Working together to live with the land

As an ongoing family ranching operation in an increasingly competitive and changing world, the Chico Basin Ranch is working on a daily basis to find financially viable ranching and land management practices that build upon our western heritage. Our business practices combine traditional methods with innovative ideas. We work collaboratively with neighboring ranches and with people and organizations in the local community and nearby cities to establish relationships that enhance the ecological and economic stability of this ranching operation.

The Chico Basin Ranch (CBR) is a working ranch which comprises 87,000 acres located 35 minutes southeast of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Duke Phillips, his wife Janet, and their family, live on and manage the ranch. CBR is leased by Box T Partners from the Colorado State Land Board for a 25-year term which began November 1, 1999. Today, Box T Partners maintains a traditional cow/calf operation as its primary business. Additionally, it farms approximately 375 acres.

The Phillips operate under the assumption that ranching, as it has been known in the United States, is entering a new era. The American West is being purchased by individuals such as Ted Turner, larger corporations like Enron, and conservation groups such as the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. The new owners' interests are not limited to agriculture and include recreational uses, habitat and species preservation, water supply for urban consumption, and portfolio diversification. Traditional uses of the land, such as cattle grazing, are having an increasingly difficult time financially and although cattle will always be an important income producer, they will move toward the background economically. Innovative business approaches will create non-traditional enterprises that are supported by a major shift of the American public's perception and concern for the the well-being of the natural world and the health and safety of the food that is produced from it.

Today's rancher is no longer the mythic figure trotting his horse over the endless landscape. The modern day rancher is a business person who views the "encroachment" of the American public into what has always been his privagte "domain", as a reality. He accepts it as an eventuality which he believes he has to view as an opportunity, in order to survive. He communicates as well with the cowboys riding their horses across the prairie as with corporate executives. He knows land and cattle and how to enhance his ranges ecologically through grazing management, as his predecessors have. He understands that managing a ranching business which encompasses the new public presence, can build business stability and profitability that is becoming harder and harder to achieve in a strictly traditional ranching operation. Ranchers have to realize that ranching is continuing to evolve, and just as horses and wagons were replaced by machines, traditional values and ways of doing business, though still important, have to adapt in order to survive.