State lawmakers are wading into a conflict over a massive fence between the billionaire owner of a historic ranch property and local communities in southern Colorado.
Lawmakers last week introduced a bill that requires local government approval of large fencing projects on Sangre de Cristo land grant properties. The bill aims to halt further expansion of a controversial 8-foot-tall fence topped with barbed wire that the owner of Cielo Vista Ranch is building in the San Luis Valley.
The construction of the fence — which locals estimate spans at least 20 miles of the ranch’s border — enraged some locals. They said it prevented wildlife movement, eroded the land and intimidated local residents, some of whom had legal access to the land grant.
Local opposition prompted Costilla County officials to try to stop construction, prompting the landowner to sue the county and sparking an ongoing and expensive legal battle in the sparsely populated rural community.
Bill sponsor Rep. Matthew Martinez, a Democrat who represents a large swath of southern Colorado, visited the fence project outside San Luis after reading stories about it in Colorado journalism outlets.
“I saw how immense and enormous and destructive this really was, and I wanted to offer some help — it’s so out of place in that area,” Martinez said. “I saw firsthand the damage from erecting a fence that there is no reason for.”
The fence controversy is the most recent point of contention in decades of conflict between a succession of out-of-state billionaire owners of the 83,000-acre property and the approximately 3,500 people who live along the ranch’s eastern border — some of whom have access rights on the land dating back to before Colorado became a state.
Descendants of Sangre de Cristo Land Grant families who settled in the valley in the mid-1800s maintain legal rights to graze cattle and collect firewood on the property, which locals call La Sierra.
“It’s an environmental disaster, it’s a wildlife disaster,” said Bernadette Lucero, a member of La Sierra Environmental Guardian Committee, formed to oppose the fence. “Nobody owns the elk and the deer and the wildlife, and they’re fenced in over there.”
Jamie Dickinson, an attorney for ranch owner William Harrison, in an email Wednesday declined to comment on the legislation, citing pending litigation over the fence.
Representatives for Harrison have previously said the new fence was necessary to keep the property’s bison from escaping and to keep out trespassers who do not have legal rights to access the ranch.
House Bill 1023 would require people who want to build fencing that is more than 5 feet tall and spans more than half a mile on Sangre de Cristo Land Grant properties to first submit an application to the county government. Local government officials must then consider whether there is a rational reason for the fence and how it would impact local communities, wildlife and ecosystem health.
Any fence project must also meet requirements that allow for wild animals to cross the fence.
“The Sangre de Cristo Land Grant Lands are at risk of landowners undertaking irrational and environmentally damaging fencing projects without oversight or intervention by a local government,” the bill’s text states.
If the bill passes, the new requirements will go into effect July 1, but won’t apply retroactively to already-constructed fence. The bill would allow local governments to opt out of the application process required by the bill.
Lucero said she was happy lawmakers were paying attention to the fence and hoped long-term solutions between the ranch owner and the community could be found.
“We’re just trying to keep attention on it,” she said.
The bill will be heard first by the House Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee but a hearing has not yet been set.
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