Proposed Tucson-area shooting range could be much larger, more controversial than expected

Proposed for Redington Pass, the range also would place a long list of auxiliary facilities in now-remote desert along Redington Pass Road. The range would lie about 4 miles northeast of where the pavement ends and about 11 miles northeast of Houghton Road.

Included would be roads and trails, portable toilets, a water well, an outdoor education area, vault toilets that store waste underground, a portable generator, shade structures and solar-powered electric panels.

An existing trail for off-highway vehicles would be rerouted away from the facility, as would a wash. A new “simulated hunt trail” would be added.

The permit application was obtained by an environmentalist through the federal Freedom of Information Act. It’s a more intensive facility than what a gun club official outlined in a June interview about the range.

The proposal is now triggering a heated debate among shooters, environmentalists and other conservationists. On a much smaller scale, it’s reminiscent of the decade-long debate between supporters and opponents of the proposed Rosemont Mine.

The club’s detailed permit application touts this facility as a way to dramatically reduce “wildcat” target shooting that has been pervasive in the Redington Pass area for decades.

“It’s kind of a one-stop shop, where I’m not running all over Southern Arizona, going from one environment area to another to shoot,” said Paul Rodriguez, manager of Second Amendment Sports, a gun store on the east side. “It will be better regulated and have more people to clean up the area. All facilities will be there.

“People can park there and the training facilities sound excellent. There are tons of lands that will still be untouched. Other areas where people will normally be shooting at, those other places can recover.”

But Cyndi Tuell, the environmentalist who obtained the permit application, said this shooting range would be way out of scale for the remote area.

Its approval would be a slap in the face to a multi-year citizens group planning process for the Redington Pass area that concluded that a shooting range wouldn’t be an appropriate use, she said.

That group argued and debated incessantly over where trails should go and what kind of activities should be allowed where.

“But we hashed out all the issues. Now this group wants to come in and put in an industrial-scale shooting range,” Tuell said.

“With the Catalinas burned, the sheep and other wildlife will now find a more appropriate place to live. This area needs to be protected not degraded.”

Optimistic about approval

The debate will be fought on many fronts:

• Is it an appropriate use of federal land?
• Will it reduce wildcat target shooting elsewhere?
• Will it trigger lead bullet contamination that taxpayers will have to pay to clean up?
• What impact will it have on what conservationists say is a major wildlife corridor?

For now, Coronado National Forest Supervisor Kerwin Dewberry can’t say when his agency will start a review of the facility under the National Environmental Policy Act.

“I haven’t received all the final documentation from them,” Dewberry said of the shooting range applicants. “I sent them a letter in May, asking for a lot of material, financial stuff, who is going to do the analysis. There is a lot of detail now. They are not ready.

“We don’t even know what this is going to affect. We don’t know the size of the project area. It’s very premature.”

David Hardy, the gun club’s president, said items to be resolved before analysis can begin include which entity will conduct it, what it will cost and how the costs will be shared between the Forest Service and his club.

Typically, such federal reviews are paid for, at least in part, by the applicant.

Hardy said that ideally he’d like to see the project be built and ready to operate in about two years. And while the Forest Service kicked out the club’s Sabino Canyon shooting range 23 years ago due to neighborhood opposition, Hardy said he’s more optimistic about the service’s stance now, saying that he gets much more positive feedback from lower-level Coronado National Forest staff.

As planned, the project would be built in three phases.

The first phase should be finished in two years, as should parts of the other two phases, Hardy said. As for the entire project, “That’s so far off, I don’t have any idea,” he replied.

“Wildcat” shooting an ongoing problem

Potentially the most emotional issue in this debate is how this range will affect “wildcat” target shooting. That has been a chronic problem for years, people on all sides of this issue agree.

Televisions have been shot up and left to disintegrate in the desert. Shooting noise has disturbed hikers and others who go out there for peace and quiet. Lead from bullets required a costly Forest Service cleanup in the area back in 2013, although the range operators say they’ll catch the bullets in earthen berms and sell the lead for recycling.

In the club’s permit application, it blames much of the target shooting increase on the Forest Service closure of its Sabino Canyon-area facility after it operated 50 years on federal land.

Since then, demand for places to shoot around Tucson has increased greatly, the gun club said.

“A great number of informal, dispersed shooting sites have sprung up on the public lands surrounding Tucson, particularly in the Redington Pass area. However, many of these informal shooting sites are compromised by illegal dumping, extensive littering, illegal activities and disorderly behavior, perpetrated by a variety of individuals other than the legitimate shooters,” the club said.

Such sites are “problematic” for the Forest Service and less desirable for legitimate gun owners seeking a clean and safe place to go target shooting and to teach their children to shoot, the club said.

“Additionally, informal, dispersed shooting sites lack the desirable amenities of a formal shooting range, such as shade, water, snack food, targets, ammunition, trash collection and sanitary facilities.

“As a result, there is a strong demand in the Redington Pass area for a well-maintained, formal shooting range facility where citizens can go to participate in the shooting sports and learn how to safely handle firearms,” the club said.

This is “wishful thinking,” countered the Center for Biological Diversity’s Randy Serraglio.

“They say that just because they are going to build this facility, it will somehow tamp down on irresponsible wildcat shooting,” Serraglio said.

While the Forest Service has temporarily banned target shooting in some of the pass area, Serraglio said he sees no indication that the closure will be expanded or will be adequately enforced.

“We don’t just want wishful thinking. Enforcement is not just driving a car up the road. It’s citing people when they violate the closure,” Serraglio said.

The rod and gun club’s position is that “We exist to promote shooting opportunities,” Hardy countered. “We really can’t support cutting them back elsewhere.”

While it’s perfectly legal to target shoot in a national forest, “if you give people a nice place to shoot, and make it at a reasonable price, you give them an incentive to shoot in a nicer place,” added Charles Heller a local, weekly radio talk show host and a longtime shooting range supporter.

“You will greatly cut — if not shut down — the amount of shooting in the desert. You won’t end it completely, but there’s no reason to end it completely.”

Old range shutdown was “malfeasance”

Heller said a shooting range would fulfill the “multiple use” mission underlying national forests since the Teddy Roosevelt presidency of a century ago.

“It’s in keeping with our national identity to have ranges on public lands, so they can never be arbitrarily shut down by a private landowner,” he said.

He noted that proposals similar to this one have been on the table for around 15 years but haven’t happened due to what he sees as “government malfeasance.”

“It’s malfeasance in the way they closed down the old range and refused to open the new one, to deliberately rain on the parade of shooting sports and the right to keep and bear arms,” said Heller.

“A pretty large footprint”

But to Louise Mizstal, director of the conservationist Sky Island Alliance, “this is a big installation on public land that would be right in the middle of a wildlife corridor.

“It would be a pretty large footprint on landscape that is now mostly habitat for wildlife. We’re concerned.

“I think this would need really serious examination. We would need to understand a lot more about actual impacts to wildlife, why this is a good place to be doing this and what are the benefits for our public lands. Without a lot more information and analysis, this doesn’t make sense.”

Some vegetation would need to be removed

The gun club’s application insisted that wildlife populations in the project area won’t be affected, although for safety reasons, existing vegetation in rifle and pistol shooting lanes will need to be removed. That would allow unobstructed views of areas where gunfire occurs.

The site would no longer be impacted by livestock grazing, vandalism and littering, the club said, although it didn’t say what would happen to cattle that legally use the area.

“Due to the topography of the area, most of the facility will not be visible to motorists passing by on Redington Road. We will encourage natural vegetation to grow in areas where there is no visual obstruction of the firing areas,” the gun club application said.

Hardy predicted that wildlife will behave at the new range as it did at the Sabino Canyon shooting range. There, wildlife tended to avoid it when it was open and to pass through it again when it was closed for the night, he said.

“Sometimes, it went through the site even while we were using it. A family of quail would walk across the range, when we were bench press shooting and bullets were passing about 3 feet off the ground. Apparently they didn’t mind,” Hardy said.

Need for range called intense

The gun club and others say the demand for the facility will be intense.

In the shooting range application, the gun club said the facility will provide quality family recreation for the population in the area and attract visitors from the greater Tucson community.

“Hunting and shooting are popular rural activities in the Tucson community and this facility will complement such rural activities by providing a place for members of the community to practice their hunting and shooting skills,” the club said.

At the nearest public shooting range, run by Pima County on the southeast side, traffic has jumped since opening in 2004, said Butch Jensen, manager of that range and a second one in the Tucson Mountains.

Then, “if we would break 70 shooters on a Saturday or a Sunday, we’d be doing pretty good.

“In June, we averaged over 200 shooters a day this year, and we’re getting 170 to 175 on average in August,” Jensen said of the Southeast Regional Park Shooting Range on South Harrison Road.

A “big tent” for all users

But Larry Audsley, a longtime hunter and target shooter and former Arizona Wildlife Federation board member, said he’s leaning against this facility because he believes it would be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The wildlife federation itself is holding off on taking a stance until the federal environmental review is done.

While philosophically supporting such facilities, northeast sider Audsley said he lives closer to Redington Pass than most Tucsonans, yet it takes him at least as long to reach the proposed site as it takes to reach the county range near the fairgrounds, far to the south.

“A shooting range there would have to be pretty outstanding for me to choose it instead of the county range, or simply choosing to shoot at some other informal site on public lands,” Audsley said.

Citing the road’s rough condition, “I can already hear the cries for paving or at least improving the road up to the range. That will invite increased use for all sorts of purposes and possibly residential development on the private parcels.

“Wild places get ruined incrementally at first, and then the ruination gains increasing momentum.”

At the same time, Audsley said he takes a dim view of some other concerns about the range.

A former Friends of Redington Pass board member, he used to hear a lot of safety worries from his colleagues, he recalled.

“I asked if any could recall a case of someone being hit with a target shooter’s bullet in Redington Pass. No one could,” said Audsley.

“If we’re to hang on to federal lands for the public’s use, we need to allow and encourage uses by everyone, including segments that don’t especially like each other. The public lands constituency needs to be a big tent.”