Opinion: It's what Mo would want

Saving Tumacácori wilderness area is the right thing to do

Opinion by Mark Trautwein

Special to the Arizona Daily Star Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.19.2007

Early in my 13-year career as Rep. Morris K. Udall's legislative assistant on wilderness and public lands, I recommended that he push for a controversial land acquisition. However, the critics in the local press and the criticism were getting personal. I thought the campaign of rumor and ridicule might force him to back off. Mo's reply surprised me, but only because I was just getting to know him.

"Do you think it's the right thing to do?" he asked. When I answered, "Yes, of course," Mo shrugged his shoulders. That was all he needed to know. The discussion was over.

I thought of that moment recently during a visit to the Tumacácori Highlands. The Sky Island Alliance, Friends of the Tumacácori Highlands and the Arizona Wilderness Coalition have been working hard to designate a 84,000-acre wilderness on this rugged and beautiful land. The highlands are a fantastic landscape of multicolored cliffs, rolling grasslands and Madrean oaks. It is ecologically healthy, with rare subtropical species found nowhere else in the United States. By any definition, this is wilderness.

More than that, Tumacácori is unmistakably Arizona. It's the kind of place that makes native and new Arizonans want to live here and draws visitors. Arizona's allure has a cost — explosive growth has put Arizona's magnetic wild places that make the state distinctive under mounting threat. We know where that threat is most severe.

In a recent examination of areas left unprotected by Mo's two statewide wilderness bills in 1984 and 1990, I found that wherever wilderness values had been significantly degraded, the wildlands were close to fast-growing urban and suburban communities. Off-road vehicles and other pressures had hit them hard. Tumacácori Highlands has escaped that fate — so far. But it fits today's profile of an endangered wilderness in Arizona too precisely for comfort.

Taking in the breathtaking, panorama, I remembered why Tumacácori had not been included in the 1984 Arizona Wilderness Act. Congressional district lines had been recently redrawn, taking Tumacácori out of Mo's district and putting it in — barely — the district of vulnerable freshman Jim McNulty. With other endangered areas having higher priority, McNulty triaged Tumacácori from the bill. If the line had kept Tumacácori in Mo's district, it would be protected today. That it is not is simply an accident of history.

Some critics suggest that because Tumacácori failed to win designation in 1984, it should be ineligible for a second look. They say there was a promise — some even say Mo promised it — that there would be "no more" Forest Service wilderness in Arizona. They are mistaken. The so-called release language of the 1984 law clearly contemplates that places like Tumacácori will be periodically re-examined. Wilderness opponents wanted to bar the Forest Service from ever recommending lands for wilderness that Congress had already passed over. Mo strongly disagreed and repeatedly killed bills with "hard release." The Arizona bill's "soft release" assumes that lands like Tumacácori would be reconsidered.

It takes foresight Mo never believed that love of the land should be ossified by the decisions of any one man or any one generation. In 1984, he was in Alaska explaining to a hostile audience why he so aggressively drew the map of wilderness and parks in his landmark Alaska Lands Act. He told them that a small but growing Tucson had been wise enough to overcome the naysayers of an earlier day and set aside wild areas like Pusch Ridge and Mount Wrightson in the then-distant mountains. Over time, he told the Alaskans, he'd seen those areas become virtual islands in an urban ocean. Whether it was Alaska or Arizona, Mo had learned that good stewardship of the land took vision that could see over the horizon.

Mo also would have approved of the work done by Tumacácori's advocates. They have listened to local stakeholders, made numerous public presentations and fully informed congressional offices. More than 100 businesses; 23 local, regional and national conservation groups; and seven homeowner associations in nearby Green Valley have signed on. This is how Mo did business. He sought the views of all Arizonans before constructing any wilderness bill and always made it clear to me that my job was to listen for the equity in the other guy's argument. Tumacácori wilderness advocates have been doing their job, and their work deserves respect.

In Mo's day, he was joined by men like Sen. John McCain in a brand of bipartisan politics that helped Arizona succeed where other states failed. If that politics is alive today, Tumacácori will win the protection it deserves. The spirit that produced two statewide wilderness bills established a wilderness legacy no state other than Alaska can claim. Mo would have readily acknowledged the legacy is not complete.

If Mo were here today and was asked whether Tumacácori Highlands should be designated as wilderness, I know what his response would be. Of course, Mo would say, it's the right thing to do.

Mark Trautwein served on the staff of U.S. House Interior/Natural Resources Committee from 1979 to 1995, specializing in parks, wilderness and public lands.  He was lead staffer for the 1984 Arizona Wilderness Act and the 1990 Arizona Desert Wilderness Act.