Right now the Coronado National Forest is formulating a new management plan. The final product will guide Forest management for years––perhaps decades––to come, and is vitally important to our region. The CRC has serious concerns about the proposed plan, as it has so far evolved.
In the draft plan, the Forest Service's approach shifts drastically from an emphasis on land stewardship, built by crafting policy over many years, to a new emphasis on wide-scale recreation. Similar proposals to open the Forest to mass recreation have been overwhelmingly opposed by the public each time they have been announced. And yet the Forest Service planners have once again returned to this outdated mindset, and once again we need to nudge the Titanic in a healthier direction. In a future post to this blog, Noel Snyder will explore the issues related to mass recreational development in the Coronado National Forest.
In addition, the draft plan in places appears superficially sound, yet it is very vague and does not specify which measures might be taken to implement that part of the vision which we could support.
An important goal which the CRC champions is the designation in the plan of a new Zoological-Botanical Area (or similar protected status, such as Research Natural Area), which recognizes the Cave Creek Canyon watershed for its extraordinary value to nesting raptors. Helen Snyder's studies in Cave Creek Canyon reveal that it has the highest density of nesting raptors of any known region. Nesting density is more than five times that of the Snake River Birds of Prey Area in Idaho. In Cave Creek Canyon, small owls are particularly abundant. Helen will give you details of her proposal in a future post on this blog.
Whiskered Screech Owls would benefit from designating Cave Creek Canyon as a Zoological-Botanical Area under the new Forest plan.
(Watercolor by Narca)
The CRC envisions this new ZBA as a layer of protection safeguarding a region which is world-famous for its biodiversity and which draws thousands of visitors upon whom the local economy depends. The USFS planners in Tucson have said that they don't want to treat the ZBA within the plan itself, but rather deal with it separately later. We fear that if the ZBA is not specifically included in the new Forest plan, there's little chance of any action on the issue. (It is our understanding that the change in designation would not affect current grazing practices.)
A plan is exactly that––a plan. It lays out what we want to accomplish. Those goals need to be outlined specifically.
First: the CRC stands firmly with the public's often-articulated desire to emphasize the unique biological values of the Chiricahua-Peloncillo region, and not mass recreation, in any new management plan for the Coronado National Forest.
Second: the Regional Council supports inclusion of a designated special area, which would protect Cave Creek Canyon's unique density and diversity of nesting raptors.
Helen will give you more information on the proposed Zoological-Botanical Area, and once you have that, we hope that you will write to the decision-makers whose addresses are given at the bottom of this blog, in support of a special designation within the new Forest plan.
Narca Moore-Craig, CRC Board Member
