Cindy Tolle is a biologist, an environmental chemist, and a mother with decades of ranching experience across the West. At the Diamond E. Ranch in Cochise County, Arizona, Cindy, along with her family and her team, Steven and Angie Terrell, approach their work first and foremost as land stewards. Their multi-generational endeavor has US ranch hubs in the Midwest (267 acres in MO, 443 acres in KS) and the Black Hills (1,700 acres in SD), and with the Diamond E. Ranch, they are building their latest hub in the Southwest. 

The cattle raised on the ranch are Criollo, a desert-adapted species, and are a part of their Audubon-certified heritage beef supply chain for Evergreen Ranching and Diamond E. Beef. Criollo are perfect for this drought-prone area due to their efficient forage conversion, water use, breedback, and mothering qualities. The Criollo on this ranch will support the testing of intensive, regenerative grazing employing virtual fencing paddocks through a collaboration with the Jornada Experimental Range and the Sustainable Southwest Beef Project based out of New Mexico State University.

Diamond E. Ranch is a native grassland and rangeland ecosystem at the foothills of the Swisshelm mountains and part of the Central Flyway adjacent to the Leslie Canyon Fish & Wildlife Refuge corridor to the east and Whitewater Draw Wildlife Refuge to the west. With the purchase of this ranch, Cindy is preserving a vital piece of the ecologically critical ecosystem where the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts meet. Dozens of rare species, including the Chiricauhua Leopard Frog, Yaqui Chub, Yaqui Top Minnow, and Mexican Long Nosed Bat, as well as over 400 species of bees and 270 species of birds (including the Elegant Trogan) depend on the habitat. Cindy’s team focuses on riparian and grassland habitat restoration through conservation water management tactics such as seasonal rain capture using rock detention structures and earthen berms. Under Cindy’s stewardship, the ranch will become certified organic and an Audubon Conservation Ranch.

Supporting ranchers like Cindy in undertaking projects of this scale which enable permanent land conservation is central to our vision of impact-driven financing at Iroquois Valley. The protection of the ranch from development through easements is only made possible through our collaborative financing efforts with Dirt Capital Partners and Cindy’s partnerships with numerous conservation groups. The lead conservation collaborators are The Conservation Fund, with additional partners including NRCS, The Nature Conservancy, US Fish & Wildlife, Arizona Game and Fish, and the Department of Defense at Fort Huachuca. 

Diamond E. Ranch is considered a Grassland of Special Significance by NRCS and is within US Fort Huachuca’s priority easement acquisition area. Our collaborative financing endeavor is providing Cindy with the critical support necessary to permanently conserve an environmentally resilient desert grasslands in the Central Flyway of southeastern Arizona for generations to come.