Groups Protest BLM Plan for Sonoran Desert Monument
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
PHOENIX - Six conservation groups have filed a formal protest against a proposed management plan for the Sonoran Desert National Monument southwest of Phoenix.
The groups say the plan does too little to protect the monument's cultural and natural resources, including archaeological sites and the saguaro cactus, from unrestrained recreational shooting. Sandy Bahr, director of the Grand Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club, explains.
"We're seeing more and more saguaros destroyed by shooting. It's just ridiculous. If it's along a road, people get out of their vehicles, pull over and apparently decide to start shooting saguaros, and it ends up killing them."
Bahr says shooting targets have been painted on the monument's petroglyphs.
The conservation groups say it makes more sense to ban or severely restrict recreational shooting on the national monument, and instead create shooting areas on adjacent lands also managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management.
The protest also calls for the "minimum road network" necessary to protect public health and safety, as well as the monument's cultural objects. Ian Dowdy, conservation outreach associate for the Arizona Wilderness Coalition, says the degradation of these resources goes hand in hand with easy access.
"We know that the damage that occurs to these things is really proportional to the amount of access that is provided to them."
Phil Hanceford, an attorney for the Wilderness Society, says the main point of the formal protest is to get the BLM to comply with the laws that created the national monument, for the explicit purpose of protecting and preserving historic and scientific objects.
"It's not just recreational shooting; it's any damaging use. If BLM finds anything is damaging to the monument objects, they need to discontinue that use."
The protest also says the BLM plan should do more to protect lands within the monument with wilderness characteristics. There is a court-ordered deadline to finalize the plan by Sept. 15.
The text of the formal protest is online at wilderness.org.
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