Cows, condos, and the contested commons: The political ecology of ranchingon the Arizona-Sonora borderlands

Despite the rapid urbanization of the Arizona-Sonora borderlands, cattle ra nching continues to play a major, if increasingly contested, political, eco nomic, and ecological role in the region. Unlike other industries, technolo gical manipulation has failed to increase productivity in the range cattle industry. The constraints of aridity and climatic variability have not been overcome. Ranchers on both sides of the border therefore need access to la rge tracts of land to secure the natural forage their cattle need. Spain an d Mexico both recognized communal as well as private forms of tenure, even though neoliberal reforms are weakening comunidades and ejidos. The United States, in contrast, has no communitarian tradition, and U.S. homestead law s never allowed individuals to preempt enough of the public domain to suppo rt a cow outfit. Instead, grazing allotments on both federal and state land s provide ranchers with exclusive rights to forage. Those rights are increa singly challenged by some environmentalists, who want cows off public lands . Faced with rising land prices, unstable markets, an unpredictable climate , enormous estate taxes, and increasing political uncertainty over their ac cess to public lands, many ranchers choose or are forced to sell their priv ate land to real estate developers or subdivide it themselves. The resultin g fragmentation of the landscape and increasing densities of people deplete : water resources and make large-scale ecosystem management, including the preservation of wildlife corridors and the reintroduction of fire, difficul t if not impossible.