Covenant
The following Covenant, adopted from the Saguaro-Juniper Covenant, applies to the Cascabel Hermitage Association land:
Note: Saguaro-Juniper is another association subscribing to the Covenant. For more information, click here to go to the Saguaro-Juniper website.
THE SAGUARO-JUNIPER COVENANT PREAMBLE
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.
THE SAGUARO-JUNIPER COVENANT PRINCIPLES
(A Bill of Rights for the Land)
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 THE CASCABEL HERMITAGE ASSOCIATION LAND
The following shall be among the Saguaro-Juniper Covenant practices for the
Cascabel Hermitage 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 [asterisk
(*) indicates covenant which runs with the land (and on file with the Cochise
County Recorder)]:
1. No hunting, shooting, poisoning, or trapping.
a. 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.*
b. The possession and use of firearms by caretakers for humane slaughter and
for humane killing of sick or injured animals is excepted.
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 CHA 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.