MAY 9, 2011
Cooperative effort results in ton of success
ELOY – It is easy to have mixed feelings about volunteers removing a ton of trash from a magnificently scenic area in the Ironwood Forest National Monument, managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Arizona.
On one hand, it is discouraging that there could be a ton of trash left behind in this area of national treasure.
On the other hand, the multiagency cooperation that got the cleanup and restoration effort pulled together is something to be recognized and celebrated.
The trash was left behind by people involved in illegal activities, primarily smuggling of drugs and humans. The area – northwest of Tucson, about 65 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border – is part of a corridor used by criminal factions that runs through public land.
The cleanup was a joint effort organized by the BLM that brought together volunteers and law enforcement officers.
The volunteers were from the Dove Mountain Hiking Club, the Clean Forest Project, the Silverbell Estates neighborhood, and the Friends of the Ironwood, among others. In addition, inmates from the Pinal County Jail, though not exactly volunteers, provided valuable work in blocking an illegal road.
The BLM was the organizing agency, but the list of support – primarily law enforcement – was extensive.
Pinal County Sheriff’s Office provided the inmates and law enforcement sweeps of the area in the days before the cleanup.
Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) used its helicopter to do an aerial check of the area for potential problems and then stayed around in case of a medical issue.
Border Patrol agents joined in the pre-operation sweeps.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers also were involved in the pre-operation sweeps.
Town of Eloy police officers were involved in the pre-operation sweeps and patrolled the roads leading to the Monument to deal with people who may have fled to avoid all the attention.
Officers from the multi-agency Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission (GIITEM) provided on-scene security and gained insight into the issues facing officers from land management officers charged with protecting natural resources. The GIITEM force comprised officers from the Department of Public Safety and the cities of Casa Grande, Coolidge, and Florence.
“This is another example of cooperative efforts that we are committed to law enforcement-wise and with the community,” said Tom Lister, chief law enforcement ranger for BLM Arizona.
The effort was part of BLM Arizona’s Operation ROAM (Restore Our Arizona Monuments) that focuses on fighting back against smugglers and others using public land for transporting contraband.
As part of ROAM:
• BLM Arizona in fall 2010 built a vehicle barrier along 1.3 miles of land in the Sonoran Desert National Monument that now blocks an illegal road.
• BLM law enforcement rangers continue to join Border Patrol and other land management officers in joint operations on public lands. The result: criminals are arrested and deterred and officers get cross-training that only makes them better able to serve.
• In an ongoing effort by the BLM and the Arizona Department of Transportation, brush is being cleared in the right-of-way along Interstate 8 so that smugglers don’t have cover when transporting loads to highway vehicles.
In the recent operation in the Ironwood Forest National Monument, Lister had praise for the volunteers who uncovered and picked up sometimes unpleasant materials. He also praised the efforts of the jail crew, who used only muscle power to haul rocks to build a barrier.
“Providing the jail crew is another example of (Pinal County) Sheriff (Paul) Babeu trying to address the smuggling problem that goes on down here. He is working to protect the resources for the citizens of Pinal County and Arizona,” Lister said.
Having the helicopter in the air was another big plus. “It was a real asset for us in protecting the safety of the volunteers. In these tough economic times it’s hard to get a commitment for such an asset,” Lister said. “DPS really stepped up for us.”
Laura Olais as the BLM manager of the Ironwood Forest National Monument, organized the volunteers and the cleanup. She noted the hard work put in by the volunteers. “It is difficult terrain and it’s hard to find the trash. We probably got 80 percent of it (in the area of focus).”
The trash was hard to find because criminals using the site for lookout and lay-up sites have learned that visible trash makes it easier to locate their hideouts, Lister said. So they stuff empty cans, empty water bottles, backpacks, pizza boxes and dryer sheets (thought to make the smell of marijuana undetectable, Lister said) in crevices and under rocks.
The volunteers pulled out 69 bags of trash, which weighed an estimated 2,000 pounds.
No one estimated the weight of the rocks moved by the jail inmates – but it was probably well over a ton. The rocks were used to build a low wall across an entrance to the illegal road.
Nobody could calculate the value of having law enforcement officers from different agencies working together on a project like this. But everybody agreed that it was another step forward in the fight against illegal border-related activity.
http://www.sonorannews.com/archives/2011/110504/frontpage-trash.html
Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.
Apprehensions of individuals by the U.S. Border Patrol as a result of illegal immigration vary every year. Current Border Patrol statistics indicate that about 110,000 border crossers will be captured during the current fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, and doesn’t count the many others who get through. The border crossers leave approximately six to eight pounds of trash in the desert during his or her journey. The cost of disposing of this trash is high for local communities. Landfill fees range from $37 to $49 per ton in Southern Arizona. These fees do not include costs for materials, equipment, labor and transportation for the collection and transfer of the trash to the landfill.
Characterizing the Impact
Accumulated border trash has been shown to affect human health, the environment and economic wellbeing. Impacts include:
- Strewn trash and piles
- Illegal trails and paths
- Erosion and watershed degradation
- Damaged infrastructure and property
- Loss of vegetation and wildlife
- Campfires and escaped fires
- Abandoned vehicles and bicycles
- Vandalism, graffiti and site damage (historical and archaeological)
- Occurrence of bio-hazardous waste
http://www.azdot.gov/highways/adoptahwy/index.asp
Helping to keep Arizona’s roads clean and beautiful for over 20 years! ADOT has an Adopt a Highway Program that allows you to adopt a highway as a Volunteer or through a Maintenance Provider as a Sponsor.
Adopting a highway provides an avenue for individuals, organizations, or businesses to help maintain sections of roadside within the Arizona State Highway System.
Volunteer groups adopt a two mile section along available State, Interstate, or United States highway. Groups sign up by completing a two year permit application. We generally ask that groups perform cleanups three to four times each year. Members of the Adopt a Highway Volunteer Program should be volunteers and not paid to pick up litter. Groups can partner with other volunteer groups, but may not pay another group or company to pick up litter.
ADOT will provide safety training, trash bags, and two signs to be used at each end of the adopted section. Signs will ONLY be installed once a cleanup activity is completed. If safety vests are not available from ADOT, the volunteer group must purchase them. Washable safety vests can be obtained from local vendors.
More information about becoming an Adopt a Highway volunteer can be found under the Volunteer link in the left hand navigation menu.
To become an Adopt a Highway Sponsor, professional maintenance and marketing organizations provide litter removal service at no cost to the State by obtaining corporate sponsorships to fund their operations. Three to five thousand bags of trash and debris are removed from the Valley freeway system in Phoenix every month. Sponsorships are available in Prescott, Tucson, Phoenix, Yuma, and Flagstaff. The sponsorship areas are generally in one direction, in two mile increments. Multiple areas may be sponsored by the same company as long as they are not adjacent to one another. Members of the Sponsor Program receive one recognition panel, produced by the Maintenance Provider.
For a list of ADOT’s approved Maintenance Providers, click the Sponsor link in the left hand navigation menu on the website below.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700132459/Groups-united-by-desire-to-clean-up-border-trash.html
TUCSON, Ariz. — Sometimes weird things bring people together.
In Arizona, trash does just that.
Efforts to clean up the rubbish presumably left behind by illegal immigrants not only physically unites distinct groups — like the Pinal County inmates and dozens of volunteers who spent the morning of April 30 sprucing up Ironwood Forest National Monument — but also create an ideological common ground.
Karl Tucker, a long-time volunteer with Humane Borders, doesn’t deny the complexities or divisiveness of the immigration debate. He said there’s at least one offshoot of it that almost everyone agrees on, though – the trash is a problem.
“This trash thing people get,” Tucker said. “Ain’t it awful? Yeah, ain’t it awful?”
Tucker helps pick up trash almost every week and said he thinks the problem has been alleviated a lot over the past decade.
Matt Skroch, who works for a land and wildlife conservation organization, agrees.
Skroch, executive director of Arizona Wilderness Coalition’s Tucson office, called the scope of the trash removal over the past decade “absolutely amazing.”
He credits the Southern Arizona Project, a federally-funded effort administered by the Bureau of Land Management, which was started in 2003 to curb the damages caused by illegal immigration and smuggling on Arizona’s borderlands.
The project, which was championed by then Congressman Jim Kolbe and eventually approved by Congress, gave Arizona $695,000 to clean up its borderlands – an area that stretches about 100 miles north of the border. The project funding, which has to be re-allocated each year, has been raised fairly steadily since its onset. By fiscal year 2009, the funding was up to almost $1.14 million.
Its price tag isn’t the project’s only big number.
In fiscal year 2010, the Southern Arizona Project removed more than 255 tons of trash.
And the BLM’s Deborah Stevens said it’s not just small things, like water bottles and discarded photographs, that are picked up. In fiscal year 2010, 364 bikes and 77 vehicles were removed from Arizona borderlands. Bikes and cars are often used, and then ditched in the desert, by illegal immigrants and smugglers, she said.
The BLM designates money to county, city and tribal entities that are affected by illegal immigration, Stevens said, and the entities decide how to divvy up the funds.
The BLM also contracts with student conservation groups, who hire temporary workers to help coordinate and work at the trash clean ups.
Although the “visual intrusion” of trash piles gets most of the attention, Skroch said that’s not the only negative result of people — often, but not always, illegal immigrants – trekking through the desert.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700132459/Groups-united-by-desire-to-clean-up-border-trash.html
Citations
1. Emry, David. “‘Illegal Super Highway’ in AZ Sonoran Desert.” About.com- Urban Legends. June 2007. Web. 11, April 2011.
2. Marinedebris.noaa.gov. 12, April 2011.
3. “Waisted Turtle”. Millercountymuseum.org. 12, April 2011.
4. Parris, Doug. “Recent Pictures of Our Beautiful Sonoran Desert.” http://www.TheReaganWing.com. 17, September 2007. Web. 11, April 2011.
5. Amermaidstear.blogspot.com. 12, April 2011.
CABEZA PRIETA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Ariz.— Mountains of trash, recurring fires, despoiled natural springs, vandalized historic sites and disappearing wildlife are part of the devastating toll that the government’s running battle with smugglers and migrants is taking on national parks and wildlife refuges along the U.S. border with Mexico.
In southern Arizona, the damage extends to Indian and private land, jeopardizing a broad expanse of the Sonoran Desert, which boasts a greater diversity of plant and animal life than any other of the four North American deserts.
At Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, 2 1/2 million pounds of garbage are scattered through broad valleys and desert arroyos every year, according to Roger DiRosa, the refuge manager. Officials with the U.S. Border Patrol said the refuge’s seven mountain ranges — home to bighorn sheep and a prized destination for wilderness hikers — now serve as posts for lookouts who use night-vision equipment to track the movements of the Border Patrol. Mountain peaks conceal clandestine radio repeating stations that are part of smugglers’ surveillance operations.
Illegal “ghost roads” carved by smugglers and pursuing federal agents crisscross Cabeza Prieta and nearby Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Sections of Organ Pipe are deemed so dangerous that the National Park Service has closed them to the public.
Officials at the U.S. Department of the Interior said they are considering giving the Border Patrol control of the hard-hit areas of the refuge and park nearest the border.
“We’ve talked about what kind of swath they would need, how much we would let them control, recognizing that you would be sacrificing a small area for the greater good,” said Larry Parkinson, Interior’s deputy assistant secretary for law enforcement and security.
“You’ve got to give up a little to save a lot,” Parkinson said. “If we don’t help Border Patrol improve their control over the border, we won’t have anything left to save.”
On a recent tour of the damage, DiRosa, who manages Cabeza Prieta for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, steered his truck toward the Growler Mountains, making slow headway through 2 feet of what used to be fertile desert topsoil. A constant stream of vehicles had pulverized the sand into a fine powder that DiRosa and other federal land managers here call “moon dust.”
There is only one official road in Cabeza Prieta’s 860,000 acres, and this wasn’t it. The nameless routes, stretching north from the Mexican border, are the result of an estimated 1,000 illegal foot crossings a day and countless vehicles transporting undocumented migrants, drug runners and the Border Patrol.
The constant human pressure is threatening to eliminate the area’s wildlife. The refuge’s population of the endangered Sonoran pronghorn, a deer-like creature, had fallen to 21 — down from 179 in 1992 — and the species was headed for extinction before a captive-breeding program was established in 2004.
Cabeza Prieta alone has 400 plant species and 300 types of wildlife, including ringtail cat, kit fox, bighorn sheep, javelina, badger, bobcat, mule deer, desert tortoise, 24 species of snake, 11 species of bat and 212 species of birds.
It’s only a matter to time, officials say, before these animals’ home is rendered uninhabitable.
Federal officials describe the effects of massive trespass as “staggering” and warn of dire repercussions to rare wildlife and sensitive desert, where nature may take decades to erase a single boot print.
“We’re getting hammered,” DiRosa said, calling Cabeza Prieta the most embattled wildlife refuge in the United States. At Organ Pipe, Supt. Kathy Billings said she can’t argue with a conservation group’s 2004 assessment that the national monument is one of the nation’s most imperiled.
East of Organ Pipe, residents of the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation recently removed more than 7,000 abandoned vehicles.
Wendy Glenn, whose family runs a cattle ranch near Douglas, described the harm done to livestock and wildlife.
“There are at least two semi [tractor truck] loads of trash in the canyon behind us, and there are probably seven canyons like that,” she said. “Our cattle eat the trash. Little animals stick their heads in bean cans and walk around with the cans on their muzzle until they die. Our neighbor had a cow in a corral — it was having a problem calving. They came back in the morning to check on it and two illegals had killed the calf and were cooking it.
“There’s constant harassment of wildlife,” Glenn said. “Deer don’t feed during the night because there’s too many people running around. They need to go into the thickets to shade up during the day, but they go in now and there’s people there, along with trash and fecal matter.”
Arizona’s border with Mexico, more than 350 miles long, includes six national parks, three wildlife refuges, three national monuments, two national conservation areas and a national forest. Government scientists have documented the most serious damage at Cabeza Prieta and Organ Pipe.
At Organ Pipe, on Cabeza Prieta’s eastern border, the National Park Service estimates that visitors hiking the park’s trails may encounter 200 pounds of trash per mile each year. Wildlife biologists say trash and human waste spread disease among animals.
Soil compaction across hundreds of miles of roads and trails has killed cacti’s shallow root systems, causing towering saguaro and organ pipe cacti to topple, taking with them animal food sources and bird nests. Especially vulnerable is the fist-size cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, a rarely seen endangered bird that nests in saguaro cavities.
The refuge is home to one of the nation’s few birthing sites for the lesser long-nosed bat, an endangered species. Migrants hiding out in the bat’s caves cause the animals to abandon their nests. Bats are vital to desert plant communities as pollinators and distributors of seeds.
At Organ Pipe, Native American relics and pioneer ranch buildings have been damaged or destroyed, Supt. Billings said. The corral from Dos Lomitas Ranch, a 19th century site listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is being taken apart board by board and the wood used for campfires.
Thirsty border-crossers are draining many scarce natural water sources and have damaged or destroyed water tanks placed by biologists for bighorn sheep and pronghorn. Dripping Springs, a centuries-old desert oasis for pioneers and prospectors, now regularly tests positive for high levels of E. coli bacteria.
Last year, 3,500 acres burned in Cabeza Prieta, said Mike Coffeen, a Fish and Wildlife biologist at the refuge. The previous annual high was 50 acres. According to refuge staff, the increase is due to “come-get-me fires” set by undocumented migrants who become lost in the desert.
DiRosa said he spends 80% of his time not dealing with the wildlife protection duties for which the refuge was established in 1939, but mired in paperwork on border security. He likens his management decisions to triage, sacrificing the welfare of some plants and animals to save the refuge as a whole.
“It’s like every day you get up and get slapped 10 times,” he said. “One day, you only get slapped seven times and think, ‘Hey, that feels good.’ But your face is still raw. We’re just trying to reduce the destruction.”
Preventing damage is complicated by the Border Patrol’s virtual immunity from laws designed to protect the border environment. The Real ID Act, enacted last year, gives the U.S. Department of Homeland Security authority to exempt its operations from environmental laws.
Border Patrol agents pursue illegal immigrants in high-speed chases across fragile desert lands. Driving in the area normally would be prohibited by the Wilderness Act.
The agency has established camps in wilderness areas, obliterating plants to make way for helicopter pads, trailers, fencing, generators and high-intensity lights. Since much desert wildlife is nocturnal, the noise and lights have driven animals out of their natural habitat.
Environmental groups and others contend that the Border Patrol’s own policy, adopted in the mid-1990s, to reduce border crossings near urban areas has shifted the illegal traffic from Southern California and Texas to environmentally sensitive federal lands in Arizona.
“Arizona is getting hammered because of enforcement efforts elsewhere,” said Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.
Last year, according to the Border Patrol, a record 267 people died crossing the Arizona desert, where 100-degree temperatures for 100 consecutive days are not uncommon. Already this year, the Border Patrol reported, 30 people have died in a region more inhospitable than usual after four months without rain.
“What would this be like if the Border Patrol was not here?” DiRosa mused, walking around a bullet-ridden white station wagon stuck in the sand. “I’d shut the door, because the refuge would be so damaged and compromised. But the Border Patrol is a Catch-22: They protect the refuge but damage the wilderness.”
The Border Patrol says it now requires environmental sensitivity training and mandates that agents who drive through wilderness areas report incidents to refuge or park managers.
“We’ve come a long ways,” said Ron Colburn, the Border Patrol’s chief patrol agent for the agency’s Yuma sector. “It has been an evolution in the cultures of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists and Border Patrol personnel. We were both operating in the same area, but had recognizably different missions. We didn’t see our missions joining.”
Now they do, Colburn said, citing a pending national agreement between the Border Patrol and several federal land and wildlife management agencies that seeks to reduce conflict and spell out how to operate in sensitive habitat.
In some cases, federal land managers must weigh damage from border protection projects against the future destruction they forestall. At Organ Pipe, installation of an $18-million vehicle barrier scraped away a 30-mile swath of the park’s southern border, but has successfully reduced illegal vehicle traffic by 95%.
“The reason Organ Pipe was created was to preserve the Sonoran Desert,” Supt. Billings said. “If we lose Organ Pipe and it becomes a moonscape as a result of these impacts, we lose our heritage.”
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Article belongs to New York Times paper, but we thought it would be a good idea to repost it to emphasize how urgent the littering in our desert is.
-Laurel, Ella, & Courtney
Allocation: Land allocation is how the land is divided and utilized amongst the citizens, government, state and county.
County Land: Land owned by the county and under their jurisdiction. It can be used for public activities or private activities.
Federal Land: Land owned and controlled by the government; this includes military bases and national parks. Along with national parks, the land can be opened up to the public for certain activities.
State Land: Land owned and controlled by the State; this land is mostly managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the United States National Park Service, Bureau of Reclamation, or the Fish and Wildlife Service. It can be traded and sold between the citizens and the State.
Tribal Land/Reservations: Land administered for the benefit of remaining native tribes; size of land and population within land varies. The federal government designates the land to the various tribes as Indian Reservations.
BLM (Bureau of Land Management) : An organization that manages and directs American public land. Approximately 264 million acres of land and 2.2 million acres of lakes and rivers are under their control. They collect geographic information, maintain records of land ownership and mineral rights, conserve wilderness areas while allocating other areas for grazing and agriculture, and protect cultural heritage sites on public land.
Lower Colorado River Valley: This region is comprised of Federal land, county land, state land and tribal land. BLM manages some amount of land there and the federal land includes National Parks.
Magdalena: This region is comprised of tribal land, federal land and state land.
Vizcaino: This region has federal land and state land.
AZ Upland: This region has mostly federal, and state as well as tribal land. There is also land managed by BLM.
Plains of Sonora: This region is mostly comprised of federal land, but it also has state and tribal land.
Central Gulf Coast: This region is made up largely of federal land, as well as state and tribal land and land that is managed by BLM.
Whenever the subject of immigration comes up, people immediately go on the defensive. Somehow it has been ingrained into people’s minds that immigrants are evil and their sole purpose in our country is to create crime, steal our jobs, and degrade the environment.
Some of those actions may be true, but the intention behind them certainly is not. Illegal immigrants are only coming to the States because they are seeking a solution to their poverty-ridden lives, otherwise they would stay exactly where they were. Because illegal aliens are coming steadily there is not that much that people can do aside from stay as calm about the situation as they can. If people are aggressive maybe some immigrants will leave, but that might just cause more to come in spite of the anger because the incentive is too high.
As immigrants make their way across the desert to the closest state they cause a lot of damage to the precious land. It may not seem like it, but if you really think about it people aren’t made to live in the rough and harsh desert. As people move through the same paths over and over again that have been deemed “safe” from border patrol and I.N.S. it interrupts the natural flow of the desert; as people make camps for the night they might set fire with their camp fires or they might leave trash and toxic waste such as drugs etc. on the land which is very harmful for the environment.
On this blog we will attempt to inform people of the current issues surrounding illegal immigration as well as give them some ideas as to what they could do to curb the damage being done to our precious Sonoran Desert.
-Laurel
Saving The Sonoran Desert One Post At A Time 
