BLM plan would scrap target-shooting at park

These sights are among the reasons that the Bureau of Land Management is proposing to ban target and other forms of recreational shooting inside this 129,000-acre monument.

Hunting would still be allowed, but people could no longer fire bullets at discarded computers, TV sets or stoves and leave behind their shotgun shells as trash.

"People are bringing their trash out and shooting their trash, or they shoot someone else's trash," said Patrick Madigan, who oversees management of the Ironwood monument northwest of Marana.

"That's a law enforcement issue — littering — but we're stretched so thin that we have no staff to deal with the trash."

The proposal has drawn opposition from the National Rifle Association, which has tried to make it a national issue. The ban would mark the first step toward kicking hunting and all other gun uses off all national monuments and other public lands around the country, an NRA spokesman said.

"That kind of thing where you can go out and shoot, clean your stuff out and then go home, is one reason that people moved here from other places," said Todd Rathner, a Tucsonan who sits on NRA's national governing board and chairs its hunting policy committee. "I'm willing to consider that there may be a problem … but closing the monument is not a solution."

The NRA has lobbied BLM officials in Washington, D.C., on this issue, and organized a national letter-writing campaign that has prompted letters and e-mails to the bureau from Ohio to California opposing the target-shooting ban.

While the Forest Service closed a Sabino Canyon-area shooting range a decade ago under a Democratic president, Rathner said the group is not convinced that a Republican president won't do the same thing at Ironwood.

"That's why we always play for keeps," he said. "We don't leave things to chance."

Gun-rights advocates just won a victory over a proposed expansion of a BLM shooting ban at the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area in Idaho, however. Late last week, BLM dropped plans to add 41,000 acres to a 68,000-acre area where target shooting is banned.

The proposal was originally meant to protect National Guard soldiers who train at the site. Lawmakers who pressured BLM to end the proposal said that it could exacerbate conflicts by concentrating shooters close to where the Guard trains.

Environmentalists and others favoring the Ironwood target-shooting ban have also written BLM from around the country. One group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, has tried to lobby agency officials but hasn't had calls returned, said Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the group.

"The bottom line on this issue is that there are a lot of places to shoot off the monument, and this kind of uncontrolled shooting is making a mess of Ironwood monument," Patterson said. "There is a huge difference between hunting, and shooting junk and blasting saguaros."

The proposed ban is the hottest issue surrounding the monument's first management plan, which fills a 2-inch-thick document and has drawn more than 1,200 letters, e-mails, faxes and phone calls to the BLM, agency officials say.

The rifle association has offered several alternatives to closure, including having Boy Scout troops and 4-H clubs clean up trash, increasing law enforcement staff and putting public service announcements on TV to warn viewers that shooting saguaros and littering on the monument are illegal.

Madigan said the BLM is trying to find a spot on the Tucson area's far Northwest Side outside the monument for target shooting, and is also trying to determine if it would be possible to secure a single spot inside the monument for target shooting.

At this point, about a year from making a decision on the shooting ban, it's hard to say how difficult it will be to find such spots, he said last week.

Rathner, however, said Madigan has already demonstrated a severe bias in favor of the shooting ban by writing an opinion piece advocating it that ran in the Arizona Daily Star in April. He said Madigan "should be fired" for having taken such an overt stance while BLM still hasn't made an official decision.

Madigan, however, said all he wrote was that people are damaging resources on the ground.

Gary Swanson, who described himself as an Arizona native, wrote in a letter to the BLM that he will not tolerate any more closures of any Arizona land that his grandfather, his father and he — a U.S. Navy veteran — fought for.

"We will fight to the last man to defeat the gun ban lobbyists, mark my words," Swanson wrote the bureau in late March. "The BLM has plenty of space for people to hike, walk in, etc. No need to infringe on the constitutional rights of all citizens for a fearful bunch of citizens who would be the first to buy a gun if a home invasion occurred."

Tucsonan Brad Cowan, describing himself as an NRA member, said he supports closure of the monument to recreational shooting because many people who use rural areas for target practice are extremely unsafe.

"I am a livestock officer for the state of Arizona, and often I respond to scenes where cattle have been shot, either on purpose or by stray rounds," he wrote the bureau in mid-March. "Let these people buy and shoot up their own land. Better yet, let all who wish to practice with their firearm … go to your local range and participate in a safe and responsible manner."

More than 25 sites on the monument draw target shooters, including the area where BLM officials took a Star reporter and photojournalist last week — the base of El Cerrito del Represo, Spanish for "The Little Hill of the Impoundment." The area at the foot of the hill is about half-barren and is slowly losing vegetation to gunshots, BLM officials say.

Since 2001, the bureau has run 14 organized trash cleanup events on the monument, each covering multiple shooting sites and collecting a total of more than 11,200 pounds of debris. Most debris is from shooting or household dumping, BLM planner Mark Lambert said.

With homes already surrounding parts of the monument and more proposed in the area, the monument is an easy draw for shooters, and the shooting generates more environmental impact here than on other, more rural national monuments, Lambert said.

"The resources we are dedicated to protect are falling victim to that use," said Lambert, saying many desert plants are suffering "collateral damage" from bullets aimed at other targets.

But the Ironwood monument area also is a favorite attraction for target-shooters who say they are responsible, such as J.Q. Sides of Kingman, who uses it when he comes to visit his brother in Tucson. His is a family of hunters and shooters, and members always take firearms on outings, usually for target or other forms of recreational shooting.

"We are not destructive and are stewards of the land, as are most dedicated firearms owners. It would be prudent for the BLM to consider the desires of the shooting public, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding, model citizens," Sides wrote in late March.

Richard and Anne Edwards of Tucson, who support the shooting ban, wrote the BLM in late April that they often hear gunfire when hiking around the monument on weekends.

"Because the gunfire echoes off the mountains, it is impossible to tell if the gunfire is occurring nearby or miles away," the couple wrote. "It is unnerving, to say the least, to be hiking not knowing if you are going to suddenly appear over a hill right in the midst of target shooters."

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Share your thoughts

Comments on the Ironwood Forest National Monument management plan can be e-mailed to AZ_IFNM_RMP@blm.gov or sent by regular mail to Mark Lambert, Ironwood Forest National Monument planner, BLM, 12661 E. Broadway, Tucson 85748.