In southern Arizona’s Tumacacori
Highlands, the tropics meet the desert. Black bears roam
steep canyons and oak-covered hillsides alongside Mexican vine
snakes, cuckoos and jaguars. Located just north of the border, the
region is one of the most biologically diverse in the country.
In September, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., introduced a
bill that would protect more than 80,000 acres of this lush desert
as wilderness. It’s one of 13 wilderness bills in the West that
have been introduced in Congress this year, and it may actually
have a chance of passing. Following seven anemic years for the
Wilderness Act, during which just 3 million acres gained protection
nationwide, a more favorable atmosphere in Washington has
environmentalists licking their chops.
“There’s a whole
lot of activity and a friendlier political climate,” says Jeff
Widen of The Wilderness Society’s Wilderness Support Center. “We
hope to pass through a bunch of bills.”
As of
mid-September, there were more than 35 million acres of proposed
Western wilderness on Congress’ table.
Front-runners
include two bills that came within inches of passing in the last
session of Congress, even with the anti-green Rep. Richard Pombo,
R-Calif., in charge of the House Resources Committee: the
Boulder-White Clouds wilderness in Idaho, pushed by Rep. Mike
Simpson, R, and a proposal to designate nearly 130,000 acres on
Oregon’s Mount Hood and in the Columbia Gorge, sponsored by Sens.
Ron Wyden, D, and Gordon Smith, R, both from Oregon. In Colorado, a
bipartisan effort to up protection on hundreds of thousands of
acres in and around Rocky Mountain National Park also seems poised
to pass. Other realistic proposals are moving forward for New
Mexico and California, and wilderness watchers expect several more
to be introduced in the next few months.
Successful bills
tend to be ones that were originally rooted in local efforts; it
also helps if potential opposition has been smoothed over before
the proposal made it to Congress. “Groups are doing a whole lot of
work on the ground with a complete spectrum of stakeholders to try
to work out differences up front,” says The Wilderness Society’s
Widen. That will always be necessary, he says, no matter how many
Democrats sit in Congress.
And even the staunchest
wilderness advocates admit that sweeping, multimillion-acre
proposals have little chance of passing as written. The 22
million-acre, five-state Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act
and the 9.5 million-acre Red Rock Wilderness Act in Utah, both
pushed at a national level, are likely to languish in committee.
Colorado Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette’s recently introduced 1.6
million acre proposal for her state also faces slim prospects, but
a local group from San Miguel County hopes that by picking out the
portion of the bill that applies to their county and taking it to
Washington, they’ll have a better chance.
Other bills go
through all of the right steps, and then hit roadblocks that have
nothing to do with environmental protection. Congress knocked
Washington’s Wild Sky Wilderness bill around for five years before
the House finally passed it this summer. Then an Oklahoma senator
on an anti-spending crusade put a “hold” on the bill, blocking a
Senate vote. The bill’s not dead, but it could take lengthy debate
to free it up, something a very busy Congress has little time for.
Indeed, a chock-full agenda on Capitol Hill may be the biggest
obstacle to getting more wilderness bills passed this year.
The Tumacacori bill has been “worked, reworked, and
reworked,” according to Grijalva, and even nearby ranchers are on
board. But it still must compete for floor time with all of
Congress’ other concerns. And, even if the wilderness is ultimately
established, it may suffer from illegal border crossers, who often
trample the area on their way into the United States. If they
ignore international borders, after all, they’re not likely to pay
much attention to a wilderness boundary.
Dead
Birds
35,000
Number of bird
carcasses recovered after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
250
Number of those that were bald
eagles.
150,000
Number of eared grebes
and ruddy ducks found dead of mostly unknown causes at California’s
Salton Sea in 1992.
14,000
Number of
birds killed by avian botulism at the Salton Sea in 1996.
1.2 million
Number of European starlings killed
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services in 2005.
158
Number of birds killed by hail in
a single storm in Argentina, 2003.
113
Number of those birds that were Swainson’s hawks.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Two weeks in the West.
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