INTRODUCTION
The San Pedro River Valley has received international attention as the best example of a desert riparian system remaining in the Southwest, and in particular as a principal migratory corridor for songbirds in the West. CCA has taken an active role in advocating for the ecological integrity of the Middle San Pedro and against projects which would compromise its connectivity and biodiversity.
Hot Springs Canyon Corridor
One of CCA’s first conservation projects was advocating for the lower Hot Springs Canyon as a wildlife corridor. A CCA volunteer worked with private landowners in the Hot Springs area and coordinated the donation of conservation easements to The Nature Conservancy, preventing subdivision and promoting wildlife-friendly practices on 1800 acres in this important corridor. These included CCA’s Hot Springs Canyon property and that of our sister organization the Saguaro-Juniper Corporation, along with donations from a number of private landowners.
CCA has also continued to monitor parcels for sale along the Lower Hot Springs corridor, and is now co-owner with Archaeology Southwest of a 130-acre parcel on the banks of the Canyon (Baicatcan), as well as an adjacent 40-acre parcel where Hot Springs wash joins the San Pedro River across from the confluence of Paige Canyon with the River (the Confluence property). There remains much work to be done to secure this Conservation Corridor, including more potential conservation easements.
Sunzia Transmission Project
Since 2009 CCA has opposed the introduction of a new potentially mile-wide utility corridor running down the Middle San Pedro Valley. The SunZia Southwest Project proposes a set of two 500-kilovolt transmission lines to run from the wind generation area in east central New Mexico to Pinal County, Arizona. The federal permit process under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was undertaken by the Bureau of Land Management, which selected a route that would open a totally new utility corridor on the west side of the San Pedro Valley.
The Cascabel Working Group (CWG) has taken the lead in opposing this ill-conceived project, with much support from CCA volunteers and assistance with fundraising. For more information about SunZia and our fight against it, see the CWG website:
Villages at Vigneto
CCA has joined with five other conservation groups and the legal support organization EarthJustice to advocate for studying the impacts of the proposed 70,000-resident Villages at Vigneto development in Benson, Arizona. The developer proposes to replicate an Italian ecosystem, exclusively dependent on groundwater, just upstream of CCA’s area of primary concern. Rapidly building a city of this size adjacent to a threatened desert river ecosystem will obviously have impacts that extend beyond Vigneto’s property boundaries, and would likely contribute to the fragmentation of the large, relatively unfragmented land block of which the Middle San Pedro is an integral part.
Introduction | Advocacy | Collaborative Planning | Ecological Monitoring | Meader Endowment | CCA Lands
Header: Matt Clark / Hot Springs Canyon Corridor: Kai Staats