Starting Conversations is celebrating the Gila Wilderness Centennial with a special series featuring Steve Morgan, Chautauqua performer, as Aldo Leopold in conversation with three scholars working directly in forestry, environmental restoration, and land ethics.
100 years after the Gila Wilderness was founded and designated as a recreational wilderness area, land restorations continue to this day in the region. Pitchfork Ranch is a 11,300 acre property south of the Gila Wilderness that is home to a diverse and unique habitat. Over several decades, the land at Pitchfork had been exploited for its resources without any care given toward replenishment or damage control. A. Thomas Cole and his wife Lucinda decided to embark on the great project of restoring the ranch with a number of environmentally stabilizing practices such as carbon sequestration and reintroducing native plant species to the site.
In this episode, Aldo sits down with A.T. Cole, owner of Pitchfork Ranch, to discuss his journey.
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Steve Morgan is a naturalist, performer-educator, and a Landscape Architect focused on creating, restoring, and retaining natural habitat. The southwest has been his home for 50 years and he currently resides in Kingston, New Mexico with his wife Nicole and their dogs. His goal is to continue teaching Leopold’s wisdom to encourage careful observation, inspire wonder, and promote environmental action and change.
A.T. Cole and his wife Cinda retired to the Pitchfork Ranch in 2004 where they undertook a massive land restoration project installing over 1,000 grade controls, propagated more than 1,000 new trees, and generally improved the land, including one of the few remaining cienagas (a wetland system unique to the Southwest).
Cole’s book Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch tells the story of the decades-long habitat restoration project. The book weaves together stories from mine strikers, cattle ranching, and the climate crisis into an important and inspiring call to action.