The following Covenant, adopted from the Saguaro-Juniper Covenant, applies to CCA’s hermitage land, but not to CCA’s Baicatcan land.
In acquiring private governance of land, we agree to cherish its earth, waters, plants, and animals in a way that promotes the health, stability, and diversity of the whole community. This entails attentive stillness to meet and know the land as an active presence. It entails study, observation, shared reflection, and cumulative corporate experience to increase and bequeath our understanding of ecosystem health, stability, and diversity. It entails symbiotic naturalization into the land community – a communion of actual nurture and shelter. As elaborated by these entailments, fully accountable governance – stewardship – is the distinctively human way of bonding into one society with all who share in the land’s life, which is the foundation for instituting a biocentric ethic among humankind.
1. The land has a right to be free of human activity that accelerates erosion.
2. Native plants and animals on the land have a right to life with a minimum of human disturbance.
3. The land has the right to evolve its own character from its own elements without scarring from construction or the importation of foreign objects dominating the scene.
4. The land has a pre-eminent right to the preservation of its unique and rare constituents and features.
5. The land, its water, rocks, and minerals, its plants and animals, and their fruits and harvest have a right never to be rented, sold, extracted, or exported as mere commodities.
Some Specific Applications of the Saguaro-Juniper Covenant to CCA Land
The following shall be among the Saguaro-Juniper Covenant practices for the Cascabel Conservation Association land in Sections 1 and 12 (T13S, R19E), subject to consensual amendment by covenant-community participants and to recognition that emergencies or other special circumstances can entail exceptions:
1. No hunting, shooting, poisoning, or trapping.Predators and wild herbivores are protected, even if they attack livestock or other domesticated animals or eat gardens or orchards, unless there is reason to believe they are rabid. Poisonous reptiles are protected.*
2. No pesticides, and no dumping or storing of toxins.*
3. No chainsaws, engine-driven generators, or other mechanical noise-makers.*
4. No access for electric lines.*
5. No off-road motorized travel.*
6. No new roads.*
7. No use of heavy equipment to maintain existing roads.*
8. Motor vehicle access to Section 1 shall be limited to caretakers and sojourners.
9. The road from the “high point” in Section 1 southward through the NE Quarter of Section 12 and the road from the windmill area up to the high point in the NE Quarter of Section 12 shall be closed to motor vehicles. Erosion control and revegetation shall be adapted to the roads’ continued use as paths for walkers, riders and bicyclists.
10. Motor vehicle use on the remaining road in the W Half of Section 1 (open only to caretakers and sojourners) shall be limited to 2:00-4:00 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9:45 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. Sunday. This road shall be closed June 24-September 21 and at other times when it is likely to be used by desert tortoises.
11. Any dogs brought onto the land shall be enclosed or (when walked) on a leash, shall be kept inside at night, and shall never be left alone.*
12. All inorganic garbage shall be taken away for disposal.*
13. The land shall not be subdivided, except as may be specified by contract provisions at the time it is acquired.*
14. At least 40 acres shall be allocated for each sojourner who stays overnight or longer.*
15. Tents, small ramadas, straw bale and pit houses are generally the preferred kinds of shelter.
16. Technological processes or materials used for building should be mutually enhancing to the human/earth relationship. The shelter should not intrude on nature, nor distract from the natural world, but should help to lead us and encourage us into a closer relationship with and understanding of the natural world. The materials used should also ‘rot down nicely.’ These discriminations shall be as determined by the CCA Land Committee.
17. Hermitages or shelters shall be no larger internally than 225 square feet and shall be located and designed to be inconspicuous. A ramada no larger than 100 square feet may be added.*
* Indicates items which run with the land as part of a conservation easement held by The Nature Conservancy and on file with the Cochise County Recorder.
As it applies to the CHA land, the Saguaro-Juniper Covenant does not preclude symbiotically integrative activities that support, restore, and strengthen the larger community (for example, constructing rock-wedge catchments to slow run-off and hold silt) and that balance takings with givings (for example, planting mormon tea to compensate for pastoral uses that compete with the land’s use by native herbivores).
The Saguaro-Juniper Covenant’s preamble and principles establish a common ground for group discussion and deliberation. They are to function primarily as queries that guide decision-making, not as conclusions that override deliberations.
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