Join author A. Thomas Cole for a talk about Pitchfork Ranch and a reading from Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch: How Healing a Southwest Oasis Holds Promise for Our Endangered Land.

The Pitchfork Ranch is more than another dusty homestead tucked away in a corner of the Southwest. It is a place with a story to tell about the most pressing crisis to confront humankind. It is a place where one couple is working every day to right decades of wrongs. It is a place of inspiration and promise. It is an invitation to join the struggle for a better planet.

Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch tells the story of a decades-long habitat restoration project in southwestern New Mexico. Rancher-owner A. Thomas Cole explains what inspired him and his wife, Lucinda, to turn their retirement into years dedicated to hard work and renewal. The book shares the past and present history of a very special ranch south of Silver City, which is home to a rare type of regional wetland, a fragile desert grassland ecosystem, archaeological sites, and a critical wildlife corridor in a drought-stricken landscape.

Today the 11,300 acres that make up the Pitchfork Ranch provide an important setting for carbon sequestration, wildlife habitats, and space for the reintroduction of endangered or threatened species. Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch weaves together stories of mine strikers, cattle ranching, and the climate crisis into an important and inspiring call to action. For anyone who has wondered how they can help, the Pitchfork Ranch provides an inspiring way forward.

“This book will help spur the imagination of other landowners: ‘how can I help?’ is the most human of questions, and it turns out the answers are manifold!”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

“A. T. Cole is as great a writer as he is a practitioner of stewarding rangelands and their community. In a region currently being devastated by drought, wildfires, and political divisiveness, Tom is not restoring valuable relationships but re-storying the way we relate to the land. Bravo!”—Gary Paul Nabhan, co-author of Agave Spirits: The Past, Present, and Future of Mezcals

"A riveting tale that combines history, advocacy, and how-to, Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch is both a kick-in-the-butt call for individual action on climate change and an inspiring story of what one couple with a passion for restoring the land can accomplish."—Susan J. Tweit, author of Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying“

"A. T. Cole’s book has arrived in desperate times. Cole gives us a road map out of the morass of climate change, species extinctions, and catastrophic soil loss. Using their Pitchfork Ranch as a learning lab, he and Lucinda, his wife, demonstrate how restoring lands and waters can address this trifecta, whether you are urban, suburban, or rural. Critically, it gives us hope for a future where people and land get on better together.”—Richard L. Knight, Colorado State University