EDITOR'S LETTER

This Land Is Your Land
I saw a black bear in the Blue. I was hiking the Steeple Trail, almost 25 years ago, when I heard a deep, throaty sound behind me. I stopped, turned around ... and there it was, about 30 yards away, right in the middle of the trail. She was staring at me — I think it was a female — and grunting. Her behavior wasn’t aggressive. It was just harmless bluster from a nervous bear. I never felt threatened. Instead, I was staring back. Captivated. I’ve seen a lot of bears over the years, but that was my first encounter in Arizona. It was thrilling. And also unexpected.

With hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see her. The Blue Range Primitive Area is bear country, a land of rugged mountains, steep canyons and stark ridges. It’s also been described as “a chaotic mass of very precipitous hills.” Or, as Kelly Vaughn so beautifully writes in The Blue, “the state’s most unsullied landscape — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s forest primeval made real by murmuring pines so dense that, once in them, you find yourself swallowed by their long shadows.”

Although it’s remote, and seemingly untouchable, the Blue is uniquely vulnerable. In 1933, it was one of 63 areas in the United States to be protected as “primitive.” That was the ultimate protection at the time. Three decades later, in 1964, the Wilderness Act took those safeguards to an even higher level. Eventually, all but one of the primitive areas in America were elevated to wilderness status. The only one left out was the Blue.

In her story, Kelly recounts the bureaucratic history of the area. More importantly, she looks to the future of the Blue. Specifically, she examines the environmental threats to a place where Aldo Leopold began formulating his “land ethic.” It was a philosophy that called for a new relationship between people and nature — an  “ecological conscience” — and set the stage for the modern conservation movement. If you want to know how special the Blue is, think about how it inspired Mr. Leopold. Time will tell if it ever gets wilderness protection. It probably won’t, but 200 miles to the northwest, just south of Flagstaff, a coalition of citizens is getting closer to their dream of protecting one of the most beautiful canyons in the Southwest.

As Annette McGivney writes in For Land’s Sake: “Walnut Canyon meanders through wild country that harbors sparse roads and rare stands of old-growth ponderosa pines, as well as a rich riparian area filled with the canyon’s namesake Arizona walnut trees. Pronghorns roam the open, grassy plateaus. And tucked away in Walnut’s 400-foot-tall cliffs are dozens of ancient archaeological sites.”

The most important cliff dwellings are protected in the 3,580-acre Walnut Canyon National Monument, “but the scenic, ecological and archaeological resources of the canyon extend well beyond the park boundaries.” That’s why Ralph Baierlein, a retired Harvard physics professor, is spearheading a grassroots movement to protect the entire canyon. “This is Flagstaff’s canyon,” he says. “It is a unique and special place that is a recreation resource for the whole city.”

The coalition’s original goal was to establish a national park, but the study area didn’t meet the necessary guidelines. It did, however, pass the test for a national conservation area, which is defined as offering “exceptional scientific, cultural, ecological, historical and recreation values.” At press time, the coalition was reaching out to members of Arizona’s congressional delegation to see if any of them would sponsor a bill. If somebody does, and if the bill passes, Walnut Canyon will join San Pedro Riparian, Gila Box Riparian and Las Cienegas as the only national conservation areas in Arizona.

Like the Blue, time will tell. Meanwhile, not far from Las Cienegas, there’s another special place that’s already gotten its protection. In fact, it’s been 30 years since the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge was established to protect an area of grasslands and wetlands, and a gorgeous sycamore-shaded canyon. Jack Dykinga calls the refuge our state’s version of the Serengeti. In The Grass Is Always Greener ..., you’ll see why. It’s a beautiful portfolio that shows the effect of summer monsoons on Southern Arizona. As our photographer says, when the rains come, “the Buenos Aires explodes with color.”

In addition to the landscape, the refuge was created for the reintroduction of masked bobwhite quails, which had been extirpated from the United States. Pronghorns have been reintroduced, too. There’s a lot of wildlife in the refuge. Some of the more common species are mule deer, Coues white-tailed deer, foxes, bobcats, javelinas, four types of skunks, ringtails, coatimundis and mountain lions. On extremely rare occasions, even jaguars have been spotted in the rugged west end of the refuge.

Although I’ve never been lucky enough to see a jaguar in the wild, I have seen a lot of bears, including a black bear in the Blue. I was staring at her. She was staring at me. And somewhere, I think, Aldo Leopold was smiling.
 

COMING IN AUGUST ...
Next month, we apply our “Best of Arizona” label to the landscapes of every county in the state. In addition, we’ll tell you about Mexican wolves on White Mountain Apache land and show you what a California condor looks like up close.