In their small corner of the vast, windswept San Luis Valley, Roger and Marilyn Perry recently staked a claim in the name of conservation that radiates well beyond the boundaries of their ranch.
By permanently protecting their water rights in a deal finalized last month, the Perrys have helped ensure critical runoff forever into La Garita Creek, sustaining a whole network of wildlife-rich wetlands in the arid country.
“I think this whole valley should be protected. It’s a very beautiful place, a very special place,” Roger Perry said from his home near Monte Vista. “Once you sell the water out of it, it’s dead on its feet.”
His agreement to place a conservation easement on the historic Dunn Ranch – and more importantly, the senior water rights tied to it – is being hailed as a significant environmental triumph, a perfect combination of agriculture and conservation, and a telling legacy for the transplanted Englishman who fell in love with the land.
“This is a case where a relatively small act has really wide-ranging effects,” said Doug Robotham, Colorado director for the Trust for Public Land, which helped broker the deal.
In a place that averages less than 6 inches of rainfall a year, the groundwater running off the property helps to feed ephemeral lakes and streams known as playas that gurgle to the surface in places such as the waterfowl- critical Mishak Lakes more than 10 miles away.
The Perrys gave up their ability to sell off their prized senior water rights or develop the 1,240-acre ranch in exchange for cash grants totaling about half its market value, a perpetual tax break and a broad measure of satisfaction.
“It’s such a magical place, and we’re just pleased to do a little bit,” said Roger Perry, who started farming as a 19-year-old with a few hogs in the Robin Hood country of England known as the Midlands.
Now 61 and caring for his terminally ill wife, Perry displays his usual good cheer in recounting how he ended up becoming the self-deprecating savior of the valley’s lifeblood.
The couple arrived with their two daughters in Colorado nine years ago after becoming enchanted with the rural San Luis Valley, where dusty settlements remain from the days of the Spanish conquistadors and mirages dance against the backdrop of the surrounding mountains.
With money they saved from years of farming, they purchased the small Parma Ranch, raising alfalfa and cattle and enjoying the annual migration of the sandhill cranes that stopped in the nearby wetlands.
Four years ago, the Trust for Public Land approached him “out of the blue” to sell a portion of the ranch to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for a 700-acre expansion to the adjacent Monte Vista wildlife refuge.
“To be honest, I didn’t know much about conservation easements at that point. We talked it over, my wife and I, and said, ‘Hey, we probably should do it.’ As we owned it, we realized it was a bit special.”
He invested the money he gained from the deal into the Dunn Ranch, a former stagecoach stop established by another Englishman now buried in the local cemetery.
Along with the new property came prized senior rights to water carried by 19th century canals from the Rio Grande River, which flows eastward out of the San Juan mountains.
Noting that the northern portion of the valley is a geologically closed basin, where water pools up as if in a bowl rather than flowing out, conservationists convinced the Perrys that they could help sustain other lands already protected in the area through a new conservation easement.
The couple turned the easement over to the Rio Grande Headwaters Trust for $394,400 in cash, including nearly $200,000 from the federal ranch-preservation program and $170,000 from Great Outdoors Colorado, which designates state lottery funds for recreation and open-space acquisitions and has funded several other efforts to preserve ranchland and water flows in the area.
The rest of the easement’s $830,000 value was the Perrys’ donation.
“We’ve done OK in America. America has been good to us, and it’s nice to give a little back,” Roger Perry said. “One hundred years from now, I’d like for somebody to say, ‘Well, he wasn’t too bad a guy.’ That would be rewarding enough.”
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com.
