
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