{"id":22675,"date":"2025-04-14T17:32:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T17:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/landowners-in-chicken-creek-permanently-conserve-720-acres-outside-mancos\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:15:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:15:30","slug":"landowners-in-chicken-creek-permanently-conserve-720-acres-outside-mancos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/landowners-in-chicken-creek-permanently-conserve-720-acres-outside-mancos\/","title":{"rendered":"Landowners in Chicken Creek permanently conserve 720 acres outside Mancos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hackley
Hackley Ranch is one of two conservation easements being funded by Keep It Colorado. (Montezuma Land Conservancy\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

At the end of March, a conservation easement on 720 acres of land outside Mancos will protect it from future development.<\/p>\n

The land has \u201cbeen an operational cattle ranch for centuries\u201d and is in Chicken Creek, about 5 miles outside town limits, according to a news release from the Montezuma Land Conservancy<\/a>, which partnered with a local family to make the project happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf of the property shares a border with San Juan National Forest, creating a buffer and helping to extend migratory pathways for elk and mule deer,\u201d the news release said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also the highest property in its respective portion of the Mancos watershed, \u201cand paired with its healthy ponderosa pine forest and 17 acres of wetlands, will be a vital piece for protecting this watershed for future generations,\u201d the news release said.<\/p>\n

And protecting that cherished land is what motivated the family to conserve it in this way.<\/p>\n

\u201cCattlemen pass through our place on the way to and from their allotments, timber thinning goes on across the private\/public boundary, elk find spring habitat in the meadows, hikers enjoy the views in summer and fall from the Chicken Creek Trails, and Chicken Creek Nordic skiers pass by in winter,\u201d said Ryan Brown, a local whose family owns the land.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s for all these reasons that our family thinks preserving this property as a transition and gateway to public lands is important not only for us, but for the future of the community,\u201d said Brown.<\/p>\n

The 720 acres that make up the Hackley Place easement means that, in the Mancos watershed alone, the Montezuma Land Conservancy has permanently protected 6,800 acres of land.<\/p>\n

That includes over four miles of land on the Mancos River and nearly a mile of Chicken Creek.<\/p>\n

Zooming out, on land throughout Montezuma, Dolores and San Miguel counties, the conservancy has protected over 50,000 acres \u201cof open space, wildlife habitat, public access trails and agricultural lands,\u201d the news release said.<\/p>\n

The most recent easement was made possible by the Brown\/Reddert family and their spouses, with the help of $50,000 in funding from Keep It Colorado\u2019s Transaction Cost Assistance Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Brown\/Reddert family recently entered a conservation easement on 720 acres of land outside of Mancos. From left to right: Ryan Brown, one of the owners of the Hackley Place, Travis Custer, executive director of the Montezuma Land Conservancy and Austin Easter, conservation director at the Montezuma Land Conservancy.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

easement is on land that\u2019s a \u2018transition and gateway to public lands,\u2019 landowner says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[529,28,83,2312,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-conservation","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-mancos-river","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77807,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22675\/revisions\/77807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22675"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}