Proposed Energy Line Threatened Trinchera Ranch

In 2007 the infamous Forbes family sold their Trinchera ranch to hedge fund master Louis Moore Bacon. Despite becoming one of the most successful financiers of our time, Louis Bacon shuns the limelight and media attention, instead preferring to focus on his other passion - conservation.

With several landscapes across New York, North Carolina, and Colorado Bacon has permanently saved these lands from the risk of development and degradation. Louis Bacon founded the Moore Charitable Foundation to help with preserving the land and waterways of these properties, maintaining a plush landscape for locals to enjoy and wildlife to live on. However the Trinchera Ranch, with its 81,400 acres is by far the biggest addition to his conservation collection.

Preferring to work outside of the spotlight, Louis genuinely loves conservation and caring for the lands of his country, building a greener future for the next generation. This is apparent by the ferociousness with which he defends his conservation projects, whilst supporting other like minded charities, all without the recognition from the media. He's not doing it to make himself look good; conservation has been a passion of Louis Bacon for his whole life, now he's in the fortunate position to make a difference he's throwing all he can into it.

Speaking about his purchase Louis Bacon made a rare statement: “I was looking for a large landscape that had different ecosystems within it, and this was the pièce de résistance.”

However not long after the sale was completed the ranch was under threat from Xcel Energy and Tri-State Generation & Transmission, who wanted to erect a man-made energy transmission line, complete with 150 foot metal structures spreading across the 17 miles of the Trinchera landscape; almost certainly killing the habitat of several wildlife groups who relied on the Trinchera ranch space.

Louis Bacon wanted to understand the need and the benefit of this proposed work; he put together a team of experts to carry out an independent investigation on whether the power lines would carry green-only energy (as Xcel Energy and Tri-State Generation & Transmission had claimed) and what the impact this work would have on the local residents, the environment, and the wildlife. Speaking about this initial probe, Louis Bacon said: “Initially I just wanted to see if this was a battle that made sense for us to fight. pretty quickly it became apparent that “the line made no sense at all.” So he started proceedings to prevent the work from going ahead.

The case brought much attention to the publicity shy owner of Moore Capital Management, something he was uncomfortable with, however the public quickly learned about his philanthropy, and almost 20 years of conservation work, not to mention tens of millions of dollars donated to other environmental groups.

When the public learned he was fighting their corner they soon rallied round and showed their support for Bacon. Through his investigation he learned several things which made him more determined to do what was right for the land, and its residents "Xcel had already met its renewable energy mandate with the state and that the line, which hadn’t even gone through an environmental impact study, would in fact most likely not even carry any “green” energy at all. The more we looked into it, the more we felt like Erin Brockovich. The only reason they wanted to build the line was to make more money, it had nothing to do with public interest.” Bacon found out that the companies were promised a double-digit rate of return on the project, with zero percent interest rates.

The energy companies fought back Bacon's claims; however after a 3 year battle Louis Bacon won after Xcel announced its intention to retire from the project.