Pilot Bruce Gordon steered a small Cessna plane over a portion of the 200-mile Santa Cruz River on Tuesday morning, offering glimpses of the riparian corridor and miles of its dry, sandy bed.
Considered one of the most endangered rivers in the United States, the Santa Cruz River stretches from Eastern Santa Cruz County and into Sonora, before returning north along the Interstate 19 corridor and ending northwest of Tucson.
Tuesday’s flyover with the environmental nonprofit EcoFlight explored a stretch of the river that could soon become Arizona’s first Urban National Wildlife Refuge.
The effort recently took significant steps forward as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a coalition of 50 groups presented a Landscape Conservation Design proposal for protecting the river and the life it helps sustain.
“The refuge is remedying environmental injustice and opening access to green spaces in communities where that has been limited,” said Luke Cole, director of the Santa Cruz River program of the Sonoran Institute, one of the groups in the coalition.
The refuge proposal would permanently protect hundreds of miles of the Santa Cruz River and adjacent land – stretching from the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales to the northwestern edge of Pima County. It would limit development, while affording existing habitats and wildlife the opportunity to flourish.
“Land along the Santa Cruz River corridor in Santa Cruz County is under urgent threat from industrial development and climate change effects,” the coalition wrote in its proposal.
To help increase awareness of the effort, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hosted two workshops in Pima County this week – informing people about community-based conservation efforts and land protection.
Overall, the coalition hopes the refuge will act as an “archipelago of protected properties” along the river, offer a permanent habitat for wildlife in the region, and foster outdoor recreational access to visitors, like hiking and birding.
“The river brings a sense of pride for the people who live here, and we’re seeing more people connect with it,” Cole said.
A collaborative approach
About two years ago, Cole said, the Sonoran Institute and Wilderness Society ruminated on the idea of pushing for an urban refuge in the lower portion of the Santa Cruz River in Pima County.
“We were initially just looking at the Tucson reach,” Cole said, adding: “A Santa Cruz County landowner’s initiative triggered action to look at the entire corridor.”
Speaking to the NI this week, that landowner – Andrew Jackson – said he had been in contact with advocacy groups for more than a year as he looked to sell and donate about 8,000 acres of land throughout his Baca Float No. 3 property in Santa Cruz County.
The land covers about 12 miles of the Santa Cruz River. It contains an intact mesquite bosque and one of the largest cottonwood-riparian gallery forests in the entirety of the basin, according to the conservation design. The Baca Float also encompasses 4,700 acres of the San Cayetano Mountains and nine miles of the Josephine Canyon Wildlife Corridor.
In essence, the privately-owned land is a major corridor for a wide variety of wildlife facing precarious futures, including the endangered jaguar, the threatened spotted owl and the threatened southwestern willow flycatcher.
For years, Jackson had hoped to conserve portions of the area, he said, but those plans grew last year after attempting to pursue another endeavor.
In the summer of 2023, Jackson headed a proposal to rezone 3,550 acres of land along the Interstate 19 corridor. The rezoning would make way for a wide range of development in Rio Rico, including industrial, commercial and residential growth. The proposal received strong opposition in Santa Cruz County, and Jackson ultimately withdrew his request.
Reflecting on that proposal, Jackson said last year’s events highlighted a crucial element: the community’s strong desire to preserve rural lands in the region.
“Seeing a bobcat or a javelina, that’s part of the appeal of living here,” he said. “What we have is so special.”
Now, as efforts for the refuge proposal progress, the 50-group coalition continues to engage in talks with other landowners whose properties also fall within the proposed wildlife refuge, Cole said. He noted that the refuge will include multiple sites acquired from sellers, as well as areas that are co-managed to maximize wildlife protection.
Cole added that one of the main components of the proposal is to involve communities that the refuge would encompass: Santa Cruz County, the Tohono O’odham Nation, Tucson and other communities of Pima County.
Already, Santa Cruz and Pima counties have expressed support for the refuge proposal. The San Xavier Reservation, one of the 11 political districts of the Tohono O’odham Nation, has also supported the proposal.
And City of Tucson officials were scheduled to discuss potential support for the refuge on Sept. 25, after the NI’s press deadline.
“It takes community input,” Cole said. “For people to say what they want to see.”
Proposal highlights
The urban refuge proposal is modeled after the San Xavier District’s Wa:k Hikdan Riparian restoration project on Tohono O’odham land, which not only serves as a refuge for plants and wildlife, but invites the community to foster and celebrate the land’s restoration.
“The Ali Ak (Santa Cruz River) has brought human, plant and animal life into this part of our Mother Earth,” Nunez said. “Now it is time to restore the river to some semblance of what it was prior to the advent of an increased population for our benefit and for the benefit of those yet to come.”
Decades of unsustainable population growth, settler diversion and groundwater overuse, have caused perennial flows to vanish and the riverbed to dry out – except during periods of heavy rain.
In Santa Cruz County, the river constantly carries water thanks to the Nogales International Wastewater Treatment Plant releasing treated flows into the river.
The Landscape Conservation Design lays out successful conservation efforts in the lower Santa Cruz River region, as well as plans to protect green spaces and involve Indigenous leadership, expand ecotourism, maintain wildlife connectivity, and ensure equitable access for local communities.
What’s more, the design plan prioritizes creating public parks in areas that currently lack access to recreational spaces. For instance, it identified areas near the San Cayetano Mountains and near Ruby Road.
The acquisition of land in Baca Float No. 3 would also connect an estimated 12 miles of river in the area to lands that are already protected.
The refuge proposal also seeks to protect recent headway to bring the polluted river and its ecosystems back to a healthy state. For instance, recent efforts from environmentalist groups and organizations allowed the endangered Gila Topminnow fish to return to the river after a decades-long absence.
Ben Lomeli, president of Friends of the Santa Cruz River – one of the groups behind the return of the Gila Topminnow – stressed the importance to implement a holistic approach in protecting the river.
“We emphasize the importance of the Santa Cruz River as a whole, connected ecosystem in Southeastern Arizona with strong spiritual, cultural, historical economic and environmental connections,” he wrote in a letter of support for the proposal.