Arizona’s ‘Sky Islands’ Are at the Center of a Conflict Over Biodiversity : Ecology: Mountains harbor plants and animals found nowhere else in North America. Debate concerns which should take precedence: human recreation or species’ preservation.

Call it the biodiversity battle of Arizona’s “sky islands.”

Haunt of Geronimo and his fellow Apaches a century ago, the sky islands of southeastern Arizona and northwestern Mexico are small mountain ranges that rise abruptly from a sea of desert.

They sustain a diversity of plants and animals unique in North America, including the Mt. Graham red squirrel and the brightly colored, parrot-size tropical bird known as the elegant trogon.

The heart of the battlefield is Coronado National Forest, about 1.8 million acres of desert, grasslands and mountains in a corner of Arizona.

A truce has been in force since last fall, when the U.S. Forest Service, reacting to an unexpectedly negative public response, withdrew its proposal to designate three of the dozen or so principal ranges in the Coronado--the Chiricahuas, the Pinalenos and the Santa Catalinas--as national recreation areas.

“That would have to happen with a coalition of support. We’re a long way from having that kind of coalition,” said Jim Abbott, supervisor of the national forest.

The victor is the Sky-Island Alliance, a Tucson-based group of scientists and environmentalists formed in 1991 to oppose the recreation-area proposal.

“At first we were entrenched adversaries,” said Paul W. Hirt, an environmental activist who helped organize the alliance. “When Abbott finally gave up the recreation-area idea--we were saying all along that recreation is an inappropriate focus for this area--his staff didn’t want to let go of it until it was clear that it was totally infeasible.”

Both sides foresee an eventual compromise, but probably not for years.

The Sky-Island Alliance proposes that the most ecologically rich mountain ranges in the national forest be designated “biodiversity conservation areas.”

“We think that they (the Forest Service) should be basing all of their management decisions on what it takes to preserve biological diversity, and not just preserve it, but restore it and enhance it,” said Susan Brandis, a Sierra Club leader in Tucson and an alliance member. “If you don’t protect biological diversity, eventually you won’t have a forest to deal with.”

The Forest Service mandate is for multiple uses of national forests. These include grazing, hunting, fishing, timber-cutting and camping, as well as environmental protection.

“The most important criteria for anything on the sky islands would be to preserve biodiversity,” Abbott said. “That leaves a lot to be defined, I think.

“You’ll get a thousand arguments going instantly. It sounds good, and it’s certainly not a negative kind of thing, but it’s non-answerable. We have to define what it means on a specific piece of land.”

“We should protect this region from recreation rather than build roads and campsites to promote recreation,” said Dale S. Turner, director of the Sky-Island Alliance.

“Right now,” Abbott said, “if we floated the alliance proposal, I’m sure there would be a great uproar. Any kind of legislative proposal right now would meet with a lot of skepticism.” Any new program requires congressional approval.

With the participation of widely differing groups, planning is under way for a conference in the fall of 1994 to seek agreement on some of the most divisive questions.

That’s more progress than has been achieved in the bitter, ongoing dispute over a $200-million observatory on top of 10,713-foot Mt. Graham in the Pinaleno range, tallest of the sky islands.

Environmentalists have argued that the giant telescopes, promoted by the University of Arizona and the Vatican, among others, could lead to the extinction of the endangered red squirrel. An Apache Indian tribe resists the project on grounds that Graham is a sacred peak.

Courts have ruled for the observatory and against the squirrels. Construction continues, but so does litigation.

The Mt. Graham controversy “created a constituency around the issue of biological diversity,” Paul Hirt said.

South of Mt. Graham, in the Chiricahua Mountains, are Cave Creek Canyon and the Southwestern Research Station of the American Museum of Natural History. At hearings last spring on the recreation-area proposal, opponents in nearby Portal, Ariz., were among the most vocal.

More than any other sky island, the Chiricahuas, Geronimo’s haunt, are home to an astounding blend of species from both Mexico and the United States.

“It means a unique area that we have to study and explore,” said Wade C. Sherbrooke, director of the station. “And we have to work with Mexico, because its sky islands are part of this.”