Monday, 5 June 2000

Federal and state officials want to provide road access to pristine John Long Canyon, now blocked by pockets of private property. The Chiricahua Regional Council is adamantly opposed.

For nearly four decades, Bill Winkler's family would let just about anybody cross their ranch property to reach neighboring public canyons in the rugged Chiricahua Mountains.

For nearly four decades, Bill Winkler's family would let just about anybody cross their ranch property to reach neighboring public canyons in the rugged Chiricahua Mountains.

"It used to be, if they didn't stop at your house and have a cup of coffee, you'd be angry," says Winkler, chuckling.

By the early '80s, the kitchen-table social skills of passersby were the least of his concerns. Persistent vandalism prompted him to lock the gate to his property, about 30 miles southeast of Willcox.

Since then, state and federal agencies have struggled to find a way to provide access to the Coronado National Forest's rolling canyons wedged behind the Winkler property and other pockets of private land.

Public access to the forest land, which is designated for uses ranging from hiking and bird-watching to hunting and cattle grazing, is now limited to foot traffic.

Last month, Arizona Game and Fish officials struck a deal with one of Winkler's neighbors to upgrade a route across private land to the forest boundary. But a feisty group of area residents that monitors public-land use in the southeastern corner of Arizona is fighting to keep the street-entrance gate to that route tightly bolted.

"Letting in vehicular traffic would mean total chaos for the habitat," said Noel Snyder, vice president of the Chiricahua Regional Council.

Environmentalist groups, such as the Tucson Audubon Society, echo that sentiment. They say plant and wildlife variety found in John Long Canyon - hidden about three miles behind ranch rooftops - is on par with that found in nearby Cave Creek Canyon.

With elevations that run from the desert floor to mile-high peaks, Cave Creek attracts hundreds of species of birds and is one of the nation's top bird-watching sites.

In the early '90s, Snyder's group of about 60 rural residents fought off plans for a gold-mining operation near Cave Creek's entrance. Congress later backed the effort by passing a bill that prohibits mining in the canyon.

The Chiricahua Regional Council now wants to stop brawny four-wheel drives from bumping along oak-dotted savanna hills and pine galleries that wind to John Long Canyon, which is also known to hunters for its abundance of deer, javelina and mountain lions.

Gerry Perry, the state Game and Fish Department's regional supervisor in Tucson, argues that, since the canyon is not designated a wilderness area - in which vehicles are banned - blocking vehicular traffic there would be unfair to the general public.

He also suspects that landowners opposing such access enjoy reserving the lush forestland for themselves and their friends.

"If you had the ability to have sole use of that canyon, would you want everybody else to be in there?" Perry asked, quickly adding, "I wouldn't."

Pockets of private land blocking access are a problem along many sections of the Coronado's boundary lines, Perry said, because the forest is composed of a dozen non-contiguous mountainous areas - known as "sky islands" - scattered through the southeastern quarter of the state.

A petition submitted to state and congressional leaders last month - signed by outdoor enthusiasts across Arizona - accuses local, state and federal agencies of not doing enough to resolve the "crippling problem" of blocked access.

Todd Rathner, a regional field director of the Mule Deer Foundation, which he described as a hunter-based conservation group, said he signed the petition because of places like John Long Canyon.

The "checkerboarding" of private and public properties there, Rathner said, "certainly limits" access to hunters who now must lug supplies and the spoils of their sport for miles. The strenuous trek often excludes older and very young hunters, he added.

Perry said Game and Fish was responding to public demand when it signed an "access stewardship agreement" with Winkler's neighbor. Under that agreement, a few weeks ago state department officials paved a streambed crossing on the private land. It would provide vehicles headed to the Coronado's boundary - about a half-mile from the street entrance - with a smoother ride along the corridor's choppy dirt road.

But the gate at the street entrance is still locked.

In this case, the Forest Service, which owns a 50-foot-wide strip of land sandwiched between the street entrance and the private property, is clutching the key.

John McGee, supervisor of the Coronado National Forest, said the agency is still weighing the pros and cons of opening vehicular access through that private corridor. Negotiations are under way for the sale of the land to the Forest Service.

Snyder, of the Chiricahua Regional Council, suspects the Forest Service's hesitation is also tied to a dispute about the status of an "existing roadway" into John Long Canyon.

Agency officials say aerial photos dating back to the 1950s show evidence of an old Forest Service road that connects with the upgraded private corridor. They also point to a drawn map, on which a road is clearly marked.

But Chiricahua Council members complain that they simply cannot see the road that the officials point to on photos. Snyder, a former wildlife biologist, said better photographic evidence should be required to prove the roadway's existence.

He said the keen eyesight among agency officials may be an attempt try to "skirt the spirit" of a federal law.

According to that law, before a new Forest Service road is established, rigorous environmental studies and public hearings must be conducted. Efforts to reestablish existing roads - even those neglected for decades - are exempt from the process.

"What we're asking for is an open public process that will lead to a Forest Service decision based on how people feel about this," said Snyder, who added that he is confident that opposition to vehicular traffic in John Long Canyon would prevail.

In addition to hunter traffic, council members are worried about the prospect of all-terrain vehicles ripping up the area's fragile hillsides and vandals striking again. Winkler said cattle and branding gear were stolen from his ranch, and thoughtless passers-by used his signs for shooting practice and left behind heaps of litter.

An ongoing review of the Coronado's roadways, conducted by a Tucson-based environmental group called the Sky Island Alliance, shows that there are about 3,000 miles of legal roads and 1,000 miles of illegal roads, including many carved by all-terrain vehicles straying from legal routes.

Snyder's group also wonders why the Forest Service would consider vehicular access to John Long Canyon when, last month, the Clinton administration proposed banning road building in 43 million acres of roadless federal forest land.

In the Coronado, roughly 339,000 acres are already designated as roadless wilderness areas.

The federal government wants to tag another 420,000 acres as roadless, although that designation would not establish them as federal wilderness areas, which permit grazing but prohibit motorized equipment. Local Coronado foresters would decide the scope of allowed activities.

Much of the 1.78-million-acre Coronado's remaining land - 1.02 million acres - is crisscrossed with roads. Still, Coronado policies already block road building in portions of the proposed roadless areas as well as in other acreage that lacks federal restrictions.

In response to the Chiricahua Council's puzzlement, the Forest Service's McGee, who asserts that John Long Canyon has an existing road, said:

"All the roadless-area initiative does is proclaim no more new road building or reconstruction in inventoried roadless areas. This area is not one of those areas."

Perry, of the Game and Fish department, disagrees with Snyder's assertion that public sentiment favors limiting John Long Canyon's 9,000 acres to foot traffic.

Noting that the petition calling for improved access to public lands in rural Arizona had at least several hundred signatures, he said that a growing faction is fed up with the notion that public lands can be "essentially privatized."

As the John Long Canyon debate continues, Perry said, both sides should look toward the future.

"What do we want this to look like 50 years from now?" he asked. "Do we want it all locked up so it's like a . . . wilderness area? Or do we want some portions that the public can get to recreate?"