Ecology

WILD RIVERS Environmentalists Battle to Keep Them Flowing

A coterie of conservationists is rallying to spare what remains of Arizona's streamside habitats before they are beyond redemption. Among the candidates for designation as Wild and Scenic Rivers, which would provide federal protection against further harm, are certain segments of the Black and Santa Maria rivers.

Chill springs and surges of snowmelt high in the piney White Mountains replenish the Black with water, some of it destined to sustain crops, spurt from taps, and fill swimming pools in central Arizona.

Long before it melds into the Salt River on a timeless journey down to the desert, however, the remote Black River in extreme eastern Arizona threads through alpine meadows and slender, stony gorges. It writhes among the state's longest stretch of virgin timber.

Beavers and rare Apache trout splash in the Black. Elk, deer, and bears descend to drink. Steller's jays shriek from amid the pines, willows, and alders. High up the cliffs, peregrine falcons perch, and bighorn sheep dart from ledge to ledge.

Few other American watercourses are wilder or more pristine. Much the same can be said of the Santa Maria River in the dryer lowlands farther to the west.

Named in 1604 by Spanish explorer Juan de Oñate, the Santa Maria rises in the sunbaked mountains northwest of Prescott and slowly slants through untamed terrain into the hardscrabble flatlands some 4,100 feet below.

Its pools harbor fish at the precipice of extinction: Gila topminnows, humpback chubs, desert pupfish. Endangered bald eagles nest nearby.

Mesquite thickets, or "bosques," abound. An unusual vegetative mix distinguishes the lower reach, where saguaros of the Sonoran Desert and Joshua trees of the Mojave thrive together.

These are incredibly fragile ecosystems. And despite their disparate settings, the Black and Santa Maria share a hazard imposed by humans. With abuse, misuse, or overuse, they might flow no more.

Mines, dams, and cattle grazing could deplete them. Already, off-road vehicles tear asunder the delicate communities of riverine or so-called riparian plants vital to wildlife and erosion prevention.

Within memory, 5,000 acres of cotton-woods and willows lined the lower Colorado River, upstream and down from Yuma. Only 200 acres remain. The rest was obliterated by farms, homes, and other manifestations of a growing population. Hundreds of acres of giant mesquite trees that spread along the Santa Cruz River near Tucson provided nesting cover for thousands of doves. Woodcutters and a declining water table have reduced the area to a barren plain.

And a ghostly stillness has settled west of Phoenix where the once-gushing Gila River joins the Salt. Whistling swans alighted there in the past, and yellow-billed cuckoos sang.

Great groves of cottonwoods no longer shadow the scorched banks at the confluence, nor whiten each autumn with their fluffy seeds. Dust devils dance where Pima Indians swam and fished. The lower Gila and Salt, choked upstream by dams and diversions, now run rarely usually only when the water managers deem they do.

And, sadly, these are commonplace examples, for experts estimate that during the past century Arizona has forfeited 90 percent of its low-elevation streamside habitats.

But efforts to save the surviving 10 percent are under way. The two-score Arizona streams suggested for status as Wild and Scenic Rivers range geographically from Cave Creek, cascading from the Chiricahuas in southeastern Arizona near the Mexican border, to the Paria River, which bisects the Utah line. Enthusiasts worldwide converge on bird-rich Cave Creek to witness such Mexican species as elegant trogons and Mexican spotted owls that can be seen nowhere else in the U.S.

Hanging gardens clinging to vertical 2,500-foot canyon walls cast a magical spell on the Paria, home to the endangered Roaring Springs poppy and striped-flower milk vetch.

Other nominees include the part of the Colorado that carved and sculpted the Grand Canyon, as well as 20 miles of the Agua Fria Spanish for "Cold Water."

Paradoxically, the Agua Fria, although concealed by dramatic canyons, parallels much of Interstate 17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff, Arizona's most traveled highway.

Prehistorically, it offered a corridor through which the Indians traveled and traded between northern and southern Arizona. Pictographs punctuate canyon walls that shelter ancient ruins.

Wildlife still migrates up and down the Agua Fria and other streams, allowing the genetic interchange requisite to long-term survival of many species.

In both olden and present times, free-flowing streams were and are the veins for all existence in the arid Southwest. Seventy-five percent of all wild creatures depend upon them. Without them the burgeoning cities would lack sufficient water.

Streamside vegetation stabilizes the banks reducing erosion and preserving the storage capacity of the floodplain, lessening peak flow from infrequent but torrential rainstorms, thus diminishing the danger of flooding downstream. The plants also improve water quality, recharge water to underground supplies, and trap silt that would fill reservoirs.

Arizona State University ecologist Robert Ohmart estimates that healthy riparian plots can produce up to 100 times as much living matter as the adjacent desert.

And erasing the native flora opens land to invasion by alien plants. Water-wasteful saltcedars (tamarisks), originally imported from the Middle East for windbreaks, have infested vast swaths of landscape throughout the West.

Clearly, with a rapidly multiplying human population, time is not on the side of the streams that are left and the habitats they sustain. Already, cottonwood-willow communities such as those on the Verde River are described as the rarest forest type in North America.

It was this urgency that led the Arizona Rivers Coalition, an amalgam of environmentalists and such groups as American Rivers, the Audubon Society, Tucson Rod & Gun, the Sierra Club, and the Wilderness Society, to call for greater federal guardianship.

While no one can predict how Congress will react to the Arizona appeal, little opposition is expected at home.

Most of the streams involved flow far upstream from the state's present and projected water projects.

In an introduction to the coalition's proposal to Congress, former Gov. Bruce Babbitt argued that "protecting our natural-flowing streams makes good economic sense for tourism, for water quality, for water management, and for outdoor recreation."

And moreover, he wrote, "protecting these special places for our children is the right thing to do."

Since enacting the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, Congress has afforded its provisions to more than 100 "special places across the country, 9,000 river miles altogether.

Yet, among them is only one portion of a single Arizona river, 40 miles of the upper Verde in almost the very center of the state. Lengthening that leg is one element in the coalition's proposal to Congress.

Designation as a Wild and Scenic River neither alters existing water rights nor affects privately owned property. Nor does it open private land to public access. Indeed, studies show such designation increases the dollar value of nearby private land.

What the act does is preclude or restrict new mineral developments and additional

WILD RIVERS

Lush vegetation hugs the banks of the South Fork of Cave Creek (OPPOSITE PAGE) in the Chiricahua Mountains.

(LEFT) Along with Arizona's other freeflowing streams, the Agua Fria affords not only scenic vistas but makes possible life itself for the wildlife in the area.

dams or diversions that would detract from the nature of the river corridors.

In the case of public lands and most of the nominated Arizona parcels already are federally or state owned - agencies must manage the land and its timber and other resources in a way that preserves its character.

To qualify, a stream must be uninterrupted in flow and, by law, “possess outstandingly remarkable values.” That means “scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic, cultural, or similar values.” Each of the proposed 40 Arizona watercourses, 1,700 river miles in all, fulfills some or often all those requirements, proponents say. One that meets most criteria: the 56mile-long East Verde River, from its source springs below the Mogollon Rim-to where it weds the main Verde in the wilds southeast of Camp Verde.

Campers, backpackers, fishers, birders, hunters, and horsemen use it. Jasper sparkles along the walls of its shallow canyons, surmounted, according to Tonto National Forest archeologists, by about 100 prehistoric sites.

The East Verde contains an imperiled fish, the Gila roundtail chub, and hosts dozens of species of migrating birds. The vistas, unworldly everywhere, vary with elevation.

One of the most spectacular Arizona sights, though, is unveiled in the 2,000foot-deep canyon cut by the Salt River where it is bridged by the highway between Globe and Show Low.

The canyon attracts white-water rafters, their boats seemingly swallowed by huge, perpendicular walls of solid, varicolored stone. (See Arizona Highways, June '91) Farther down the Salt, nearer Phoenix, dams have transformed the river into a smooth-as-glass stretch navigated each summer by 100,000 inner tubers.

In stark contrast to this traffic jam of tubers, Cherry Creek, which splashes into the Salt above the canyon, is in a remote, relatively untouched haven inhabited by bobcats, leopard frogs, and narrow-headed garter snakes.

The San Pedro, wending north from Mexico, is a paleontologist's paradise. Along it, scientists have unearthed the bones of mammoths and the implements with which ancient hunters felled and butchered those elephantine beasts. (See Arizona Highways, April '89) But every river lover claims a preferred place. For Gail Peters, it is the Grand Canyon, which she has visited her past nine birthdays: “Rafting the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon changed my life.” For Peters, the Arizona director for American Rivers, a conservation organization based in Washington, D.C., also is entranced by Cherry Creek, where waterfalls divide sheer gorges.

“It's a very private place,” she points out, “and it's the kind of place you can see a mountain lion in the wild - as I did.” Tim Flood, a Phoenix physician and one of the architects of the coalition proposal, votes for the isolated San Francisco “because it is absolutely the wildest river you can imagine.” Before joining the Gila near Clifton, the San Francisco snakes through some of the loneliest, most rugged country in eastern Arizona, negotiating a horseshoe bend about every half-mile.

Last April, Flood and three companions rafted 40 miles of the stream, starting near its headwaters in western New Mexico. Their adventure filled three days and, Flood later said, “We didn't see another person the whole trip.” Though he loves the San Francisco, the doctor hopes a future can be assured for all our feral streams. Once altered, those places can never be restored to the gems they once were.

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Carle Hodge is a veteran science writer based in Phoenix. He also wrote about recently discovered Sinaguan pots in this issue.

Since moving to the Southwest from Ohio in 1974, Jerry Sieve frequently has been drawn to Arizona's waterways.