U.S.
Will Protect Las Cienegas Area
By Gale Norton
Secretary of the Interior
If
you travel southeast from Tucson about 50 miles, you reach a scenic landscape
of vast desert, expansive native
grasslands and rolling oak-studded hills connecting several “sky island”
mountain ranges.
The
Las Cienegas National Conservation Area is home to
such varied species as the lesser long-nosed bat, the endangered Gila
topminnow, the Chiricahua leopard frog and the
southwestern willow flycatcher. Cienega Creek, with its perennial flow and lush riparian
corridor, forms the lifeblood of the conservation area.
This
week, the Bush Administration announced a transfusion of funds to keep this
rare site protected and maintained. The
proposed fiscal year 2004 budget request for this conservation area increased by
$125,000 or 23 percent more than last year.
The total for Las Cienegas NCA is $676,000 to
go toward wildlife management, rangeland health and implementation of a
resource management plan.
Las
Cienegas is extraordinary not only because of its
scenic beauty and resources, but also because of the extraordinary
local-federal partnership that led to its becoming a National Conservation Area
under the Bureau of Land Management.
The driving force
behind the creation of the Las Cienegas NCA was not
Washington, D.C., but a local planning group – the Sonoita
Valley Planning Partnership. Through its
efforts, a special local-federal partnership came into being,
one that resulted in the joining of 143,000 state trust land acres with 42,000
acres of federally managed land. This
voluntary association of local citizens, conservation organizations, ranchers, recreationists and government agencies spent five years
developing a multi-use management plan for the area.
The local-federal partnership is
setting the resource management goals for the Las Cienegas
NCA. The management plan to reach those
goals has just been completed and it calls for full public participation. What’s more, the Sonoita
Valley Planning Partnership is developing a hands-on, citizen-based approach
for implementing the plan.
One of the management
goals for the Las Cienegas NCA is to make it a
“working landscape” – that is, land that serves productive uses, such as
grazing, and is environmentally sound, with clean water and healthy habitat for
plants and animals. In support of this
goal, the private Empire Ranch Foundation is partnering with the BLM to restore
ranch buildings and develop an interpretive infrastructure for visitors, and in
so doing preserve and honor the culture of ranching.
As Interior Secretary,
I have the responsibility of managing vast swaths of public land -- about one
in every five acres of America. As
development expands outward from our cities, these public lands are ever more
important as places for wildlife habitat and for people to be refreshed by the
soothing touch of the natural world.
Even more important,
they are places where our children can learn the value of a wetland or be
awestruck by a night sky that is a classroom for learning the stars. The area is used for recreation that includes
horseback riding, mountain biking, camping, hiking and hunting. In short, the area provides for multiple use but is protected from abuse.
I am pleased to see $31
million requested for next year to fund the BLM National Landscape Conservation
System. That figure is up by $2.7
million and will be used to enhance the BLM’s
management of national conservation areas, national monuments, wilderness areas
and other special areas.
President Theodore
Roosevelt once said, “a nation behaves well if it
treats the natural resources as assets, which it must turn over to the next
generation increased and not impaired in value.”
That is what the system
of National Conservation Areas is all about.
The President’s budget will help us continue to build partnerships for
conservation.
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