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Wilderness
Character at the Crossroads
- The Cabeza Prieta
— By TinaMarie Ekker
It
is a dry land, hot and searing under the summer sun along the Mexican
border in southern Arizona. Stone basins in the burnt rock gather
precious rainwater, drawing all winged and four-footed creatures
to the hidden moisture meccas, and sometimes two-legged creatures
as well. Heat can be seen in the dessicated air. Perception changes,
and visions form here as dehydration stirs new mythologies in
the human brain.
This is the Cabeza Prieta Wilderness. At 803,418 acres it encompasses
93% of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), making
it the largest refuge Wilderness in the lower 48 states.
It is a basin and range landscape, with wide alluvial valleys divided
by narrow mountain escarpments of granite and basalt. Cabeza Prieta
feels remote; the nearest city is Tucson, Arizona, several hours
to the north. There are no paved roads leading to the refuge, and
most access requires four-wheel-drive.
The Wilderness receives 3 to 9 inches of rainfall a year and this
factor more than any other has deterred civilization and kept Cabeza
wild. Temperatures in this hard, dry-boned land can reach 130o and
this truth expands space and distance exponentially for a human
on foot. At Cabeza, silence can be felt as a presence and a pressure
palpable against one’s thoughts.
This place is home to coyote, cougar, desert bighorn sheep, rattlesnake,
scorpion, endangered lesser long-nosed bat, chuckwalla, Gila monster,
ringtail cat, endangered Sonoran pronghorn antelope, fringe-toed
lizard, Sphinx moth, and kangaroo rat. At mid-day turkey vultures
float suspended against sharp light; at evening, nighthawks dip
and swerve in the gathering darkness, slicing through silence with
the sudden whir of angled wings. More than 200 bird species find
haven here in small hollows carved between Saguaro ribs, in the
dusty green tangle of ironwood and palo verde trees, and atop the
slender stems of ocotillo and the aromatic branches of creosote
bushes.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) manages the Cabeza Prieta.
The agency is preparing to write an EIS and Comprehensive Conservation
Plan (CCP) that will guide management direction at Cabeza for the
next 15 years (see Refuge Planning). Public scoping began in April
and preliminary comments will be accepted until the Draft is written.
The FWS has determined that an EIS is necessary due to the national
significance of wilderness resources on the Cabeza Prieta. An earlier
draft document issued in 1997 was seriously challenged by Wilderness
Watch and we are pleased that the FWS has decided to start again
with a greater emphasis on the unique value of wilderness.
The agency has formally stated that the new Cabeza plan should exemplify
“the best the Service can do for wilderness.” This planning
process will therefore be watched closely by managers at the 83
other wildlife refuges that have designated wilderness. The outcome
of the Cabeza Prieta CCP will be a strong indicator of the FWS’s
commitment to wilderness protection.
Demonstrating such a commitment will require the FWS to make major
changes in current management activities at Cabeza. It will also
require the agency to step forward and assert strong leadership
in encouraging some habit changes among several other agencies as
well, most notably the Arizona Game & Fish Department, the U.S.
Border Patrol, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Drug
Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Defense. The most
significant change that would immediately defend the timeless quiet
and wilderness character of Cabeza Prieta would be for all these
agencies to stop driving motor vehicles within the wilderness.
Federal and state agency personnel routinely drive through the wilderness
on what the FWS calls “administrative roads.” These “roads”
are dirt tracks that easily become widened by regular use. Congress
did not approve these “roads” at the time of wilderness
designation and therefore they have no legislative validity. The
Wilderness Act clearly requires that, subject to existing private
rights, there shall be no permanent road and no use of motor vehicles,
motorized equipment, or temporary roads within wilderness except
as necessary to meet minimum requirements for administration of
the area for its purpose as wilderness.
Refuge staff and state game agency personnel drive hundreds of miles
each year inside the wilderness to monitor rain gauges, conduct
research, and service a couple dozen artificial water developments.
These tanks and “guzzlers” were originally constructed
to aid recovery of desert bighorn sheep in the region. This was
a primary purpose for establishing the refuge in 1939. The bighorn
population has sufficiently recovered to the point where a few hunting
permits are now issued annually. No conclusive evidence indicates
that water developments are necessary to support bighorns at natural
population levels. The FWS also admits these water developments
do not appear essential for the endangered Sonoran pronghorn either,
yet staff continue to drive inside the wilderness hauling water
to the guzzlers.
Other unregulated driving also occurs within the wilderness. The
Cabeza Prieta is a borderland, and at night two-legged coyotes cross
the invisible boundary between the U.S. and Mexico to illegally
guide poor, desperate, and hopeful immigrants northward. Drug runners
slip across the line also, relying on the seemingly empty desert
to hide their activities. Some of these clandestine visitors attempt
to cross the arid terrain on foot, but many others are picked up
by waiting vehicles and driven through wilderness across open desert
valleys. Some are even picked up by aircraft that land undetected
within the Sonoran solitude. In response, various federal law enforcement
agencies also motor through the wilderness conducting patrols and
hot pursuits both on and off the “administrative roads.”
Scars from all this vehicular traffic are clearly evident, and do
not heal readily in such a dry land.
Additional challenges are threatening to dwindle the expansive wild
character that has defined Cabeza Prieta for centuries. The Department
of Defense (DOD) has congressional authority to conduct certain
military activities at Cabeza including low elevation training flights
over the wilderness, air gunnery practice with live fire, and placement
and maintenance of military ground instrumentation within the wilderness.
These activities all impact the untrammeled quality, natural quiet,
and wilderness character of the area as well as cause potential
stress to wildlife, especially the endangered Sonoran pronghorn
during fawning season. Removal of military debris such as tow darts
is also a wilderness issue at Cabeza that must be addressed in the
new CCP.
The FWS has an agency vision statement called “Fulfilling the
Promise.” This statement calls for elevating the stature of
all refuge wilderness and acknowledging wilderness as a unique resource
within the refuge system. The new Cabeza Prieta CCP offers the FWS
an opportunity to fulfill this promise and protect the wilderness
character of a truly vast, quiet, and starkly beautiful land.
Refuge Wilderness in the New Conservation Century
— By Jamie Rappaport Clark, Director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service
When it comes to saving wilderness, no federal land base is better
suited for the job than the National Wildlife Refuge System, the only
network of lands dedicated first and foremost to wildlife. The System’s
525 wildlife refuges and its thousands of prairie wetlands protect
millions of migratory birds, hundreds of endangered species, many
of the nation’s flagship fisheries, and many of the plants found
on the American landscape. Its 93 million acres span a wide range
of habitats, from ocean to marshland to desert, from mountain to prairie,
and from the Arctic tundra to the southern bayou; 20 million acres
of this habitat is designated as wilderness, most of it in Alaska.
Protecting and managing wilderness is a natural extension of the wildlife
conservation mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the
Refuge System. As places “where the earth and its community of
life are untrammeled by man,” wilderness lands are reservoirs
of environmental health and biological diversity and integrity. They
are places for peaceful reflection and reinvigoration of the human
spirit. They are natural wonderlands where Americans can find the
challenge of recreation. They are reminders to all Americans of our
natural heritage, and they are bridges for all people to the greater
community of life to which we all belong.
The Service is committed to demonstrating national leadership in wilderness
protection. We have a proud leadership tradition in this area. Two
former Service employees, Olaus Murie and Howard Zahniser, helped
spearhead the wilderness movement. It seems only natural, therefore,
for the Service to build on this history and re-emerge as a national
leader in wilderness stewardship. The groundwork to do so was set
in the National Wildlife Refuge System’s vision document, “Fulfilling
the Promise,” in which the Service dedicates itself to wilderness
conservation leadership. Our commitment to this cause has grown through
the recent wilderness battles that we have won at Arctic, Izembek,
and Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuges.
To become even stronger, we have taken steps to improve our wilderness
stewardship program. I have directed that new wilderness reviews be
conducted on all Refuge System lands not previously reviewed and that
wilderness stewardship be fully incorporated as refuges develop comprehensive
conservation plans. I expect that we will begin to see new wilderness
recommendations this year.
Additionally, new Service policies are being developed to guide refuge
managers in the practice of wilderness stewardship. Refuge managers
are being asked to consider the effects of management actions on wilderness
character. The Service is developing innovative strategies that provide
for the needs of wildlife while keeping wilderness landscapes wild
and free.
Further, all Service employees with wilderness responsibilities are
completing wilderness-stewardship training. This training will ensure
that our employees are knowledgeable about the National Wilderness
Preservation System, Service policies on wilderness stewardship, and
the best wilderness-protection management practices. The Service is
also expanding its support for the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness
Training Center and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute,
two interagency efforts that have a vital role in preparing our workforce
for the wilderness challenges that lie ahead.
Certainly, we have had our share of failure and disappointment in
the management of wilderness. We need to face our shortcomings squarely,
and we will. The Service is committed to making the Refuge System
the model of wilderness stewardship that Murie and Zahniser envisioned.
How will history remember us at the dawn of a new millennium? I believe
it will be more for what we leave of the land, rather than what we
build on it. As our nation and our cities grow, so too does the desire
of Americans for more and more open space. The Refuge System safeguards
the best of America’s wide open spaces, keeping lands wild as
a natural legacy to pass on to our children.
Wilderness
Character
— By Roger Kaye, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
. . . each agency administering any area designated as wilderness
shall be responsible for preserving the wilderness character of the
area and shall so administer such area for such other purposes for
which it may have been established as also to preserve its wilderness
character. [emphasis added] — Section 4 (b), The Wilderness
Act of 1964
Preserving “Wilderness character” is one of our criteria
for judging the appropriateness of potential management actions, public
uses, and technologies in Wilderness. Thus, we need to know what it
is. We need a sense of how tangible and intangible attributes of a
landscape converge to shape wilderness character, and how our actions
may diminish or enhance this elusive but definitive quality.
At its core, wilderness character, like personal character, is much
more than a physical condition. It is an unseen presence capable of
refocusing our perception of nature and our relationship to it. It
is that quality that lifts our connection to a landscape from the
utilitarian, commodity orientation that dominates the major part of
our relationship with nature to the symbolic realm serving other human
needs.
This transcendent function of wilderness character is recognized in
the legislative history written by the Wilderness Act’s chief
author, Howard Zahniser:
We deeply need the humility to know ourselves as the dependent members
of a great community of life, and this can indeed be one of the spiritual
benefits of a wilderness experience. Without the gadgets, the inventions,
the contrivances whereby men have seemed to establish among themselves
an independence of nature, without these distractions, to know the
wilderness is to know a profound humility, to recognize one’s
littleness, to sense dependence and interdependence, indebtedness,
and responsibility.
— The Need for Wilderness Areas, 1956
Wilderness serves an ancestral impulse – found throughout time
and across cultures – to set some places apart as the embodiment
of an ideal. The wilderness ideal is the need for places where we
can know ourselves as part of something beyond our modern society
and its inventions and conventions, something more timeless and universal.
Wilderness character is not preserved by our compliance with wilderness
legislation and regulation alone. It emerges from the circumstances
we impose upon ourselves. It emerges from the decisions we make that
test our commitment to our ideals. Every management decision against
an action or technology that might degrade the wilderness condition
serves to uphold and strengthen the character it is seen to have.
Every decision to forgo actions, technologies, or conveniences that
have no seeming physical impact, but detract from our commitment to
wilderness as a place set apart enhances wilderness and agency character
because sacrifice for an ideal is the strongest gesture of respect.
The Wilderness Act provides guidance for such decisions. But beyond
its listing of certain allowed and prohibited uses, much ambiguity
remains. Like the stewards of the Saint Paul Cathedral, Arlington
Cemetery, or the Viet Nam Memorial, we have few objective criteria,
and no standard metric with which to quantify or evaluate actions
that enhance or detract from the character of our nation’s natural
sacred places. This is the unique challenge of wilderness management,
preserving what is unseen and unmeasurable.
Zahniser’s words suggest that chief among our criteria should
be the purpose of the action, the spirit in which it is carried out,
and the effect it will have on our way of thinking. Will the action
reinforce the primacy of our uses and benefits, our convenience and
expediency? Or will it serve to affirm our role as humble, respectful
guests of the landscape? As the criteria we choose shapes the character
of wilderness, so it shapes our character as stewards.
Wallace Stegner called Wilderness America’s “geography of
hope” – the hope for an undiminished future. Nowhere is
this ideal expressed more visibly than in those remnant landscapes
we allow to be wild and free. Free of our tendency to dominate and
thus free to inspire thinking beyond the boundary of our life and
lifetime. This convergence of vision and restraint is the source and
symbolism of wilderness character. It is that quality that transcends
physical boundaries to touch the millions who will never come, but
who find inspiration and hope just in knowing some places are –
and will always be – wild and free.
Designation
Story - Great Swamp Wilderness
— By Bill Worf
The Great Swamp Wilderness, established in 1968, is approximately
3,750 acres within the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New
Jersey, located 25 miles west of New York City. The proximity of
an area with wilderness characteristics within sight of the Big
Apple makes it truly unique. Bottomlands and low ridges covered
with deciduous trees and brush provide habitat for deer, many smaller
animals and 175 species of birds.
This was the first wilderness proposal submitted to Congress by
the FWS after passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. As Wilderness
Coordinator for the Forest Service I followed submission proposals
by other agencies with keen interest since our own wilderness management
policies and philosophies were still maturing. I wanted to see how
other agencies were dealing with these issues and how Congress was
responding.
The FWS had selected the Great Swamp as its pilot submission in
order to set clear legislative direction that would recognize the
special management needs in refuges. Refuge managers were concerned
that wilderness designations might unduly restrain wildlife management
activities. With the Great Swamp proposal the FWS hoped to get Congress’s
concurrence that it was not under the same constraints as the FS.
The written proposal contained the following innocent sounding language:
…. Nature trails will be maintained to encourage continued
use for education and recreation… The wilderness aspects…
can best be accomplished by reestablishing pristine conditions through
restoration of the natural swamp and marsh. Planned management objectives
encourage the use of the refuge by fall and spring migrations of
dabbling ducks, and include emphasis on local duck production. Attainment
of these objectives will require construction of low plugs to retain
floodwaters, overcoming the effects of previous drainage. Wilderness
classification must recognize these minor management requirements
which eventually will blend in with the landscape.
The House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs held a hearing
on the proposal June 3, 1968 in conjunction with a Forest Service
wilderness proposal. FS Chief Ed Cliff and I were there. John Gottschalk,
Director of the FWS, testified in support of the Great Swamp proposal.
Committee members pressed for details about what kinds of management
actions were proposed. As I recall, besides the low plugs to retain
floodwaters, a toilet would be built which would be maintained and
serviced by FWS motor vehicles, board walks would be constructed
to facilitate management and recreation use, and low level helicopter
flights would be used to count water fowl.
Some members were pretty tough on Mr. Gottschalk. It was clear they
did not believe the actions proposed were consistent with the concept
of wilderness. Congressman John Saylor, who first introduced and
guided the original Wilderness bill through Congress, seemed especially
troubled by plans for a toilet, board walk and the use of helicopters.
When the Director made his pitch for using helicopters to count
waterfowl, Congressman Saylor said, “If you use helicopters
to count ducks I’ll take your duck counting money away from
you!” I still chuckle at his reply to the Service’s plan
to provide visitors with a toilet in the Wilderness. Saylor asked
what the farthest was that a person could get from a road. When
told “less than 2 miles” he quipped, “If people can
walk a mile for a Camel (a popular add in those days for a cigarette
maker) they should be able to walk two miles to take a crap!”
On June 27, 1968 the FWS Director made the following points in a
letter to Honorable Walter S. Baring, Chairman, House Subcommittee
on the Public Lands:
Dear Mr. Baring,
During the June 3 hearings on H.R. 16771...questions arose as to
whether or not the kinds of development proposed for the Great Swamp
Refuge were acceptable under the Wilderness Act… This letter
is an attempt to clarify the issue as it relates to units of the
National Wildlife Refuge System, and to suggest the alternatives
that might provide a means of resolving the problem....
It is clear that those measures needed for proper administration,
for example, are permissible, but there are no statutory guidelines
in those portions of the Wilderness Act that apply to refuges, as
to the extent of approvable measures for accommodating public use.
How the public is to be accommodated is of particular importance
in the refuge system since many wilderness areas in refuges will
be relatively small. Consequently, public use will have a more noticeable
impact than in the characteristically large wilderness units in
national forests. Because of these considerations, we have held
to the view that certain developments within wilderness areas on
units of the Refuge System would be necessary, but would be limited
to the following situations:
1. Where necessary to permit proper administration of the area.
(Trails for patrol and fire suppression).
2. Where necessary to restore or maintain the primitive character
of parts of designated wilderness. (Low head dikes for water control).
3. Where necessary to channel public use into definite patterns
to prevent the spoiling of natural areas by excessive and uncontrolled
public use. (Footpaths and minimum sanitary facilities).
Further, it has been our view that no development of any kind would
be planned or installed unless there were a clear showing that there
were no other means, such as “offsite” location of developments…
It is our belief that recognition of the problem posed by the application
of the Wilderness Act to the Wildlife Refuge System calls for legislative
consideration of the characteristics and management requirements
of each area proposed for inclusion in the wilderness system. While
we recognize and support the basic principles on which wilderness
area concepts are based, we urge that these be applied in such a
manner that individual differences and special problems of the smaller
areas are identified and treated individually.
Referring specifically to the Great Swamp wilderness proposal, there
appear to be two alternatives:
1. Permit minimum development. This would involve acceptance of
the proposals made by the Department in its submission on Great
Swamp… We can only reiterate our belief that it is through
such a policy, and only such a policy, that the full benefits of
the Wilderness Act can be made to apply to the National Wildlife
Refuge System as we believe is indicated in section 4 (a).
2. No development. As applied to the Great Swamp National Wildlife
Refuge, a policy of no development for the areas classified for
wilderness status under H.R. 16771 would be acceptable to the Department.
We do not believe it would be necessary to build any public use
or wildlife enhancement facilities….
Sincerely yours,
JOHN S. GOTTSCHALK
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