Throughout the 1990s, Carlos worked with a ranching family in Coconino County, Arizona, to sell approximately 8,000 acres of forested ranchland, including 1,500 acres of wetlands and associated water rights, to the United States Forest Service for wildlife conservation purposes. Funding was secured over a three year period through Congressional appropriations to the U.S. Land and Water Conservation Fund.

In the late 1990s, Carlos began representing a second Arizona ranching family by asking the U.S. Congress to pass legislation to authorize the exchange of approximately 50,000 acres of fee land in Yavapai County for numerous tracts of land administered by the United States Forest Service. In 2005, Congress finally passed the Northern Arizona Land Exchange and Verde River Basin Partnership Act, Public Law 109-110, to facilitate this land exchange.