At monument, environmental concerns clash with security
Alex Devoid Arizona Republic USA TODAY NETWORK
AJO - Brush and woody scrub coat the valleys and slopes at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a spindly mix of cresote, brittlebush and the rare desert caper that seems to form a thick cushion on the desert floor, tough and textured.
The monument, set along one of the most remote stretches of the U.S.Mexico border south of Ajo, is home to several endangered species, including the fastest mammal native to North America, the Sonoran pronghorn.
It’s not the desolate, rocky desert Hollywood made famous in Western movies. It’s alive, a fragile landscape protected by the 1964 Wilderness Act, a law meant to shield areas from most human activities.
But thousands of miles of vehicle tracks and rutted roads cut through designated wilderness on the monument and adjacent public lands.
The tracks began appearing in 1997, when cat-and-mouse chases increased between law enforcement and illegal cross-border vehicle and foot traffic, according to a National Park Service report.
In more recent times, the off-road tracks are overwhelmingly left by Border Patrol agents, conservationists say. The roads and the damage to the land have intensified the debate over border security and preservation of some of the Southwest’s most diverse, yet vulnerable, environmental settings.
The Border Patrol’s primary mission is to secure the border, said Christopher Sullivan, an agency spokesman.
“We also take into consideration the impact it can have on the wildlife, on the roads in the desert,” he said, “but first and foremost, we still have a job to do.”
In 2015, monument crews restored nearly 200 miles of routes through wilderness areas. The Border Patrol agreed not to drive on them unless agents are under what are determined to be exigent circumstances.
Yet off-road vehicle travel across the landscape can cause an array of problems, biologists say.
Vehicle routes can alter the desert’s hydrology, which reduces food and water available to wildlife such as the Sonoran pronghorn, according to a recovery plan for the species prepared by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The tracks can fragment wildlife habitat, compact soil and accelerate erosion, said Sue Rutman, a retired botanist who worked at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
And the damage lasts a long time. A single vehicle track kills cryptobiotic crusts for decades, said Dan Millis, the Sierra Club’s Borderlands program coordinator. These thin crusts on the desert floor hold sand in place and feed plants, acting much like compost in a garden.
To restore native plants on routes where soil is compacted can take more than 100 years, according to a National Park Service plan to restore vehicle routes on the monument and adjacent public lands.
The funnel effect of enforcement
In the late 1990s, amid a rise in migration and smuggling across the U.S.Mexico border, law-enforcement authorities cracked down in urban areas along the border and “ultimately drove such activities into more remote areas,” including the monument and adjacent public lands, according to a Park Service report that mapped vehicle routes.
And as the increased border activity took a toll on the monument, people also began to suffer.
Migrants crossing the border in these remote areas “can find themselves in mortal danger,” according to a Border Patrol strategic plan from 1994. The routes are far from water and food sources, in places where people on foot can easily become lost. Many died, their remains found by the monument’s staff, said Rutman, the retired botanist.
The journey is still dangerous. Since last year, the remains of nearly 90 migrants have been found in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, according to a database maintained by the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner and the non-profit organization Humane Borders.
Migrants’ chances of dying have increased, said Joseph Nevins, a geographer at Vassar College who studies migration and human rights. “Despite a significant drop in the number of migrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican boundary,” he said, “the number of deaths each year have remained roughly the same.”
More Border Patrol agents
More federal border agents followed the uptick in illegal border crossings on that stretch of the border. Meanwhile, wilderness managers faced more challenges.
In 2002, drug smugglers shot and killed park ranger Kris Eggle. “We were all stunned for months and months,” Rutman said.
Following Eggle’s death, officials closed the majority of the monument to the public, a move that lasted from 2003 to 2014. Rutman wasn’t scared, she said. Most people crossing the border illegally were fleeing harsh conditions in Latin America, while only a few of the crossers were dangerous.
But she was frustrated by damage caused to the monument.
At first, illegal border crossings outnumbered Border Patrol agents, she said. Then the ratio flipped.
More federal border agents patrolled the park following the shooting, but they didn’t seem to have a plan, and they disrespected the environment, Rutman said.
“There were many times when park staff were just shaking our heads and wondering, ‘Do they have a strategy at all?’ ” she said.
Border security, border ecology
The bipartisan quest for border security is seemingly unending and sacrifices the region’s fragile ecology, said Nevins, the geographer. It mistakes drug abuse, for example, as a military issue when it should be a public-health issue, he said.
By the time the National Park Service reopened the majority of the monument in 2014, the nearby Border Patrol station had increased its number of agents from 25 to 500, according to a Park Service statement.
In 2004, the monument built a 30mile vehicle barrier along its border with Mexico. Since then, illegal vehicle traffic declined dramatically and “the barrier has not been breached,” according to the monument website.
The Border Patrol’s footprint, on the other hand, increased, Rutman said.
“When they got more vehicles and ATVs,” she said, “oh, boy.”
In January, deep in designated wilderness on Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, Border Patrol agents off-roading on ATVs, driving trucks on vehicle routes and a few on foot surrounded six humanitarian aid workers, including Paige Corich-Kleim, she said.
The aid workers had volunteered with the group No More Deaths to leave food and water on the refuge for distressed migrants.
The agents asked if her group had water and sent them on their way, Corich-Kleim said.
“There’s no doubt that Border Patrol could do a better job of lessening their impact on wilderness areas,” the Sierra Club’s Millis said. “In some cases, they’ve had successes.”
The Border Patrol has taken steps to reduce its environmental footprint.
The agency strives to be “environmental stewards” and has procedures in place to mitigate off-roading on wilderness areas, said Charles Trost, a Border Patrol public-lands liaison officer.
Agents also receive wilderness training under a 2006 agreement between the departments of Interior and Homeland Security.
Agent Thomas Smith, who knows the area well, calls the land “sacred.” He’s mindful of wilderness when he patrols the Organ Pipe Cactus monument for migrants, smugglers and monument visitors acting “weird,” he said.
Restoring the landscape
In 2009, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a document requiring U.S. Customs and Border Protection to pay to restore vehicle routes when CBP wanted to build surveillance towers in the monument.
When former park ranger Fred Goodsell found out, he didn’t celebrate. He was concerned about restoration methods and continued off-road driving, he said.
After leaving the Park Service, Goodsell volunteered to survey 2,000 miles of wilderness at Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, documenting vehicle tracks and anything else that wasn’t from nature or the military, he said.
In June, Rijk Morawe, the monument’s acting superintendent, stood by a slightly browning saguaro cactus. It once grew farther south, within sight of the border with Mexico, where the pedestrian fence stands now.
Park staff dug it up before the fence construction and replanted it, against the same pointed horizon of ocotillo and organ pipe cactuses, to restore a road. That road is among the 197.2 miles of roads the federal government restored on the monument and the adjacent public lands, including the wildlife refuge.
The restoration plans, which prioritized areas important to the endangered Sonoran pronghorn and lesser longnosed bat, required a Customs and Border Protection go-ahead.
Border Patrol agents still drive anywhere on protected wilderness under so-called exigent circumstances, allowances that include the restoration areas, according to the 2006 memorandum of understanding. Agents report these instances, at least verbally, to wilderness managers.
The National Park Service and Border Patrol seemed to have different definitions of exigent circumstances, Rutman said. If agents saw footprints, they’d drive through wilderness. And Goodsell said agents still overextend the meaning of “exigent circumstances” to whatever they want.
The monument’s current managers say that’s not necessarily true now.
“I’ve pondered the language myself in the MOU,” Rijk Morawe said. While that may have been the case in the past, it’s not anymore, he added.
The Park Service blocked off restored roads with straw-netted tubes and a sign reading “Restoration Area; Please Help It Grow.”
Workers backfilled some roads with heavy equipment or hand tools. Others they simply blocked off to let nature take over, depending on the road’s severity.
Goodsell said he took issue with using heavy equipment to repair roads in wilderness, because the Wilderness Act prohibits “mechanical transport” or “motorized equipment.” Baby strollers, for example, aren’t even allowed in designated wilderness, activists say.
The environmental impacts from mechanized heavy equipment, such as backhoes and road graders, leave marks that last just as long as the roads would have, Goodsell said.
Off-road vehicle traffic
The authors of the restoration plan followed a federal guide for wilderness administrators and determined that the effects of mechanized equipment would be short-term and outweighed by the quality and scale of the restoration, according to the plan documents.
“Once the tractor is done doing its thing, you’re done. You’re out of there,” Morawe said.
The park marked other unauthorized roads with numbers on brown signs reading “Wilderness Area; Closed To All Motor Vehicles.”
Border Patrol agents call in an “offroad vehicle activity report” when they drive on these routes, to log the signs’ numbers and track which routes agents use most, Anthony Good, the former Ajo Station Border Patrol agent in charge, said in 2015.
Restored routes aren’t labeled with numbers visible from the road, but have a specific nomenclature used to report their location, Morawe said.
Still, off-road tracks that aren’t labeled or restored can originate from public access roads. In June, for example, dark tire marks skidded over the sidewalk curb and created a route extending into the monument from the Ajo Mountains Wayside parking lot.
The monument staff continues to restore roads that the Border Patrol approves when possible, but the other public lands are on their own, Morawe said.
The restoration in 2015 wasn’t as successful as they would have liked, he said. While they meticulously planted vegetation native to each specific route, a long drought hampered the results, Morawe said.
Restoration is expensive and not always successful, Rutman said. But compared with the amount of money spent on border infrastructure, it’s justified.
Even when you restore an area, permanent damage can be left behind, Rutman said. “(Restoration) is not that easy.”