NATURE

CANOEING GILA BOX CANYON

In 1826 James Ohio Pattie, a Kentucky frontiersman, and a group of mountain men trekked the 600-mile length of the Gila River from its headwaters in New Mexico to its confluence with the Colorado near present-day Yuma. Beaver were so abundant, Pattie's men subsisted largely on the meat of the animals they trapped. In places the deep Gila waters forced Pattie to construct a boat to cross the river. Today the Gila, reduced by dams, water table depletion, and irrigation diversions, would be mostly unfamiliar to Pattie and his men.

But there is one stretch that remains free-flowing, resembling the natural landscape Pattie knew. It's in a canyon called the Gila Box.

My wife, Mollie, and I are standing on a hill overlooking the end of the canyon where Bonita Creek joins the Gila River. It was here, more than a century and a half ago, that James Ohio Pattie killed a grizzly bear. The huge bruins have long since vanished from the Southwest.

From our hilltop vantage point, we survey the river to determine its navigability. We plan to park our pickup at Bonita Creek, drag a canoe upstream to the upper end of the Gila Box, and then float back to our starting point. During the height of spring runoff, the turbulent Gila would be difficult to run in an open canoe; during low water periods, it would be too shallow. We have arrived between these extremes, and the river waits to accommodate us.

The Gila Box is managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and remains relatively unspoiled. Its scenery, wildlife habitats, and other attributes had prompted the BLM's Safford District Office to include the area in a study of lands that might be added to the National Wilderness System. As it turned out, the Gila Box was the most controversial of the nine areas investigated. Opposition came from off-road vehicle users, ranchers, and resource development interests, such as mineral, power, and oil companies.

Off-road vehicle users feared being displaced because wilderness areas prohibit motorized access. Ranchers worried that various range developments, such as pipelines and large fencing projects that could improve livestock usage and management efficiency, would be limited. Mining companies expressed concern that mineral deposits would be out of reach in a wilderness area.

Supporters included the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which said that wilderness designation would "benefit wildlife and wildlife habitat." The Arizona Game and Fish Department called the Gila Box the "last significant free-flowing, undeveloped river in Arizona" and concluded that "wilderness status for this unique area is the best means to insure long-term protection." Jim Norton, Southwest regional director of the Wilderness Society, described the Gila Box Canyon as "the most remarkable BLM area in Arizona."

Even though the agency noted in its study that the Gila Box met all of the requirements for wilderness designation, including "outstanding opportunities for solitude, a diversity of plants and animals, outstanding scenery, opportunities for primitive recreation, and riparian vegetation uncommon to the Southwestern United States," the agency recommended against wilderness designation. The BLM maintained it could "protect wilderness values" while simultaneously allowing offroad vehicle usage and geothermal and mineral development in the area. BLM also said rehabilitating the area would be more difficult under wilderness designation restrictions.

requirements for wilderness designation, including "outstanding opportunities for solitude, a diversity of plants and animals, outstanding scenery, opportunities for primitive recreation, and riparian vegetation uncommon to the Southwestern United States," the agency recommended against wilderness designation. The BLM maintained it could "protect wilderness values" while simultaneously allowing offroad vehicle usage and geothermal and mineral development in the area. BLM also said rehabilitating the area would be more difficult under wilderness designation restrictions.

The issue essentially was resolved when the state's Congressional delegation reached a consensus early this year on designating the site a Riparian National Conservation Area, and the House of Representatives approved such a measure. At this writing, the bill was pending before the Senate, but was expected to pass. A riparian conservation area designation allows motorized access on selected roads and is less restrictive in other ways than a wilderness area. But the legislation directs the BLM to manage the land for the protection and enhancement of its riparian values. It also authorizes the federal government to acquire private lands within the boundaries of the conservation area through donation, exchange, or purchase with consent of the owner.

Representatives approved such a measure. At this writing, the bill was pending before the Senate, but was expected to pass. A riparian conservation area designation allows motorized access on selected roads and is less restrictive in other ways than a wilderness area. But the legislation directs the BLM to manage the land for the protection and enhancement of its riparian values. It also authorizes the federal government to acquire private lands within the boundaries of the conservation area through donation, exchange, or purchase with consent of the owner.

We climb into our pickup, slowly bounce down the last potholed, boulder-strewn pitch of road to the mesquite bosque that lies at the mouth of Bonita Creek, and pull into a well used campsite.

The solitude is filled with the twit and warble of a great variety of birds. An old sycamore just above us serves as a virtual condominium for them. A kingfisher is perched on a branch overlooking the river, waiting for prey to go swimming by. Also in the area are a mourning dove, Gila woodpecker, yellow-rumped warbler, black phoebe, vermilion flycatcher, blackchinned hummingbird, and hooded oriole. Bonita Creek supports an extensive mix of both water and desert birds. Some believe it has as diverse a collection of bird species as any location in the country.

Binoculars and bird book in hand, we exit the truck and walk to the river. A great blue heron, stalking fish or frogs in the creek, spooks at our approach and takes flight. Seeing a wading bird in the middle of a desert isn't as strange as it may seem because water flows here continuously. Perennial waterways, never abundant in the Southwest, are exceptionally rare in these days of dams and reservoirs and attract water-dependent birds like the heron. The Gila Box also is used frequently by wintering waterfowl and often by sandhill cranes.

We cross five-foot-wide Bonita Creek and spot the object of the heron's interest: schools of tiny fish. There are at least 13 species native to the Gila drainage. More than half are threatened or endangered, such as the Gila chub, razorback sucker, spikedace, and loach minnow.

The creek itself is sparkling clear as it flows placidly through rocks laced with wavy green moss shaded by large cottonwoods, sycamores, and other vegetation.

At its confluence with Bonita Creek, the Gila flows with a determined current but is not particularly swift. Should be no trouble lining our boat upstream. We begin ferrying camera gear, food, water, and canoe to the riverside.

Lining is an old trick that Pattie would have understood. By attaching ropes to the bow and stern and alternately shortening and lengthening one or the other, it is possible to steer the craft around obstacles. Lining is also a surprisingly easy way to move a canoe (and its load) upstream.

I take the first shift with the canoe, shuffling up through the shallows, boat in tow, while Mollie, binoculars in hand, walks the wide spacious sandbars looking for birds, tracks, and other tidbits of natural history. We pass the mouth of Deadman Canyon and Cat Canyon. Then rounding a bend, we move beneath a 30-foot-high cliff face made up of a tawny colored band of volcanic tuff. The cliff probably formed when nearly liquid ash flowed down some ancient stream valley and hardened in place, later to be cross-sectioned and exposed by the river.

In other areas there are great dark bodies of blue-black basalt, which once oozed out on the surface as lava. Throughout the canyon, we find andesite flows, breccias, and conglomerates. Seen occasionally are dikes and sills, formed when molten rock was intruded into existing rock beds through cracks, later to cool in place. All these relatively hard rock formations make wonderful cliff faces and explain why the Gila Box is here in the first place. In a few sections of the canyon, softer mixtures of ash, gravel, and small boulders have eroded into pillars and fins.

We pull the canoe ashore for lunch and a crackers, cheese, apples, juice rest in the shade of a mesquite tree.

CANOEING GILA BOX CANYON

Continued from page 22 Glancing about at the surrounding canyon walls, I notice textural and color differences on the opposite slope. On the gentler terrain favored by cattle, little grass exists, and the hillside tends to be a dull green, reflecting the abundant small shrub-like mesquite trees. On steeper slopes, where cows seldom graze, the coloration is more golden because more grasses grow there. Where grazing pressure is light, as on the rugged steep hillsides, the grass can compete favorably with mesquite, but where livestock grazing is heavy, grasses are soon replaced by the mesquite.

Lunch over, we pack up and continue our upstream journey. The wide mud and sandbars reveal extreme fluctuations in water flow with floods regularly scouring the narrow canyon-hemmed channel. There are cones from piñon pine, Douglas fir, and ponderosa pine, even though there are no conifer trees in the canyon. They are swept into the Gila in the mountains where temperatures are lower and mois-ture levels higher than here in the Box.

The historical changes in the landscape due to grazing and flooding are readily evi-dent as we plod upstream. There are a few immense ancient cottonwood trees what botanists call “historic” but no smaller ones. I mention my observation to Mollie, and soon we are both hunting for cottonwood seedlings. Under normal cir-cumstances, they should be abundant on the previously flooded sandbars, but we do not find any immediately. Mollie, walking slightly ahead, yells to tell me that she has found a few up around the bend. I beach the canoe and walk up the slope to examine the tiny sprouts she has found. Of the 23 seedlings I count, all have been browsed. Continued browsing pressure eventually kills the plants and contributes to reduced cottonwood reproduction.

It is possible that channel scouring in the Gila Box always prevented the development of a large riparian forest community; however, we noted the same general trends on tributaries where flooding is less severe. Unless special programs are undertaken to replenish the old trees as they die or are swept away, eventually no more cotton-woods may be left in the Gila Box. This is a common pattern throughout the West.

According to The Nature Conservancy, the cottonwood-willow plant community is the rarest major forest type in the United States. In the Southwest there are only 20 significant cottonwood-willow plant communities, and only five of them are outstanding examples.

Here in the Gila Box and among its tributaries there are still remnant stands of Fremont cottonwood, Arizona sycamore, velvet ash, Arizona walnut, and Goodding willow, species once common along Arizona's major watercourses.

The BLM is doing what it can to hasten recovery of the riparian zone. On a sand-bar around the next bend of the river, Mollie and I follow a trail up the embankment to one of the bureau's cottonwood recovery projects. In selected parts of the Gila Box, the agency has planted cotton-wood saplings, watered with a drip irrigation system and fenced to discourage browsing. About half the trees have survived and display robust, vigorous growth. The bureau also is constructing fences in some Gila Box areas to help manage livestock grazing in the river bottom.

Suddenly I hear Mollie's shout, “Black hawk,” and I look up to see a large dark raptor with a white band on its tail circling on thermals.

The sighting is a special thrill. The black hawk is considered a candidate for listing as a threatened species in Arizona. Only an estimated 400 to 500 of the birds survive in the United States. Intricately tied to water-ways, black hawks feed primarily on cray-fish, frogs, and other aquatic life. They nest only on perennial streams with mature deciduous forests of cottonwood, syca-more, and other species. Since the Gila Box tributaries have some of Arizona's finest remaining stands of this habitat, it is not surprising that the area is a significant black hawk nesting area.

In a sense, the young cottonwoods nurtured by the BLM are the black hawk's hope for the future. In time they will grow large enough to replace the aging and dying historic trees now lining the Gila.

The black hawk is only one of 22 raptor species known to inhabit the Gila Box area. Other rare or endangered bird species that occasionally use the Gila Box include the zone-tailed hawk, bald eagle, and peregrine falcon.

But they are not the only rare vertebrates that inhabit the Gila drainage. A survey conducted by Gila wildlife specialist Wendell Minckley, an Arizona State University zoologist, noted 17 animal species residing in the Gila Box that are listed on state or federal threatened or endangered species lists: an extraordinary number considering the area's small size.

This species richness is one reason why a National Public Lands Task Force Report called the Gila Box a “unique and irre-placeable” component of our nation's nat-ural heritage.

The Gila's biological treasures make it nationally significant. Located in the broad transitional zone between the lower eleva-tion of the Sonoran Desert and the higher Chihuahuan Desert, the Gila Box acts as a biological filter, preventing some species from migrating farther east or west. As a result, dozens of species reach their east-ernmost, northernmost, southernmost, or westernmost range right here. Jojoba and paloverde, Sonoran Desert species, go no farther north or east than this transition zone, and white-thorn acacia, a typically Chihuahuan Desert plant, also grows here.

We arrive at a mud flat covered with tracks. Some more natural than others. Raccoon are here. So are off-road vehicles. At low water levels, these vehicles use the Gila Box Canyon as a roadway. Their tracks, however, will disappear next spring when the Gila River sweeps through the canyon during its annual housecleaning. ASU's Minckley believes that off-road vehicles may disturb sensitive wildlife, such as nesting black hawks and other raptors, if use occurs at the wrong time of year. However, he says, the vehicles could be accommodated if restrictions were implemented during critical periods, such as when raptors are nesting. Some of the threatened fish species known to exist in the Gila Box depend upon riffle habitat, the areas off-road vehicles tend to use for stream crossings. However, he says, current levels of off-road vehicle use may not pose a problem, a statement with which many environmentalists disagree strongly.

canyon during its annual housecleaning. ASU's Minckley believes that off-road vehicles may disturb sensitive wildlife, such as nesting black hawks and other raptors, if use occurs at the wrong time of year. However, he says, the vehicles could be accommodated if restrictions were implemented during critical periods, such as when raptors are nesting. Some of the threatened fish species known to exist in the Gila Box depend upon riffle habitat, the areas off-road vehicles tend to use for stream crossings. However, he says, current levels of off-road vehicle use may not pose a problem, a statement with which many environmentalists disagree strongly.

One reason the BLM decided against seeking wilderness designation for the Gila Box was to allow continued motorized access. According to Ken Mahoney, a former BLM recreation planner who now works for the Arizona Parks Department, the agency feels that off-road vehicle use can be accommodated during the summer low-water season without conflicting with other recreation users.

Mollie and I continue our march upstream. Just below the mouth of Bill Canyon, the Box narrows. George Hill Spring Canyon comes in from the side. Here the walls are a thousand feet in height and the term "box" seems an apt description. In the evening light, the cliffs are rusty red and glow like a sunlit bottle of burgundy wine. The lower slopes are covered with the lime-green patches of mesquite dotted with the red flame of ocotillo blooms and the dull green of yucca and prickly pear.

In the days when James Pattie was roaming the Gila Box, these slopes supported grass, not mesquite, and bighorn sheep. Pattie noted in his journal that he saw "multitudes of mountain sheep." But years ago the sheep disappeared from the area, returning only recently from a herd reestablished in New Mexico.

The Gila Box also is a major fisheries research area because there are few freeflowing desert streams remaining, according to Dr. Minckley. He has helped reintroduce the endangered razorback sucker and there are plans to reintroduce other rare fish species.

Bighorn sheep. Razorback suckers. Cottonwood plantings. All are signs that the Gila, neglected for years, is slowly being nursed back to ecological health.

After we pass the mouth of Roy Canyon, we come to a long beach that we decide is a perfect campsite. We land and unload the canoe. With the remaining light, we decide to climb a nearby hill for a better view of the surrounding country. The canyon is hauntingly quiet except for the call of the canyon wren and the rippling roll of the river. For several miles, we can see upriver. No one is in sight nor are any lights visible. Solitude is complete, and we relish it for perhaps a half hour. Back on the beach, we build a fire and lay on the sand listening to frogs trill. A full moon rising over the canyon wall turns the river into a flowing band of quicksilver. It is the last thing I remember before waking to bird songs at dawn. After a breakfast of coffee and cereal, we continue our routine. Lining upstream, we soon reach Eagle Creek. It, like Bonita Creek, is a clear perennial stream. In the past, Eagle Creek hosted a resident group of Pueblo Indians. We walk along the creek's banks a few miles, impressed by some of the finest old cottonwoods and sycamores we have seen anywhere in Arizona. One cottonwood is large enough in girth to rival a small redwood. One of the healthiest riparian vegetation communities in the Southwest, Eagle Creek is nesting habitat for approximately 10 percent of the black hawks in the country. Our short hike over, we return to the canoe and continue upstream two miles, passing some beautiful old cottonwood groves, which, like others downstream, show very limited hope for successful regeneration.

At the confluence of the San Francisco and Gila rivers, we turn around, get into the canoe, set paddles, and, with the current pushing us, rapidly descend the stream all the way to our starting point at Bonita Creek. That night I lie awake in my sleeping bag listening to the wind. Somewhere in the darkness an owl hoots, pleasant counterpoint to the soft murmurs of the Gila, reassuring me that, for now anyway, it is still the free-flowing and wild river James Ohio Pattie encountered 164 years ago.