Red Lodge Clearinghouse

Photo courtesy of the Arizona State Lands Department

Cactus ferruginous pygmy-owl, photo courtesy of the USFWS

Pima County's Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan seeks to preserve ranches as key partners in habitat conservation. The county has purchased some lands, but the plan says, "Purchasing ranch lands should be the last option for conservation explored.  Ranchers should remain on the land to continue ecosomic activity and ranch land management using the best grazing practices.  Priority methods of ranch conservation should use purchase of development rights and conservation easements as the most desired method of actual long term conservation."  Altar Valley is identified in the plan as a Priority Ranch Conservation Resource, as well as Priority Habitat and Corridor for native species, including the endangered cactus ferruginous pygmy-owl, Pima pineapple cactus, and Chiricahua leopard frog.

In 1995, 12 local ranching families formed the Altar Valley Conservation Alliance. "We were very interested in keeping the working landscape open and working on more enhanced resource protection," says AVCA co-president Mary Miller, who owns Elkhorn Ranch in Altar Valley with her husband, Charley. "So many of the issues cross ranch lines and cross land-ownership lines. We're part of a watershed, and we needed to look at the watershed as a whole. Obviously, you have a stronger voice when you're working together." In 2002, after receiving advice from the Malpai Borderlands Group, the AVCA incorporated as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

Accomplishments: For its first project, the AVCA created a plan to return natural fire to the valley, because government agencies extinguish lightning-started fires immediately rather than letting them burn, says AVCA President Pat King.  The plan pinpointed natural boundaries and roads that firefighters could use as fire breaks while allowing fires to burn. Although the original plan wasn't enacted because of endangered-species concerns, the AVCA is now working with the Arizona State Land Department, Arizona Game and Fish Department, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on a new fire management plan to allow natural fire and carefully controlled prescribed burns while addressing endangered-species concerns.

In 2000, the AVCA used an $80,000 grant from the Arizona Water Protection Fund to produce a resource assessment for the Altar Valley.  A GIS database was created with eight layers: cultural features (fences, roads, stock tanks, and wells), ecological sites, land ownership, soils, and vegetation.  The database was used by AVCA to analyze the Valley's resources and identify proposed Conservation Action Sites.  "Pima County used it to assess the formation of cooperative groups with land holdings that contain special-status species, especially cactus ferruginous pygmy-wols," reports WestLand Resources, which prepared the database and associated maps.  The grant also enabled preparation of an environmental assessment for a soil retention structure on Brawley Wash. 

In 2002 and 2003, through AVCA's outreach efforts, Americorps volunteers built erosion-control structures and surveyed Pima pineapple cactus at King's Anvil Ranch. AVCA partnered with the Sonoran Institute, which signed a memorandum of understanding with the AVCA in 2003 on efforts to restore the Altar Wash and other projects. Amy McCoy, the Sonoran Institute's Santa Cruz watershed project manager who has attended AVCA meetings as an advisor, said in a 2005 interview that it's important to work with the ranchers, who "understand more than anybody what the land needs and what is missing."

New erosion control dike on the Palo Alto Ranch, photo by Daniel Robinett

Credits can be purchased by landowners, municipalities, or developers "to offset the effects of their projects at ratios to be established by the Service based on the lost habitat's value to the species' survival," say the USFWS.  "The cost of each conservation credit is determined by the owner of the bank."  AVCA does not manage the land in the bank nor sell the credits.  Rather, an AVCA committee manages the money that is set aside by the Humphreys from their sale of the credits to fund the on-the-ground cost of conserving the endangered cactus.  AVCA reports regularly to the USFWS and the landowners on the status of the fund and whether the landowners are in compliance with the requirements the USFWS set for the conservation bank.  In 2003, with the help of a $250,000 grant from the EPA, the Palo Alto Ranch replaced dilapidated 1950-era erosion-control dikes in the Altar Wash

The Altar Valley resource assessment provided the basis for the 2003 development of an ambitious habitat conservation plan to protect six endangered or threatened species. The plan was funded in part by grants from the USFWS and the Sonoran Institute and was developed in cooperation with the NRCS, Arizona State Land Department, and Arizona Department of Water Resources. It outlined a wide range of conservation projects including endangered-species protection, erosion-control structures, and environmental safeguards for fencing and pipelines.  AVCA did not implement the draft plan, Pat King explains, because of the prohibitive cost of many proposed projects, concerns among ranchers about intensive monitoring and regulation requirements, and fear of potential lawsuits by environmentalists if the ranchers couldn't comply with all of the plan's provisions.  Instead, the AVCA decided to focus on specific workable projects, including an ongoing effort to create safe harbors for the endangered Chiricahua leopard frogs at stock ponds built by ranchers.  The initial work done on the habitat conservation plan, however, proved useful in the later development of a fire management plan for the Valley.

In September 2004, Dale Hall, then director of the Southwest Region for the USFWS, testified before Congress on national forest management and the Endangered Species Act.  In comments on collaboration with local groups, Hall stated, "Private efforts like those of the Malpai Borderlands Group and the Altar Valley Conservation Alliance in southern Arizona demonstrate what private landowners can do when they are given a chance and are respected as the land stewards they truly are."

In spring 2005, the Elkhorn Ranch invited docents from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum to the ranch to broaden their understanding of the natural and cultural history of the area. The museum, which overlooks the Altar Valley, hosts 500,000 visitors a year. The museum and the AVCA also worked together to bring the museum's Desert Ark to a local elementary school to teach the children about Sonoran Desert animals.

AVCA has continued efforts to control erosion on the side channels of the main Brawley Wash.  In 2006, two erosion control workshops were sponsored for local ranchers and included demonstrations of actual installation of several types of "road dikes" along roads on some Valley ranches.

From its inception, AVCA has worked to bring natural fire back into the landscape, where government policy has been to extinguish lightning-started fires immediately rather than letting them burn.  "Fire certainly has a role to play here," says King.  AVCA's initial plan pinpointed natural boundaries and roads that firefighters could use as fire breaks while allowing fires to burn.  That plan wasn't enacted because of endangered-species concerns, but AVCA persevered, working in cooperation with the Arizona State Land Department, Arizona Game and Fish Commission, Arizona Ecological Service Office, NRCS, USFWS, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, Pima County Natural Resources Parks and Recreation, and The Nature Conservancy. 

The Altar Valley Fire Management Plan (AVFMP) was completed in July 2007, and the draft Environmental Analysis was put out by NRCS for public comment in October.  The plan covers roughly 609,900 acres in Pima County and is intended to "improve range and watershed health by reducing invasive and woody species in the Altar Valley Watershed grassland habitats.  It would allow natural fire and carefully controlled prescribed burns while also addressing endangered species concerns."

Challenges/constraints: Dealing with the day-to-day work of an active organization has been a challenge for the all-volunteer AVCA.  As with many such groups, volunteer attrition can be a problem, with the bulk of the work often falling on a few members.

Membership in the organization is open, and AVCA is trying to expand its base.  Currently, the majority of the members are ranchers in the watershed.  "Just this past year we kind of did a number of meetings in which we worked to try to re-focus and allow the different members to pick an area that they really are interested in and would be interested in participating in, so that the load spreads itself out again," says King.  "We were able to kind of shift the responsibilities to some of the other members... We're hoping with the re-shuffling, we might get some people outside our little circle to pick an area they might be interested in and become part of the group as well."

AVCA's 11-member board of directors votes on proposed actions, with a simple majority required for passage.  "There are times when there are tensions, but if we can keep our focus on the issue, we can work together to work on that in spite of our tension.  That's what we try to keep before us so that we can remain active in what we want to get accomplished," explains King.

Not all volunteers are AVCA members.  "For our fire plan, for the survey for archaeological materials, for our cactus program, people have come and helped us and done various volunteer things.  Hunters and other people who come out and hike and picnic and just enjoy this valley will come back and participate," says King.

Fundraising is always a challenge.  Member ranchers have reached into their own pockets to fund some projects, while other conservation projects haven't been started because of the prohibitive cost. "It's not about a financial reward because there is none," King says. "You don't get paid back for what you put into it because there's not that kind of money in agriculture."

AVCA does not have paid staff or a web site (although it publishes a semiannual newsletter, The Rainmaker) but in 2007 the group secured an NRCS Technical Service Provider grant.  One service provider works with AVCA on restoration projects, and also does grant writing.  Another is a specialist in one-rock dams used to stabilize arroyos.  In April 2008  he will meet with a group of people from about 11 ranches to look at potential dam sites, showing the ranchers what sites would be suitable and explaining why.  In October he plans to return and do demonstration installations on two of the ranches. 

AVCA has been frustrated at times by the intensive regulations associated with endangered species and the misperception by some environmentalists and government employees that the ranchers aren't truly committed to habitat conservation. "We're trying to do improvements and yet we're being treated as if the work we are doing is detrimental to the land and even the species, and yet our species (in the Altar Valley) are thriving," King says. "Everybody is running from a lawsuit. We're going up against people who have been here for a year and a half and they're the experts, and we're these ignorant, manure-kicking illiterates."

Perhaps the greatest challenge for AVCA, and the Altar Valley itself, is preventing ranches from being sold and subdivided by developers seeking to cash in on Tucson's population boom. Pima County's desert conservation plan notes that "market values exceed what livestock production alone can economically support." Yet AVCA members say they are committed to maintaining their land and their agricultural way of life in the Altar Valley. "I think we'll be working on this issue the rest of my life and maybe the rest of my kids' lives," says Ross Humphreys.

For more information see:

Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan

Altar Valley Fire Management Plan, 2007

Draft EA Alter Valley Fire Management Plan, NRCS, 2007

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