The Babbitt Ranches

“Just Participate!”

Coconino County, Arizona · By Rose Houk

If you ask Billy Cordasco what sustainability is, he takes his time answering. “It’s a hard concept,” he says, “because the environment is always changing.” The best explanation he’s ever heard is “living off interest, not principle.”

Billy is president of the board of Babbitt Ranches, a job he’s held for nearly ten years. And though he may struggle with the word “sustainability,” he has obviously spent a great deal of time thinking and experimenting with the idea. The Babbitt Ranch holdings and leases, close to 700,000 acres in northern Arizona, have been in the family for almost 120 years. They include the CO Bar and Cataract ranches, which stretch from south of the Grand Canyon all the way to the San Francisco Peaks and east to the Little Colorado River alongside Wupatki National Monument. They range from mid-elevation grassland, into pinyon-juniper woodland, to high-elevation ponderosa pine forests, among classic Southwest mesas and cinder cones.

In many ways Babbitt Ranches is a traditional outfit, running a cow-calf and yearling operation. “There’s a routine built in,” says Billy, “that’s grown out of years of knowledge and learning.” The Hereford cattle are driven to high country in summer and back to lower range in winter. Calves are born in the spring and branded. Fall is roundup time. Calves are taken to a ranch, raised another year, and then sold.

“We try to run cattle at ‘drought levels,’” explains Billy, meaning that they run a minimal number of head based on the average carrying capacity of the range. In 2002, to weather the drought that has gripped the West for several years, Babbitt Ranches had to take the costly step of moving the cattle to several different pasture locations in the southern part of the state and even into Texas, holding them there until summer rains greened up the grama grass back in northern Arizona.

Like ranchers everywhere, Billy is concerned about the health of the grass, the water supply, and his cattle. But native wildlife, like pronghorn, also fascinates him. When he’s out in his truck, he stops often, raises binoculars, and scans the endless platinum grasslands for the animals. He’s concerned when he doesn’t spot any, and rewarded when he does.

The larger view – evolutionary and ecological processes – also occupies Billy’s thoughts and conversation. Among the most significant influences has been the “land ethic” expressed by the great conservationist Aldo Leopold. On the wall of his office is a poster that displays quotes from Leopold’s classic book, A Sand County Almanac –albeit rearranged to reflect a landowner’s priorities. Billy was elated when he got to go to Madison, Wisconsin, in 2003, near Leopold’s Sand County farm. There, on behalf of the ranch owners, he accepted a wildlife stewardship award from the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies for participation in grazing lease planning and implementation. The award cited Babbitt Ranches’ efforts to provide water, restore habitat, and install wildlife-friendly fencing for native species.

Unquestionably, the most important person in Billy Cordasco’s life was his grandfather, John Babbitt, who raised Billy after his parents died. The elder Babbitt, who ran the family’s ranches for nearly fifty years, was a “man among men,” says Billy. It was by his extraordinary example that Billy learned about ranching and other valuable lessons in life.

After graduating from Northern Arizona University with a business degree, Billy worked during the 1980s in several Babbitt enterprises, including a summer on the ranch surveying fence line. In 1992, at age thirty, he became president of the board. Billy Cordasco utters the word “blessed” many times as he talks about his life.

As a businessman, Billy is fully aware that he must answer to his board and shareholders. But whenever the board makes decisions about the ranch, he urges them to consider three things – economics, community, and environment. As he sums it up, “It’s always about relationships,” both natural and human.

During Billy’s tenure as head of Babbitt Ranches, the company has pioneered a variety of projects that fall under the rubric of sustainability. A biological assessment of the company’s land was completed and compiled into a publication. A new name was adopted – Coconino Plateau Natural Reserve Lands – which connotes the obligation and responsibility Babbitt Ranches holds. The company established the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Foundation at Northern Arizona University as a conduit for landowners, agencies, and organizations to collect data and practice solid science on lands in the region. Babbitt Ranches also donated forty thousand acres of conservation easements to The Nature Conservancy and county, implemented holistic range management, and launched a watershed assessment project.

Billy is always looking for ways to raise and sell beef directly, rather than shipping off the cattle to distant feedlots to be fattened. Babbitt Ranches has produced beef jerky and hamburger patties, but to expand that endeavor, Billy notes, consumers must show their support by buying meat that has been raised organically and sustainably. A few years ago Babbitt Ranches also brought in bison, and “six girls – big ones” still roam the range, Billy notes.

“Ranching can be viable out here,” Billy asserts, as he looks out on land that receives about nine inches of rain a year. If the environment were the only challenge he faced, Billy’s job would be easier. But his task is far more complex – managing a huge landholding in a traditional family business, amid pressures of public issues and development that can quickly make cattle-raising less than economical.

So, rather than use the word “sustainable” to describe his land ethic, Billy Cordasco preaches the gospel of “just participate!” For him, the phrase embodies the belief that we can’t manage or control land or the environment. To join, share, and be a part of ecological processes, he says, “we can only learn and understand.”

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This is one of many stories from the Four Corners region that were printed in A New Plateau: Sustaining the Lands and Peoples of Canyon Country, edited by Peter Friederici and Rose Houk. This book was a project of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University and Renewing the Countryside, with assistance from the Museum of Northern Arizona. A New Plateau can be purchased at the Renewing the Countryside online bookstore or the Northern Arizona University bookstore, or request it at your local bookstore.