Preservationists Eye Sonoran Desert

The idea for a new national park in southwestern Arizona has been kicking around for more than 30 years, first endorsed by then-Interior Secretary Stewart Udall in 1966.

Now the proposal, which President Lyndon Johnson never acted on, has been resurrected. It would combine three huge chunks of federal land along the Mexican border, more than 3 million acres, into the Sonoran Desert National Park and Preserve.

Nearly 5,000 square miles of empty, pristine, scenic and silent desert, it would accommodate the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone national parks, with room left over.

“It’s the last and biggest chunk of pristine Sonoran Desert left anywhere,” Bill Broyles, a conservationist who heads the project, said. “It would be one of the wonders of the world.”

The plan would merge the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, south of Ajo, which is operated by the National Park Service; the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, west and southwest of Ajo, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, from east of Gila Bend to the Yuma area, run by the Department of Defense and the Interior Department, the land manager.

Only Congress can create a national park.

The area already is off-limits to mining, off-road vehicles and cattle grazing, and has no privately owned parcels, no buildings and no paved roads.

“It’s the last zone of quiet left in the lower 48 states,” said Tucson-based author Charles Bowden. “You can walk for days and never see a footprint except your own.”

“This is the heart of the Sonoran Desert, and it’s a very striking, fragile area,” said Udall, who now lives in Santa Fe, N.M.

“This will never be a national park with heavy visitation. It will be a treasure because it exhibits the flora and fauna and scenery of this wonderful desert,” he said.

Under the proposal, the 1.8-million-acre Goldwater range would become a national preserve run by the Park Service, identical to a national park except for the gunnery range, military pilot training and trophy hunting, Broyles said.

In effect, recreational and military use would be unchanged, Broyles said. But stewardship of the land would improve, because the National Park Service’s budget per acre is 10 to 15 times greater than Fish and Wildlife’s, he said.

The park service would be able to conduct research, such as how global warming and air pollution are changing the desert.

And the military would have use of the gunnery range indefinitely, considered essential for Air Force pilot training.

“This is not a campaign to get rid of the military,” Bowden emphasized. “It would not interfere with their mission.”

Because the area is so rugged, it would be easily patrolled or regulated by putting in minimal checkpoints at either end of the park, said nature photographer Jack Dykinga, another strong supporter.

He finds the region’s “absolute sense of quiet and solitude” fascinating.

“It’s absolutely the archetypical Sonoran Desert where plants stand alone, where they suffer from shortages of water. Saguaro cactus stand like monuments, evenly spaced, and they stand clear against the horizon,” Dykinga said.

The organizers’ promotional brochure calls the proposed park “one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and the burning symbol of the wild Southwest.

“It is the living core of the Sonoran Desert. It is essential for the well-being of our souls. It is a desert ark for science and a huge resource for education.

“This is not another place. This is the place.”

Broyles said no organized opposition has been identified. But Udall urged backers to move slowly and build Arizona’s congressional support first. Several members of the state delegation have supported previous wilderness proposals, he noted.

A factor that makes the proposal even more intriguing, backers say, is that Mexico has set aside two largely contiguous areas at least as large for its Pinacate Reserve and the Upper Gulf of California protected zone.

Together, the Mexican and U.S. segments would become “the largest piece of wilderness and quiet in North America south of Canada,” Bowden said.

“In Arizona, we keep adding people. We’re not making any more pristine desert. This makes sense if you love the desert, and it makes sense for southwestern Arizona.”