POLICIES AND CONTEXTS: A STATEMENT
In the late l880s cattle
grazing in the upper Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts during a severe, extended
drought led to serious degradation of rangelands in southeastern Arizona. Today
scientific and political debate continues about how much to graze, how to regulate
grazing on desert grasslands, or whether grazing is compatible at all with desert
environments. Those of us working under current laws see wide agreement on the
following proposition: ecologically sustainable grazing of desert environments
requires careful control of numbers and movement of cattle. Grazing should be
regularly monitored, and limited both in times of severe drought and for purposes
of rotation recovery. The practice of limiting access of cattle to riparian
areas has gained wide scientific support. Commitment to long-term sustainability
and to maintaining the richness and diversity of both native vegetation and wildlife
is central to the Saguaro
Juniper covenant. Also important is our wish to integrate a "human
presence" upon the land we steward. Our responsibility is to develop strategies
of cattle management which complement both objectives.
In
our experience this is not a simple task. When the Saguaro Juniper Corporation
first bought riparian bottomlands and acquired grazing leases in the vicinity
of Cascabel, Arizona in 1988-90, it faced a number of serious challenges concerning
both control of cattle location and in particular control of their access to and
use of our riparian areas -- including some precious perennial springs on the
edges of the ranch and in the riparian corridor of Hot Springs Canyon with its
perennial stream. Except for the boundary fence (which also needed repair
in some areas) almost no other fences existed on these lands, which for years
had functioned as a single open range pasture. Open access had allowed
Hot Springs Canyon to be used frequently by off-road vehicles (ORVs), a use
which promoted formation of channels in floodplain terraces. Some ORVs drove
directly up the flowing stream well into The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) Muleshoe
Preserve. On one boundary of the ranch a completely new fence had to be
constructed, while other boundary fences needed to be repaired or rebuilt. (See
Fencing
for better grazing control for further
details.)
Like many arid land riparian systems, Hot Springs Canyon is flood adapted, but we have much to learn about how such lands respond to cycles of flood and recovery. After a series of very destructive floods in 1983, 1991, and 1993, the Hot Springs Canyon channel in our area had become greatly widened, appearing as a gravel bed scoured of vegetation. In Sections 6 and 7 of our holdings, several acres of mesquite-bosque secondary and tertiary alluvial terraces washed downstream in the 1993 flood. However, with improved watershed management on the Muleshoe Preserve upstream, we hoped that a healthy recovery cycle of re-vegetation and alluvial deposit would begin, and we wanted to ensure that our grazing management choices supported those recovery processes. (See, for example, HSC photostation #09 for some evidence of streambed recovery since 1988.)
In more central
locations on the uplands, earthen water tanks built more than 40 years ago were
largely defunct when we acquired the grazing leases, and other sources of water
such as spring- or well-fed drinkers were unavailable. Improving these waters
would allow us to manage grazing so that much less grazing pressure would be placed
on Hot Springs Canyon and our other riparian areas. (See
More dispersed water supplies for further
details.)
We had the good fortune to enter the scene at
a time when the Muleshoe Ecosystem Management Plan was emerging through the efforts
of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, and The Nature
Conservancy, in cooperation with both private landowners and state agencies.
The plan, completed in 1998, will have a major impact on the Hot Springs Canyon
watershed upstream from Saguaro Juniper, and reinforces our efforts downstream.
It aims to sustain and enhance the natural ecosystem, including both riparian
and aquatic zones and the transitional grasslands and shrub/grasslands of the
uplands, in such a way as to provide high quality wildlife habitat. It also
includes a variety of livestock-management projects, including provision of fencing
systems to facilitate rotational grazing, construction of livestock-exclusionary
fencing for riparian areas, and prescribed burns to foster recovery of grasslands.
The plan recognizes the destructive effects of off-road vehicle use in riparian
areas, and specifically includes the closing of the riparian corridor of Hot Springs
Canyon to motor vehicle use as part of the plan.
Saguaro Juniper participated in the development of the Muleshoe Ecosystem Plan, and we have worked toward implementing it in our area, within the rather stringent limits of our own financial and human resources. With the assistance of the U.S.D.A. Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and advice and assistance from the staff of our local Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) office (in installing range improvements, installing a monitoring system, and advising on general range management questions and issues), we have made great progress in the past decade toward meeting our goal of developing a sustainable grazing process which will not just maintain but, hopefully, will enhance the best natural qualities of our lands.
On the following pages of this web site can be found outlines and illustrations of a series of activities we have pursued which serve these long-term aims (and those of the Muleshoe Ecosystem Management Plan) for the Saguaro Juniper ranch. Proceed to the following links:
2) Developing a monitoring system for grazing and its effects on the land
4) Changes in Sierra Blanca Canyon
5) Fencing for better grazing control
6) Providing more dispersed water supplies for cows and wildlife
7) Increasing rainfall infiltration in the uplands
8) Some Saguaro-Juniper domestic animals
9) Conservation Ranching: articles and links
10) Hot Springs Canyon: 4 Longitudinal Sets of Photo Comparisons