Conservation-minded rancher protects more than 9K acres as migratory bird habitat

The birds still at Ute Creek Ranch — and the ones that should be there but aren’t any more — motivated Crews to join with the New Mexico Land Conservancy to create a 9,000-acre conservation easement on her property to serve as a migratory bird corridor. This is a big deal both in terms of preserving a particularly threatened type of prairie landscape and for the songbirds, which have been stressed by habitat loss and drought.