Local Opinion: The Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge needs your help

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump has escalated his personal war on our nation’s stewardship of our natural resources and public lands by ordering federal agencies fundamentally to ignore established law and established regulations for goal-based management. He is rolling the dice that in a few months this neglect will somehow invigorate an economy that could under his watch become the worst since the Great Depression.

Our system of government is built on citizen oversight and engagement in its implementation, but far too few of us participate in that process. The result is increasing danger to the values many of us share including for the natural environment of our region. The Trump wall, made possible by a congressional blunder to enable the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to waive all federal, state and local laws for the wall’s construction, has neared completion not withstanding pandemics or economies, or just plain facts about the realities of the Sonoran Desert or our border policies. The waivers enabled increasing autonomy of the DHS to operate outside of the law, and the withdrawal of legal requirements for citizen oversight.

Most recently the DHS has proposed to construct an expanded, essentially military base and processing and detention center inside Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. For this proposal the DHS does not have the most direct benefit of waived laws. The rationale and analyses offered by the DHS for the need and additional cost for the facility do not even come close to satisfying the National Environmental Policy Act’s requirements, nor is the plan compliant with the Wilderness Act protections for the refuge. Nor does it make sense given nearby facilities that could be better expanded for the purpose. The opportunity for public comments on this proposal was closed earlier this month.

However, citizens still have an opportunity to comment on another administration assault on the Cabeza Refuge. The administration is now proposing to expand hunting in public lands as a general policy.

To be clear, management of our national wildlife refuges has a long history in carefully managed hunting in concert with needed protection of wildlife and habitats. The refuge was initially established largely as a result of a campaign by the Boy Scouts of America to restore endangered bighorn sheep. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has done an exceptional job of ensuring a future for the bighorn populations in the refuge and providing a once-in-a-lifetime trophy hunt. The service is in the process of also restoring the endangered Sonoran pronghorn population on the refuge.

However, now the Trump administration is proposing to expand hunting in the refuge without regard to its carrying capacity or traditional purposes. The proposal ignores the increasing drought of the region and associated habitat changes, including those accumulating from routine, unnecessary damages by the Border Patrol.

The vast majority of public engagement in the refuge is there for enjoying the peace and quiet of the Sonoran Desert wilderness. Into this experience, the Trump administration want to inject more guns and the cacophony of more uncontrolled shooting to kill species such as ringtail cats, mountain lions and foxes — gratuitous killing fundamentally without wildlife refuge management or limits.

Those of us in Arizona who hunt and recreationally shoot our firearms have abundant public lands as alternative locations. It is time, however, for all of us not to remain silent about the attack on our Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

Visit the Fish and Wildlife Service website at https://www.fws.gov/nwrs/threecolumn.aspx?id=6442461516 to find out how you can voice your opinion by June 8 for Sonoran Desert wildlife.