An inspirational battle is being waged in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado, and watershed scientists are needed to help the brave and innovative local community. These are the wonderful down-to-earth folks that were memorialized in the fictional account of the Milagro Beanfield War, but their real story and real daily activities are far more interesting. There is a wonderful opportunity for good watershed science. If you would be interested in spending a part of your vacation in this beautiful Sangre de Cristo mountain valley, and would like an opportunity to meet and learn from some of world's best people, read on. For the past two spring runoff periods I have been investigating the water systems of the Culebra and adjacent drainages in the uppermost Rio Grande basin. I've written a short informative paper that describes some of the research findings. This paper was written for the local San Luis people, and serves to outline the scope of some of the work that is needed from professional scientists and students of watershed systems.

Costilla County, Colorado, is the oldest settlement area for people of European origin in the state. It has been continuously farmed by a largely Hispanic-origin population who settled here in the mid 1800s. These people brought Spanish land and water right systems through Mexico as they moved north. Pueblo peoples occupied most of the Rio Grande watersheds north through Taos, and the Hispanics immigrants interbred and learned from these native Americans before settling down in this northernmost part of the Rio Grande basin because it was not already occupied by Pueblo tribes. Thus, the San Luis Valley is just north of Taos, and the Culebra watershed drains the western Sangre de Cristo from both Colorado and New Mexico.

The settlers were deeded their lands by the Mexican government on the typical watershed basis, and the San Luis people were given the Culebra basin. It is the effort to maintain a watershed systems approach to their County government that makes this community so far advanced over those of the overdeveloped portions of the west. Remember that in California, General Vallejo drew the first county boundaries based on watersheds, and that John Wesley Powell and others took up this wise effort in subsequent constitutional conventions as each western state was formed. Unfortunately, most western state legislators changed county boundaries to fit their eastern- U.S. based view of counties as big townships united by taxation but not self-sufficient. Costilla County, Colorado, has been trying to hold onto its watershed. Spanish and Mexican landgrants were typically described by the valley-bottom lands or larger rancheros where primary farming or ranching activities took place. The upper mountain slopes of the watersheds that watered these lands was taken for granted as part of those lands, often shown on the original Spanish plat maps as a ring of skyline mountains surrounding the deeded plan-view area of so-many varas by so-many varas.

When statehood came to areas like California or Colorado, the federal government agreed to recognize the pre-existing Mexican holdings. The problems arose when the first government surveys were made. In general, each U.S. surveyor simply outlined the valley-bottom platted areas and ignored the language in the Spanish land grants that noted the inclusion of the full watersheds that those platted areas depended upon. In the case of the Culebra drainage, the Spanish Land Grant clearly specified that the entire watershed, to the crest of the 14,000 ft Sangre de Cristo peaks, was a part of the heritage of the San Luis Valley residents. The farmers fields include lands that pass from the mountain slopes out across the subirrigated meadows and onto the sage-covered plateaux. In the classic tradition of Spain, each family could subdivide its lands for its offspring, but had to include the full swath of mountain, foothill, meadow, and scrub and its portion of the riparian corridor. Thus the patterns of land ownership are as a series of narrow strips, sometimes many miles long and but a few hundred feet wide or less. Each owner has a forest watershed and wood source, a foothill pinyon grazing zone, lowland acreage irrigated with the Spanish/Moorish acequia water distribution system, a subirrigated summer hay meadow usually managed as a community commons to keep livestock alive in winter, and open range for hunting. These are not ranchers. Primary food production is a traditional mix of locally adapted varieties of beans, with some local corn, hay, orchards, and other row crops.

Somehow, through dealings with an outside economy that was based on cash instead of beans and corn, the headwater forested portions of the Culebra watershed were secured by outside easterners. There are but two such ranches today that occupy the entire headwaters. The largest is the 256,000 acre Forbes Trinchera ranch, and the other is the 77,500 acre Taylor Ranch. The Taylor Ranch is held by the presidential namesake Zachery Taylor while the Forbes Trinchera Ranch is operated by the Malcolm Forbes family under the direction of a presidential hopeful, Steve Forbes. The Forbes holdings are being managed in a reasonably careful fashion with sustained-yield forestry and enormous elk herds managed for game hunters. The Zachery Taylor family is interested in selling off its holding, but wants to liquidate the largely old-growth subalpine and montane forest first. They are engaged in a 10-year effort to clear out the merchantable timber.

Beanfield wars never really happen. Watershed conflicts do. The farmers of the San Luis Valley depend upon the runoff to keep their alluvial basins full to subirrigate their meadows, and to supply the very long-standing system of irrigation ditches that provide, in essence, the socio-political focus of their entire culture. As shown in the accompanying figure, a handbill published in recent editions of the Costilla County newspaper, LA SIERRA, community interest is high and the public is well informed. These farmers know their watersheds and are concerned. These people have the oldest water rights in the state, recognized at statehood. But they can only use that portion of the 21,000 ac-ft of runoff that persists through the irrigation season, derived from snowmelt and baseflow. Anglo ranchers and interstate water contracts have claimed all the "excess" runoff and storage rights for transport and use along the Rio Grande.

Long records of irrigation kept by the mayordomos and housed in local archives show a significant recent shortening of irrigation season due to lack of late-season water. Colorado has no timber practices act or state regulation. Cutover watersheds appear to lose their snowpack before most irrigated crops are in need of that runoff. Increased early season flows that cannot be used by the local senior water rights holders are claimed and used or sold by later water rights holders and the State. Thus, first-in-time is not first-in-right where watershed characteristics can be manipulated. Headgates are aggrading, ditch capacity is greatly reduced, ditch failures are becoming increasingly common, and farmers are worried.

Costilla County has formed the Costilla County Conservancy District. They are passing ordinances to attempt to control manipulation of watershed runoff characteristics. A foundation has formed to try to purchase the watershed ranchlands and return them to community control. Both efforts need sound professional watershed research and opinion. Preliminary photo-stations and simple water quality measurements have been made on each of the primary Culebra tributaries. More detailed vigil-network style mapping and sediment transport characteristics need to be done. Pebble counts, rephotos, fish and macrobenthic surveys, riparian community surveys, and basic fluvial geomorphology needs to be completed for each tributary where it leaves the private mountain lands. Some long-term baseline data on this and surrounding watersheds were collected by Dave Rosgen several years before I became involved. I cannot carry the effort alone, but am willing to coordinate and work with others who may want to spend as few as 4 field days or as many as two weeks. We need low-flow and spring snowmelt peak (about June 1-10) workers. We also need folks willing to go through irrigation records, synthesize flow records from the two long-term stream gauges and snow survey stations, and basically develop a top professional research team.

There are fascinating problems. All over the west we see evidences of earlier spring snowmelt peaks. Even the Chilean farmers in the Aconcagua Valley are worried. Is this a signal of climatic change? Can we compare the southern Sierra with the Southern Sangre de Cristo? What do the recent floods in Oregon where record flows occurred on the 7 watersheds that were most cut-over in the rain-on-snow zone tell us about cutting in that zone in southernmost Colorado? What will cutting in previously uncut tributaries of the Culebra do to their channels that can be compared with areas cut-over in the past?

The Culebra is not unique, but the ownership and past protection of full mountain regions extending well above tree-line is. The community spirit and deep interest in their watersheds is very rare.

Anyone willing to help is invited to contact me and is encouraged to look at the paper on the State of the Culebra Watershed posted on the Watershed Managment Council homepage. I can be reached at curry@cats.ucsc.edu or through the Watershed Institute at California State University Monterey Bay, Seaside, Calif. 93955.