Reports reveal state of the Santa Rita Ecosystem

For more than three years now Coronado National Forest officials have been working on a new forest plan for the 1.7 million-acre reserve that stretches from the Santa Cruz Valley across deserts and grasslands and mountain ranges into New Mexico — a single document that is supposed to guide the forest for the next 20 years.

The last time the forest’s guiding plan was updated it was the 1980s, and things have changed a bit since then.

For example, the current forest plan, the one built in the 80s, is primarily concerned with the extraction industry’s use of the forest and how best to facilitate that use. In contrast, a preliminary document relating to the new plan released in November admits that these days there’s a “general passion in the surrounding communities for preserving natural landscapes of the Coronado National Forest.”

There are few places on the great forest where this sentiment is more true than here in the Santa Rita Ecosystem.

One of Coronado’s famed sky island mountain ranges, the Santa Rita Mountains east of Green Valley, comprise some 148,425 acres with elevations ranging from rare, semi-desert grasslands at 3,600 feet, up through oak and pine forests and watered, trickling canyons, to the craggy, cold-rock summit of Mount Wrightson at 9,450 feet.

The range is one of the jewels of the Coronado, a forest that is one of the more diverse in the nation. Preliminary documents related to the new forest plan, which could be released in draft form as soon as the summer of 2009, reflect a more scientific approach to land management than existed in the old forest plan. Grasslands and riparian areas need to be protected from overgrazing and invasive species, the documents say, illegal roads need to be closed, natural fires allowed to burn naturally where appropriate, and native species and endangered species must be a priority.

At a recent public meeting, the Coronado’s planning team released a series of documents called “Desired Conditions.” These are meant to be a kind of preamble to the forest plan itself, describing the best-case-scenarios for everything from the health of the forest’s grasslands and riparian areas to what kind of recreation is allowed in certain parts of the forest.

Along with these documents the planners released their preliminary structure for dividing the forest, using for the first times terms like “wild backcountry,” and “roaded backcountry” to define what kind of recreation is allowed where. According to the preliminary documents, ATV recreation — the single most offensive action on the forest to many conservationists — will be disallowed on all but a small portion of the Coronado under the new plan.

“The desired conditions statements paint the picture of how it should be,” said Jennifer Ruyle, the Coronado’s point person on forest planning.

Concurrent with the Forest Service’s reports, the Coronado Planning Partnership, an affiliation of dozens of conservation groups that is following the forest plan process closely, released its own, 268-page report last month.

Entities close

While this report goes further than the Forest Service’s when it comes to planning new Wilderness Areas, requesting new study areas, and generally taking a science- and wildlife-centric view of the Coronado’s future, the most striking thing is how close the two entities’ reports are.

“On the desired conditions we are very close,” said David Hodges, policy direct for the Sky Island Alliance and spokesman for the Coronado Planning Partnership.

In the planning partnership’s report, the Santa Rita Ecosystem is singled out as one of the top bird and wildlife habitats in the forest. One of the top priorities in this and other portions of the Coronado is to keep open space open so that local wildlife has unobstructed paths to move between ecosystems. In an area which, before the housing downturn, was one of fastest growing regions in the state, this hasn’t always been easy.

Interestingly considering the historic enmity between to the two parties, most conservationists today believe that keeping responsible, land-smart ranchers in business is a much better alternative to turning the valley into a series of housing developments.

Most of the smart ranchers recognized many years ago that they needed to manage for drought, Hodges added. Indeed, the grazing guidelines followed by the partnership were “hammered out by a rancher and environmentalist working together,” he said.

“It’s better to have ranching than it is to have housing,” Hodges added.

Not surprisingly, then, the planning partnership decries the long-term plans for a large housing development near the mouth of Madera Canyon.

Border a big issue

Another big issue in this part of the forest, at least among Forest Service planners, is the current border situation. With so many illegal crossers moving through portions of the forest near the border, the ecosystems there have taken a beating from both the migrants and those trying to arrest them. But while the border and its attendant problems are a high priority in the Forest Service planning process, the partnership doesn’t see it as an issue that is going to keep affecting the forest in the same way it does today. It believes that the issue is the result of bad near-term public policy, and that comprehensive immigration reform on the federal level will solve it.

“This wasn’t an issue 20 years ago, and it won’t be one in the future,” Hodges said.

That said, the report recognizes the trouble caused to the ecosystem by the constant coming and going of economic migrants and drug smugglers.

“Illegal alien traffic through the Santa Ritas is significant, leading to trampling of vegetation, and accompanying trash,” the report says. “Campfires have potential for starting forest fires if they are not properly put out as evidenced by the Proctor fire started on June 22, 2007. These threats are exacerbated by the remoteness of much of the area. Impacts of this type of foot travel is different from that of recreational hikers because while recreational hikers generally stay on trails, migrants often cause erosion by taking shortcuts down steep slopes between switchbacks.”

The partnership also comes down against the proposed Rosemont Mine in the Santa Ritas, which needs to lease hundreds of acres of Coronado land to operate.

“The proposed mine threatens water and air quality, recreation opportunities, wildlife and wildlife habitat and economic sustainability on the Santa Rita Ecosystem,” the report says. “The northern portion of the Santa Rita Mountains feeds into the watershed of the Tucson basin and surrounding communities,” the report says.

It goes on to quote the Arizona Game & Fish Department, which said in July that the proposed mine would “render the northern portion of the Santa Rita Mountains virtually worthless as wildlife habitat and as a functioning ecosystem, and thus also worthless for wildlife recreation.”

A big catch

While Coronado officials seem to be embracing a science-centric view of the forest, there’s a big catch in all of this: to scientifically manage an ecosystem as diverse as the Sky Island region’s is, the Coronado needs a budget to match the mission. That’s not likely to happen, however.

The Forest Service budget has been slashed over the last several years, just as the costs for fighting wildfires have soared; the fiscal year 2009 budget floated by the Bush administration was eight percent lower than 2008’s, and five percent lower than 2007’s.

“We anticipate flat budgets for the time being,” Ruyle said. “I think that’s the reality of the economic situation in the country.” What the plan will do is help Coronado officials spend the little money they do have more efficiently, she added.

But these challenging economic times could also be a boon for the nation’s forests if conservationists get their way. In fact, there are several proposals making the rounds among lawmakers right now in anticipation of some kind of large public works stimulus package being passed in the opening days of the Obama administration.

One of these is called the National Forest Watershed Restoration Corps, a plan that would mimic to a degree the old Civilian Conservation Corps of the New Deal era. The plan calls for about $500 million over two years to set up a program to close unneeded and illegal roads and restore “needed natural infrastructure” on the national forests. Such a plan, according to conservation groups, would provide desperately needed employment for rural residents while at the same time restoring some long-suffering ecosystems.

Hodges said that thousands of Americans, especially in the West, could be put to work on thinning projects in the overgrown forests that would make the tinder-dry, diseased, and drought-ravaged forests here less susceptible to catastrophic wildfires.

“The values are shifting,” he said. “People are getting used to certain uses on the forest, and its hard to turn that around.”

But all this cooperation and like-mindedness — a reality that certainly didn’t exist in the 1980s — among government planners and conservationists may be all for naught, at least in the near term.

Litigation may be problem

There is ongoing litigation over the rules used for constructing a forest plan that may end up derailing the whole process, sending everybody if not back to the drawing board then at least back a few steps.

Many environmentalists have always wanted forest planners to use planning rules set down during the Clinton administration, which they see as more scientifically rigorous. Ruyle and her team have been using planning rules set down during the Bush administration. That rule is still being looked at by the courts, and many believe that President Barack Obama may throw out the Bush rules and put the former rules back in favor.

How much of a delay that would cause remains to be seen, but Hodges said he’s skeptical that a draft of the new forest plan will be released by next summer.

Tim Hull is a freelance writer for the Green Valley News. His new guidebook Moon-Arizona is available at area bookstores.