Scott Cutler and Marshall Carter-Tripp

[00:00] SCOTT CUTLER: Hello. My name is Scott Cutler. I'm 71 years old. I'm here on January 20, 2023, in El Paso, Texas, with Marshall Carter Tripp, who is a friend and colleague.

[00:13] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: And. Hello, I am Marshall Carter Tripp. I am 78, like those old vinyl records that you may not have. This is the 20 January 2023, and we're in El Paso, Texas. I'm talking with Scott Cutler, who is a friend and colleague.

[00:31] SCOTT CUTLER: And, Marshall, I was curious how you came to be in El Paso and became involved with the Frontera Land alliance.

[00:41] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: Well, it's a long story. I got here first as a visiting professor at the university for a year, coming from Nigeria, where I had been teaching in a university there, and things got kind of. And so I was offered a one year visiting assignment here. I wasn't real sure where El Paso was at that time, 1976, but I looked it up. I accepted. I had a wonderful time here. Such an interesting place and such friendly and helpful people living here. And when I joined the foreign service two years later, I put El Paso as my hometown. So periodically, they made you come back to the United States when you were working overseas. They had some idea that you would forget about baseball and tv if you didn't come back. So once I had married, my husband and I came back here every three or four years just for a short visit. And eventually we realized as I approached, there's a mandatory retirement age, that we were going to live somewhere in the United States. And we looked at a couple places and realized in about 30 minutes that they weren't going to work. And all of a sudden, we just thought to each other, El Paso, it's up on a mountain. It has wonderful, at the time, access with Mexico. It was really a binational city. Weather was super, 20 minutes drive to the airport. What more could you ask for? So in 2003, at the very end, we ended up in El Paso, up between the mountain and the so called Krazy cat. And I was struck by what an interesting environment it was compared to the places we've been living in Spain and Argentina and Belgium and Panama, and became involved with people who were interested in conservation of open spaces, native plants. There's a native plant Society chapter here, Cactus Club and so on. And in that very first year, 2004, an organization was being formed that initially was called El Paso Land Trust, if I remember correctly, concerned about, among other things, Arroyo called Wrestler Canyon, that was ostensibly going to be developed, filled with houses. And people were very upset about that. And happily, the organization managed to preserve that land with the aid of a benefactor who has been involved with now called the Frontera Land alliance for all those years. And it was so invigorating to be with people who cared about the environment and the animals that lived in it and so on. I became involved up to being a director, and then the following year, a vice president. And I have been grateful all these years that I had the good fortune to encounter these people when I first arrived in El Paso. And I feel like tremendous things have been done, and Scott is a good part of that, and I'm going to let him talk about it.

[04:17] SCOTT CUTLER: Well, you were involved with some of the initial stages of the formation of Frontera, too, weren't you? Because I remember you showing up at some of our planning meetings and all where we were talking about starting Frontera.

[04:32] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: Yes. I don't remember exactly how early in 2004 that was. I mean, I. And when the Frontera name was chosen, it was intended to focus on the, to stress what we had hoped at the time, that it would be a really binational organization, work with Mexico and also with New Mexico. And we had a conference in the native plant Society in El Paso about two years later. And the theme was one desert, two countries, three states. And that's how we saw Frontera. And, of course, it's been hard working with Mexico as the relationship has become stressed by rules and difficulty crossing and so forth. But it's still out there, and I'm hoping that we will be able to reinvigorate that part of the operation, because.

[05:28] SCOTT CUTLER: I remember when we were starting the planning for the Frontera group, you were part of that initial planning stage about the other bylaws, establishing bylaws and all of that. So I thought I would try to give a synopsis of the formation. What caused the formation of the Frontera land alliance? It actually, in my mind, goes way back before, into the seventies, when people were trying to protect the mountain. The poppy blooms on the east side of the mountain are legendary, and people have always wanted to protect. In fact, I remember seeing a tourist map from 1932 that actually emphasizes the poppies as a place, a destination place for tourists. So even that far back, the poppies were a signature thing for El Paso, and of course, the mountains as well. But in the seventies, or by the time of the seventies, the mountains were owned by some private individuals, the naps, primarily, a number of other private individuals. The city, through the public service board, owned large swaths of land that had been acquired, I think, from the general land office of Texas. And then there was also the army, which owned Castner Range, which had been a firing range from 1926 or so up until 1966. So the community had this love of the outdoors here and the beauty that was present in the Franklin Mountains. So in 1966, when the army decided to close down Castner Range, there was a lot of interest in trying to preserve some of that. And the city ended up developing a plan to acquire all of Castner Range, all 8200 plus acres that were there, and develop parts of it, and then leave some of it as what they called a wilderness park. And over the next, I don't know, five years or so, the city was able to get the army too clear of unexploded ordnance and other problems. Enough land east of what is now highway 54 that that could be transferred to the city. And at the same time, there was another 17 acres or so that was a cleared on Trans Mountain road that became the home of the El Paso Archaeology Museum and subsequently the National Border Patrol Museum. But something happened and the army decided that the land that had been declared excess was no longer suitable to be able to turn over to the city. And so the remaining 7000 acres was withdrawn and left in the army's care. And so this is what is currently in 2023, known as Castner Range. So now, also in 1978, some of the private land that was owned by the NAPS had a. They had plans to develop on north Franklin Peak. And so one of the naps took a bulldozer and bladed a road all the way up to the top of north Franklin and actually cut away about 8ft of it, flattening it out so that it could be developed. The community, when they saw this happening, was aghast and decided that they had to do something to protect it. They gathered together and formed what became the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition, which was a consortium of a huge number of organizations here in El Paso that worked to gather signatures from people in the community to get the city to act and somehow buy the land or protect it. And they gathered something like 15,000 signatures from people. And this was in, like, 1978, and finally prompted the city to take the. To buy the land from the naps. And there may have been also some zoning stuff that had gone on, too, with that, to protect it so that he could no longer develop it. And ultimately, in 1979, with the. With the help of state senator Ron Coleman, they were able to create the Franklin Mountain State park, which has become the largest urban state park in the lower 48 states. So it's quite unique in that respect. At the time, that the Franklin Mountains, the state park, was formed. They had also wanted the Castner range property to be included in that. But because it had not been cleared of the ordinance, all of the shells and stuff that the army had laid out there over the years as a firing range, the state park was not willing to take that on. And so it remained as part of the army's property. But that didn't stop people from trying to develop it. There were a lot of opportunities or efforts to put different places, different organizations, buildings on there. Something like the El Paso Community College, Trans Mountain campus had been planned to be put on that remaining 7000 acres. Also Cohen Stadium, which was a baseball stadium, they had plans for that as well. And a number of other options had been proposed. But the community got together through the coalition and other organizations and was able to have all of those building suggestions put onto the 1200 acres that were already cleared and being developed by the city. So the 7000 acres as the essentially remained untouched since its closure in 1966. But there was still this concern that somebody was going to end up coming up with enough money through private entities to be able to spend the tens of millions of dollars that it would take to clear the land sufficiently to make it buildable. And so the community has continued to look for ways to protect it. And in 2003, the army, the Department of Defense, through their National Defense Authorization act, or Congress, came up with a provision in that act to allow the army and other military organizations to dispose of excess property through a conservation conveyance, which would allow those military groups to disperse or transfer the property from the army or the Navy or air force to a nonprofit group that could protect the land. Essentially, a land trust was. What was the idea? People here in the community looked at that and said, that's the perfect option for us because we got the army right here. They can just transfer it to a conservation group and we'll be able to protect it. We didn't have any nonprofit organizations at that time that would be able to do that. So the idea was to start a nonprofit land trust here in El Paso. So that was the initial effort, sort of the motivation to get Frontera started. And through a meeting at Artovino's desert crossing, a local restaurant here, they got a bunch of people together, like yourself, who had been interested in conservation issues here and pleaded with them to somehow get together and form a land trust. And so that did happen. There was a group of about four or five of us that met regularly after that. Maria Trunk ed story, myself, I think, Marshall, you were in that, too. And Sherry Bonhart. And there may have been some others.

[14:44] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: That Kevin von Finger.

[14:46] SCOTT CUTLER: Oh, Kevin von Finger. Yes, yes. Yeah, he was one of them as well. So we met for, like, six months, eight months, and crafted together the bylaws and all of the documents submitted, all the documents that we needed to, to get our 501 C three status as a nonprofit. And by, I believe it was 25. I think that's when I have it in my mind that we became the official land trust. The name the Frontera Land alliance was agreed upon by ultimately by all the people there as an appropriate moniker for us, because we were a border entity focused on preserving land along the US Mexico border. And as you mentioned, a binational effort, but also a tri state effort as well, where our radius of operation we envisioned at the very beginning was going to be a 50 miles radius from El Paso, which would include a fair portion of northern Chihuahua, the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, I think, also like the Sanalayuca dunes. The idea was to include that and then into southern New Mexico, and, of course, fair part of west Texas, like El Paso and Hudspeth county in particular. So we got started, and as soon as we were incorporated, we had Richard Teschner and Charlie Joachim, who were involved with the wrestler Arroyo, which you mentioned earlier. And through Richard's donation of the funds, we were able to purchase that and protect it from development. So that was Frontera's first real big land save. We also had Carol Nelson, who was a local resident that had five acres out in an area called Colonia Vista, which was kind of an old, had initially been platted as a five acre development with five acre parcels in it, and she no longer had any use for it, and the whole development had kind of faltered, so she donated that to us. So right out of the gate, we had these two lands that were protected, but we still were looking at Castner range as our main focus. And, oh, and there was one other, too, that came up within a year or two after we formed, which was Thunder Canyon. And that one was an interesting opportunity as well. Our name had gotten out to the community a little bit at that point, and this Thunder canyon is a 24 acre parcel that was privately owned by a developer. And they had plans to develop that whole arroyo. The people who lived around it in already established homes had wanted to see it preserved, so they ended up talking to the developer, which was Willis Holmes. And Amy Shoemaker was actually on our board. She was the son of Mister Willis, so she was very sympathetic to that. And while they weren't willing to donate the property, they were willing to take a reasonable price for it. But the actual outcome of it was uncertainty. The community around there decided to tax themselves and use that money to pay the city back. If they purchased it from the developer, the city would be paid back for that money, and the city would ultimately own it and not have essentially had to pay anything for it. But the property owners around there said, if we're going to put our money into this, we want to make sure that the land stays as open space, as a nature preserve. So we want more than just assurances from the city that it'll never happen. So they contacted the Frontera land alliance, and we were able to work out a deal with them so that we put a conservation easement on it. And the city, excuse me, maintains the property. So this was the first anybody here in El Paso had worked with what ultimately was called a public improvement district or a PID.

[19:17] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: And if I recall, the city council member at the time, Ann Morgan Lilly, helped with the setup of that whole project. She did, and that was another first in the city.

[19:29] SCOTT CUTLER: She was able to actually raise some money through some donations, I believe, from other companies that helped fund the necessary cost of creating that. So, excuse me. So anyway, while all of this was going on, we were still working on Castner Range and still trying to follow the conservation conveyance route, but nobody knew what a conservation conveyance was. This is something that had just sort of shown up in the National Defense Authorization act. So we were able to gather some, enlist Representative Sylvester Reyes to provide a grant through the federal government to actually study what a conservation is and how it could be implemented by not just Fort bliss, but anyhow, entity within the Department of Defense. And so we thought this was going to give us the whole road map that we needed to implement the conservation conveyance. And we got the report done, gave all the steps, but ultimately the army decided they didn't want to pursue that. So we were kind of back to square one, trying to figure out how we could do this during this time. I believe it was in 2014, in New Mexico, just outside of Las Cruces, the Oregon Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument was designated. And when this happened, this included the Oregon Mountains and some areas like the Portrio Mountains, areas out to the the west of Las Cruces, all Bureau of Land Management land that could be made into a national monument. And when people here in El Paso saw that this had happened, it sort of flipped a switch, and everybody said, wow, that would be a great opportunity for us to do it. We've got the BLM office in Las Cruces. They're close, and the Franklin Mountains are kind of a southern extension of the Oregon Mountains to the north. So why don't we work on trying to get this protected as a national monument? So Frontera became very involved in that effort and worked with Congressman Beto O'Rourke to work with the Obama administration and try to enliste their support in getting it designated. We went out and gathered more signatures. This time we were able to get 35,000 signatures. And this was all legwork, people going to different events and explaining what Castner range was and what the national monument status would do. So we ended up being able to, as I said, get over 35,000 signatures on letters to the president. And we had all sorts of local support. The city, county, the state had all said they were behind this effort, and the army was willing to do it as well. So we were right up there at the top of the list of places that we thought were going to be designated towards the end of President Obama's last term. But we didn't quite make the cut. So we were left with this effort still in place and all of the efforts still very strongly suggesting that this should be a national monument. But with the new Trump administration that came in, there was no clear indication that there was any interest on the part of that administration to protect lands as national monuments. So that effort kind of became quiet. But Frontera still continued working on things. The city had some lands that the public wanted protected, and since they were public lands, one of them was lost dog, which was a very popular bike and mountain biking and hiking place. So the city residents formed a. Oh, and this land was going to be developed. It was part of the public service board's land that was going to be sold to developers and have homes and businesses put on it. So the community rallied behind and created a proposition, citizen led proposition, that was going to force the city to designate that public land as open space. And they wanted to have a conservation easement put on it. Went to a vote in one of the elections, and really an overwhelming majority of people, like 80% of every voter in all the districts here in El Paso, whether they were around the mountains or not, said they wanted it preserved. And so with that, the city ended up working with Frontera to craft a conservation easement for that protection. About the same time, there was also another parcel of land that was privately owned on the east side of the mountain that was owned by the Knapp family. And that was something that a lot of the residents, especially on that side of the mountain, had wanted to see protected. So they talked to the city, tried to cobble together different ways that the money could be accumulated to be able to buy that property. And through quality of life bond money, and also the public service boards, 10% stormwater fee, they were able to gather enough funds to be able to purchase 350 acres of the 700 plus acres that were being offered. So that became city land. And the public also demanded that, that have a conservation easement on it. So Frontera had these two new conservation easements come up that they were enlisted by the city to take care of. So now if we jump up to 2020, and we had a change of administrations in the federal government and President Biden elected, and one of the first things he had said was that we want. We want the government, the country, to protect 30% of its lands as open space by 2030. And when we heard that, we were rejoicing, because that meant that the federal government was serious about protecting open space as national parks, national monuments, rangelands, and that sort of thing. So we enlisted the support of our congresswoman, Veronica Escobar. And she has been working very well with us, trying to shepherd this effort through the federal government, and she's done a remarkable job. You remember we had Deb Haaland, the secretary of the interior, come out here, and she actually walked some of the land adjacent to Castner range. So she was able to see it from afar. And Congresswoman Escobar was also able to bring the deputy secretary of the army, Gabe Camarillo, out here, and he was able to actually fly over all of Castner range in the helicopter and see it from there. And we got support from both of them for this whole idea.

[27:55] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: So we're still hoping.

[27:59] SCOTT CUTLER: We're still working on it. Yes. It's a long process, and I think we've gotten a lot of our ducks in a row to make this a very attractive place to be protected as a national monument. And President Biden has, as you know, protected a couple places already as national monuments. So we're hoping that we're up there on the list, and we'll soon be able to say that we accomplished the national monument status for Castor range. So that was really neat. It's been a neat road, and I'm glad I've had an opportunity to play a part in it. It's really been, I think, an honor, too, to work with you, Marshall, on this, plus all the other people that have been involved over the years.

[28:52] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: It's a very remarkable group of people in community supporting now with a substantial number of sponsorships from local businesses and so forth, which is very encouraging. I would go back just a little bit and say that the city parks department has used the idea of a nature preserve in some places to establish an area that is protected and not supposed to be used as a park with swings and jumps and that kind of thing, but just a place where people can go and walk and appreciate nature, like the Billy Rogers Arroyo Nature preserve, which is a good development. And then Frontera is now also looking at adding some properties that are down along the river and, you know, sort of diversifying the environments that are being conserved so that people don't think it's. Oh, it's just the mountain that they care about. The mountains are tremendously important here, of course, and it's an area that the rest of Texas doesn't seem to always remember, that there are mountains out here. It's a very different environment from the rest of Texas, but we have a bright future ahead. There's a lot of work going on, and more and more members coming on board, and I think the future is very promising, and it's been a wonderful opportunity to know you and all the other people engaged in this project. And the also remarkable achievement that has been done with grants and other sources of funding, so that we actually now have a paid staff as well as the volunteers.

[30:39] SCOTT CUTLER: Yeah, we've. The frontera has really grown a lot, so I'm really excited about that, having been able to see it grow from its inception to this point, they're going.

[30:52] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: Out to high schools and other schools to talk to young people. It's really great.

[30:56] SCOTT CUTLER: Yeah. And we've got so many other places around here that are being protected. I think of the Rio bosque down in the lower valley, and I know there's a place up in New Mexico that Frontera is looking at possibly having a conservation on that with some riverfront property that will protect some really great habitat. And we've always talked about trying to not just protect undisturbed areas, but also working with working lands, things like ranches and farms. And the opportunities there are great. There are other parts of the country, even down in Jeff Davis County, Presidio county, in that area, where there's a lot of ranching going on. Different land trusts have worked down there and worked with landowners over long periods of time to help them understand what a conservation easement is and how, which.

[32:03] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: Is not commonly known.

[32:05] SCOTT CUTLER: It's not and that's what I think part of Frontera's effort now, too, is education. But as I was going to say, in the Jeff Davis and Brewster counter areas, they've cultivated an interest by the ranchers now that they understand this and can see the advantages to. So they're actually putting easements on their property, which allows them to continue ranching in perpetuity, either them or subsequent owners. But they don't have to have the worry of a developer coming in and offering them huge amounts of money to buy the land and develop it.

[32:45] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: And I would just throw out Albuquerque has shown, in one sense, conserving open space is an economic driver as well. And they have an open space visitor center advertising what they have and advertising it for tourism. So you don't have to just build houses to have economic development. And we're happy to be learning that here too.

[33:09] SCOTT CUTLER: Well. And there are so many benefits to open space that people don't normally consider. And certainly the tourist industry now is a huge driver in many communities and could be very helpful here. But, you know, we've got so many concerns now about climate change and how we're going to sort of control carbon emissions that are in the atmosphere. And I've just been reading recently about different ways that desert lands, arid lands are actually very important carbon sinks, places for carbon sequestration. And so here's another argument that I think is very important in helping people understand that these natural lands need to be protected for the future, for the future, for the health of the planet, for not just ourselves, but larger entities like nations and actually the whole world. So. Well, thanks, Marshall.

[34:16] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: Thank you, Scott. And it's an exciting time, scary time in some ways. But I think with all this volunteer effort, it is going to be a success, and it will be part of the success in conserving the climate of the planet.

[34:35] SCOTT CUTLER: As you pointed out, the volunteer and excitement of the community here is really motivating, I think, for a lot of people, and it's good to see things moving in a positive direction.

[34:50] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: So again, thank you.

[34:51] SCOTT CUTLER: Thank you, Marshall.

[34:53] MARSHALL CARTER TRIPP: And I've learned quite a lot today.

[35:04] SCOTT CUTLER: And, you know, Marshall, one other thing that Frontera has assembled just recently as part of this effort to protect Castner Range is a bibliography of studies and newspaper articles and all sorts of popular stuff about Castner Range, about the Franklin Mountains. All of this that can provide some good background, some historical background about Castner Range, about the Franklin Mountains covers things like archaeology, biology, geology, hydrology, this whole thing about carbon sequestration. There's a whole bunch of stuff. Oh, and also the military's involvement in Castner Range as well. So it's something that I'm hoping that we'll be able to use that in the future to be able to keep people excited about cast and range and maybe understand more about not just its cultural history, but also the biological diversity that's out there. And that has been such a driver in trying to get that whole area and the Franklin mountains protected.