Route Editor
Route Scout
A new, better suited classification which allows for management activities should be created for these, and possibly other future areas.
The following,
taken from the act. Central Phoenix is not a wilderness. No one is arguing that. Is the Gila? What about the Superstition? Kendrick Mountain? Kachina?A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.
Forcing a sudden hands off approach to forest and ecosystem management after more than a century, or eons of human management, has led to countless areas that are worthless in practice as much as they are in the spirit of the act. Wilderness, if there is such a thing, and I argue ultimately that there is not, is nowhere to be found in most wilderness areas, and most certainly all of the non-desert designated areas of the state. Humans, for as long as the current ecosystems, or those which existed or are perceived to have existed as a natural phenomenon in 1491, have been on the continent for at least as long as the ecosystems which are considered to be candidates for wilderness. Now outdated text books reveal a form of arrogance that assumes no human intervention or influence in the appearance of the environment or ecosystems of North America prior to 1491, and this ideology wrongly was employed in the Wilderness Act.
In fact, with humans here and employing management techniques for their own benefit, the ecosystems of at least the lower 48 have had enormous human influence exercised upon them. Fire, namely, being one of the most important, but also hunting, selective planting, and prior agricultural practices, as well. This was before the first colonist stepped off a boat.
Who here has read of Mammoth Steppe? If you have, you are rare. However, you most certainly have never visited it. It is extinct from North America, and once was the worlds largest, but today exists only in a pocket in central Asia. As an example, the SE USA's Longleaf Pine Ecosystem, being dominated by one fire resilient tree and various scrub and grassland species which are temporally analogous to the Mammoth Steppe in the Pleistocene, is today rare, but once stretched from Virginia to the Everglades, and by extension the Keys (if Slash Pine can be considered) and west to Texas. That is, lots of plants that once were common in the SE, continued to be after precipitation increased and climate warmed 10,000 years ago in the SE. They were joined by what might have been a characteristically rare and perhaps even an eventually extinct Mexican Pine species to create the ecosystem, and in some places where colonists found the tree, it was a relatively recent arrival. It only made it east of the Mississippi somewhere between 5000 and 7000 years ago.
Fire, is the driving force behind it's existence. The pockets it continues to exist in do so because of human management, not in-spite of it. Like many of Arizona's wilderness areas, the existing pockets are fragments and generally small. Some are only tiny isolated parcels, adrift in a sea of farms or "forests" of other species. In a relatively short amount of time, they would succeed to another ecosystem, as many already have, except for human management. Likely the same management that created and kept the ecosystem intact for thousands of years. Like Arizona, think cheat grass and other invasive plants, invasive exotics are a problem as well, and require human intervention to exclude.
In a rather wet forested region Longleaf is emblematic of past human practices, but it is not alone. Huge prairies and savannas, as well as far more open forests existed in the entire eastern US. Some might be tempted to call many of the present forests of the east Wilderness, despite their being relatively young, but also being nothing like what would likely exist if left untrammeled. However, this is not too different than what has happened in the west, and in Arizona.
If the present trajectory of our wilderness areas continues, we can expect bizarre and abrupt delineations for many of them, with (hopefully) well managed and attractive pleasant forests and ecosystems existing outside of the wilderness areas, and anything but that which the act attempted to preserve, within. Some, like the Gila, may be large enough to escape this, but may not resemble what once was. Even some of the best examples of SW Ponderosa in the Gila have extensive wind throw from the spring of 2010 when root rotted trees finally fell after enough time had lapsed for fungus to enter the base of the tree roots and rot them out after fire scars from the deep duff layer which had burned in 2003. Duff that was as thick as it was because of decades of no fire, despite the overall appearance of the forest being intact.
Exhibit A I submit the Kendrick Mountain Wilderness Area to demonstrating that the present condition of most of the wilderness area does not reflect modern European/American ideas of what this location "should" appear as, with conditions that are characteristic not of an area of "untrammeled" land, but instead stomped down and trammeled beyond recognition from what it might have looked like in 1491, or any time since the end of the Pleistocene to June of 2000. FS reports wrote about the many lightning fires which firemen put out successfully for years and decades prior to 2000, likely during other periods of high fire danger. Putting fire out is not "untrammeled". Given the conditions it created, the need for fire perhaps during selected times when it would be more desirable, AKA management, would very easily have kept stocking and fuel loads low enough to have prevented the current conditions.
Exhibit B, is the Superstitions Wilderness Area. Refer to your thread for last June's fire. Surfactant, dropped from airplane, is not an area untrammeled by man. What about overgrowth of chaparral? Absence of native grasses? Exotic grasses? Plus, all of the other human activities.
Exhibit C, the Kachina Peaks Wilderness. In what world is an area with a delineated Ski Resort, Roads, deep wells with loud diesel pumps, and an old road penetrating a large portion of it, a wilderness? The exact same purpose could have been served, and allowed for no additional well drilling, but included active ecosystem management, by designating the area something akin to the "Flagstaff Protected Watershed Basin". Note the abrupt and unnatural change in barely managed forest conditions to those in the wilderness area on the west side of the Peaks as you drive Snowbowl Rd. It is not a matter of if, it is when, a Schultz fire will occur here, and if the conditions are right, burn to the treeline. It happened in the Leroux Fire, which was close-by, but burned into significantly more grassy and open areas due to the warm south slope, similar to the south face of Kendrick.
The theory or poetic phrasing of wilderness does not accurately represent what most wilderness areas have been subjected to since people got here, well before 1492. Strictly for Arizona, and the adjacent Gila, the influences of logging, mining, grazing, and yes, fire exclusion either by deliberate suppression, but also by no longer actively setting fires, changed what was, to what we now have, or have had and are loosing as much as we have already lost. No amount of forum lamenting will return the Mazatzal Wilderness to what existed prior to both the high intensity fires, but also the fire suppression, grazing(?), and ultimately the "pre-settlement" conditions which would have been. Instead, the "wilderness" is firmly established on a trajectory to nothing more than an infrequently burned-but oh boy is it going to burn- chaparral ecosystem, with dense brush, and big hot fires, every so often. It didn't have to be this way. It doesn't.
Angry anti-government ideology regarding conspiracy theories to defraud the public when managers utilize lightning fires to manage areas which are either some form of wilderness or simply being managed like wilderness ( NPS) ignores the reality of what exists, as much as it is completely unaware of why the conditions are the way they are. In many cases, having to work within the confines of a well meaning, but outdated and ideologically misinformed act has necessitated the use of "natural" fires under less than optimal conditions for the ecosystem, but still within those required to both facilitate spread and take advantage of the timing of these ignitions. I refer to the Galiuro Fire thread from 2015, as well as some discussions on other fires.
It is doubtful in the current climate that the 1964 Act is either going to be revisited, or that areas under it's designation are going to be revisited. It is also unlikely a new designation will emerge that allows for protection, but also management. I'm not in favor of opening the areas to mining, drilling for any purpose including water, road construction, most logging, and a lot of other activities, but the difference between what is and what should be, as well as what could be, is vast. Still, I'm sick of seeing nothing but Kung Flu and motor sports chit-chat bores me.
