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>> Nowadays, everybody has their own ideas of what's best for the land.
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In Southern Arizona San Rafael Valley, feelings about the land run deep.
>> This is one of the most spectacularly beautiful places in the United States.
It's absolutely pristine, pure, exquisitely beautiful.
And the river running down through there, and the great big grassland savannah, this is...
just lovely here.
The way Arizona all used to be, and it should be kept this way.
It's a very valuable asset to the state.
>> Well, I think it's probably some of the best cow country
in Southeast Arizona, or as good as there is.
>> The upper Santa Cruz area, including such areas as the San Rafael Valley
and Senoita Creek are two of the biologically,
most biologically diverse sites throughout the Southwest.
>> It's something that's, as I said in one of the prefaces to a book I wrote,
it's the place you have to come back to if you leave.
The Kah-den-seeah [phonetic], as they say in Spanish.
You have a feeling for the home place that you have to come back to if you leave.
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>> Like longtime resident Doris Sibold [phonetic],
many a visitor has found this Valley along the US and Mexican border irresistible.
Native Americans first roamed the rolling grasslands and oak woodlands.
Then the Mexican and American cattle ranchers discovered the year-round forge.
And now, its scenery and natural history attract both the sightseer and the developer.
The growing interest from the outside
in the Patagonian San Rafael Valley communities threatens not only a way of life,
but the integrity of the landscape.
>> Myself, I would like to see things left as they are,
but the threat of development is probably inevitable in the valley.
And I think we're going to see some big changes in the way the valley looks
in maybe 10 years, maybe a little longer.
>> John Maynard is a Santa Cruz County planner.
Like a lot of area residents, he's thinking about the future, and changes on the land.
>> My concern is the state subdivision regulations that allow a private landowner
to break his ranch down into 40-acre parcels, or larger.
By doing that you end up with land that just doesn't work for anybody.
>> We're going to lose that special quality of the open space, and kind of the remote feeling
that the San Rafael Valley offers.
>> The whole issue of land use and how to balance the needs of people
with what the ecosystem needs to stay healthy has area residents, and local governments,
and the agency that's responsible for much of the public land management
in the San Rafael area, the US Forest Service, looking at a new approach to land management.
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It's called Ecosystem Management.
The concept blends the needs of people with environmental values in a way
that sustains the diverse, healthy ecosystems.
It's an idea that people here are learning about.
>> When I think of an ecosystem management, I think of a plan to fit over a whole big area --
>> To me the ecosystem means everything that's at work out here.
It's the geology, the geography, the climate, the plants, the animals,
and the people that are involved in a particular environment.
It's everything that contributes to it.
>> Well, I think ecosystem management to me is people as well
as the environment somehow managing a harmonious relationship, where human needs
and the environment co-exist, and flourish, and live peacefully, harmoniously together.
It's not --
>> Unlike traditional resource management, where decision making revolves
around a single resource like timber, grass, or water, on a small unit of land,
ecosystem management considers the big picture.
A whole landscape, and everything in it.
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Not only the biological values, but people values of culture, history, and economics.
>> We've come to recognize, especially with endangered species and rare plants,
and the great amount of diversity that's in this area, that just looking at one resource
in isolation by itself doesn't always lead to the best results in the long run.
Maybe not even for that resource.
So I think the objective in this is to integrate all of these things, along with the people's use
of the land, taking into account the history and the culture,
and defining just where we want the landscape to go --
>> At the heart of ecosystem management is the idea
of sustaining the integrity of the landscape.
In other words, making sure we don't lose the ecosystem's ability to withstand use and change.
To do that means maintaining all the ecosystem's different components,
from the smallest organisms to the biggest parts of the landscape.
>> I think we have to recognize, first of all, that the landscape is a pattern
of sites that have different needs.
>> From the point of view of the vulnerability of the sites,
the rare species that might be there, the sensitivity to different kinds of activities,
and recognizing there's certain places that have appropriate uses,
and other places that have different appropriate uses.
And sorting those out in a pattern of use that makes sense, and it's not destructive.
>> The bottom line is that we want these natural ecosystems to be able to continue
to produce uses and values, which add to the quality of life.
>> But making it work depends on those who live here working together with the Forest Service
to figure out how to achieve a desired future condition for the area.
>> The long-term product of this has to be a new forest plan direction
for a particular piece of land.
And the key to that, we've recognized that was missing in our initial forest planning effort,
is a joint and a common understanding of what kind of desired future condition,
or desired future landscape, we'd like to see for a piece of country.
If we can agree and at least gain some common understanding of that with all of the people
that are involved, using the best of scientific information that's available to try
to identify what that desired future condition could realistically be and what we'd like it
to be, then we can test all management decisions, and all standards and guidelines,
and all our actions against, well, how does it affect that?
>> When I think of ecosystem management, I think of such in the context of a whole.
The whole region which we're in, right here, in this part of Arizona.
I also think of ecosystem management in the terms of goal setting, of priorities,
of objectives that are clear-cut, that are shared by those who are actually on the ground,
and in actuality are developed from the ground up, rather than from the top down.
>> It's one area of the county that we have not put together an area-wide plan.
An area-wide plan, I think, is important in that you begin to focus on some
of the critical issues that concern the neighborhood, the folks that live in that area.
In this case, the San Rafael Valley.
So, we'll be addressing their needs, we'll be asking them to look at the future,
what they want to see the valley evolve into in the next 20 years.
>> The success of ecosystem management hinges on public involvement.
>> Groups of people that have interest in the forest are...
are able to give us views that we wouldn't get otherwise.
We can't operate within a closed system and just make decisions
without knowing what public values are.
And public values are dynamic.
>> These days, public involvement depends on building partnerships
between government agencies, university researchers, environmental organizations,
and especially local interest groups.
Along Senoita Creek in the town of Patagonia,
the Nature Conservancy's Jeffrey Cooper understands the importance
of partnership [inaudible] association.
Jeffrey has helped create a forum for concerns about economic development, conservation,
and other needs of the community.
The association looks for common ground,
and a plan to conserve what everybody agrees is a special landscape.
>> I think it's very important that those of us involved
in natural resource conversation listen carefully to these communities
that we're affecting, and that we're working around and within.
I think too often in the past we made assumptions that what was good,
we've learned that that is not necessarily the case, or it's not perceived as being the case.
There's a real need for broadening, understanding of the ecological needs,
but conversely we need to better understand the needs of the human communities.
>> Conservationists are not alone when it comes to understanding the need for partnership.
Area ranchers like Jim Patton of the Lone Mountain Ranch, see partnerships as a way
to learn what's best for the ecosystem.
>> It's going to take cooperation from all of the people involved
in managing a particular piece of ground.
It's going to take knowing what the ground is,
or what that particular environment is capable of, and knowing its limitations.
You cannot, for instance, make a golf course in this country very easily
because there's not enough water here.
It will take a lot of cooperation from all
of the people involved working toward a common goal.
>> Knowing the landscape -- the ground, as Jim calls it --
depends a lot on researchers and government agencies working together.
Technology has made sharing that information easier.
With the help of orbiting satellites, Forest Service and University
of Arizona Researchers are collecting all kinds of data about specific landscapes,
including the San Rafael, Patagonia, and Lone Mountain area.
>> This is a geographic positioning system,
and it's used for pin-pointing your location on the Earth.
We use it for identifying monitoring spots,
so we can monitor the vegetation and the changes over time.
>> Once the information gathered on the ground is combined with topographical
and biological data, a computer at the University of Arizona paints a detailed picture
of what's going on in an ecosystem, and what's happened over time.
This very well serves ecosystem managers, and helps all of us to learn a little more
about the intricacies of an ecosystem.
And, as the information is updated, so will the ecosystem plan.
Like science, ecosystem management is an ongoing process.
Although ecosystem management is driven more by biological considerations and less
by commodity production, dollars and cents are still very much a part of the ecosystem picture.
>> A lot of agricultural economists deal primarily with one sector in the economy.
And as someone who deals with community economic development issues,
I look across a lot of sectors.
And one thing that is very important,
and I think ties in with the ecosystems management idea, is that our economic sectors,
just like our biological and environmental sectors, are really very interdependent.
So, for example, ranching activities are dependent and interdependent with other types
of activities that go on in the region.
And so are recreational activities.
And until we get a good handle on that, we won't be in a good position to make wise decisions
about the efficient and equitable use of resources.
>> Think about the American West and chances are, the images that come
to mind can be found in the San Rafael area.
The wide open spaces.
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Broken only by an occasional windmill.
Or a fenced road drifting off into the horizon.
And of course, the cowboys and cattle.
Doris Sibold remembers ranch life 70 years ago.
>> Well, I'll tell you that when it was all open range, it was the cattle,
there were lots of cattle in here and they wintered in this country here.
And you wouldn't believe that 5,000 head of cattle wintered right in this Red Rock Canyon.
>> The historical aspect of this area is, it's a very significant area in Arizona history.
A great ranch that was owned here by Colin Cameron was significant in Arizona history.
The Apaches Geronimo and Cochise came down through here.
>> [Inaudible] can help with the plan for the future.
>> Cultural and historical values are really important in ecosystem management planning
because it's really not possible to know exactly what kind of impacts have occurred
in an ecosystem, and the extent of ecological or environmental change that has taken place,
unless you're really familiar with at least the basic rudiments
of the historical past of that ecosystem.
We're really fortunate to have some wonderful photographs from the 1880s, from 110 years ago.
There are really good photographs of the San Rafael area.
And when you can identify particular landforms,
you can really re-photograph the exact area that appears in a photograph.
And by doing that, you can see the amount of change that's taken place;
whether there's been erosion, whether there has been invasion of non-native plants,
whether there are more trees, more vegetation present now or in the past.
And these are very good indicators of the types of impacts that have taken place in the past
and the types of effects that these impacts have had on the landscape.
>> Tracing history shows us that change, managing change in a way
that sustains the whole landscape and the quality
of life is what people here are looking for in ecosystem management.
It is a cooperative effort, especially when it involves public land.
>> I would like to see the various facets that are interested
in it be a little more open-minded to each other, and not quite so adamant
about their own particular interest.
>> I remember when I was in college doing a thesis, I came across a paragraph written
by Louis Agathe, a naturalist in the, sometime in the 1800s.
And he writes, "Somehow society cannot, will not see that though man is now the dominant species,
his fate is still bound up with the prosperity of all forms of life.
He carries his own animal organs and his natural history
into every ideal future that he projects."
So in other words, if we don't have an environment that's managed well,
from the smallest animal to the greatest part, we won't have an environment for anybody.
We're all going there together.
>> It's that spirit that will make ecosystem management work.
Remembering that it is an evolving process.
An ongoing attempt to balance the biological needs of an ecosystem with the needs
of people will in the end keep the land in balance.
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