Iconic Saw tooth Mountain will be staying wild
Oil companies, conservation group and landowner work out deal
Four oil and gas companies have banded together with a national conservation group, an investment firm and a wealthy landowner to protect Saw tooth Mountain and some 2,500 wild acres in West Texas from oil and gas drilling.
The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit headquartered in Washington, worked four years to put together the group, the land and the financing to acquire conservation easements that will restrict development onand around the jagged and iconic peak near Big Bend National Park. Saw tooth has gained protection as oil and gas drilling inthered-hotPermianBasin move stone wand less developed sections, including the nearby Delawaresub-basin,where Houston’ s Apache Corp. recently said it discovered the equivalent of 15 billion barrels of oil andgas.
Saw tooth Mountain is just south of Alpine High, the name Apachegaveto the oil field.The company said the easement won’t affect development of the field.
As Texas continues to develop at “record speed,” said Laura Huffman, Texas state director of the Nature Conservancy, groups like hers are “in a race to conserve the characteristics of our state that makeit so special.”
The land is owned by Fort Worth department store heiress Miranda Leonard. The Nature Conservancy paid Leonard $1 million, about half the appraised value, for the rights to establish a conservation easement onthe land. Then, this fall, New York private equity firm Warburg Pincus and four companies in which it owns stakes—A ustin-based Brigham Resources, Dallas’ K os mos Energy, Laredo Petroleum in Tulsa and Houston’ s Zenith Energy—donated $1.2 million. Thedonation will cover the Nature Conservancy’ s payment to the land owner and also establish a research andland protection endowment.
The Nature Conservancy estimates the project’ s total cost at $1.5 million, including staff time andlegal expense.
The Saw tooth donation was the third that War burg Pincus has made to the Nature Conservancy in less than five years. In 2012, Warburggave $2.5 million to protect 400,000 acres of Canadian wilderness in the North Fork of the FlatheadRiver watershed in British Columbia. In 2014 it contributed $1 million to the preservation of nearly 4,000 acres along a sevenmile stretch of the Cheat River in WestVirginia.
The company said it’ s committed to“making a positive impact” in regions where its companies operate. Brigham and Laredo operate in the Permian Basin, the hubofoil andgasdrilling in the U.S.
Sawtooth is a series of crags that reach to 7,686 feet in elevation about40miles south of Balm or he a and 100 miles north of Big Bend National Park. The peak is alandmarkfor drivers onthe Scenic Loop, the 75-mile stretch of road along Highways 166 and 118 where the Chihuahu an desert meets the“sky islands” of the Davis Mountains.
The Nature Conservancy called it one of the most biologically diverse areas in the state, home to black bears, mountain lions andgolden eagles. The group has protected more than 100,000 acres in the Davis Mountains, including the region’ s high point, Mount Liver more, and the 33,000- acre Davis Mountains Preserve.