Your Week with AZCentral: ⛰️ Why you should know…

May 31, 2024
by RJ Hamster

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Your Week with AZCentral

A SPOTLIGHT ON THE JOURNALISM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION HELPS BRING TO LIFE.

Fri May 31 2024

Raphael Romero Ruiz | Engagement Reporter

@raphaeldelag

Hey reader,

Growing up in Tucson, I always looked forward to seeing the snow-capped mountains that lined the north and east sides of town. Mount Lemon was my winter wonderland, where this desert kid first encountered snow. In the summer, it became a much-needed relief from the summer heat.

It’s been years since I’ve been to Mount Lemmon, much less any of the other 17 Sky Island ranges that our friends on the Environment desk recently reported on. Because of my personal history with the beauty of Mount Lemmon and the excellent storytelling in this piece about how climate change and the mining industry threaten our state’s Sky Islands, I felt compelled to share this story with you all.

This week, I spoke with The Republic’s Environment Reporter Brandon Loomis , who wrote an extensive article about Arizona’s Sky Island ranges. We talked about what a “Sky Island” is, the people who have come together to steward the land and what the future holds for this region.

With that, here’s what Brandon had to say.

⛰️ How climate change, wildfires, mining endanger Sky Islands

What are Sky Islands?

Your recent story highlights the incredible biodiversity and cultural significance of Arizona’s Sky Islands. The perception often placed on Arizona is that of a dry desert state with nothing more than dusty trails and cacti. But your story offers a counterpoint. For readers who may have never heard of the concept of a “Sky Island” can you catch us up?

Brandon: The term oasis is overused as a metaphor for life-sustaining areas surrounded by desert, but it’s apt here. These are mountains that spread north out of Mexico’s Sierra Madre, creating a chain of forested “islands” effectively linking that range with the Rockies to the north. They are bathed in summer monsoon rains, which in turn produce vegetation and bugs to feed all kinds of life, making them an especially attractive destination for some birds not seen elsewhere in the United States. They’re also a lot cooler than the desert below, and offer desert dwellers some summer escapes and even winter snow play. They’re just a unique and biologically rich part of our state, but also at risk from a warming and drying local climate.

Keeping the land alive

A good portion of your story revolves around the perspectives of people who are working to conserve the Sky Islands across the region. The folks you talked with varied from stewards of the Sky Island Alliance to activists of the San Carlos Apache tribe. A throughline amongst their experiences was a passion to keep the land and all its fauna and flora alive. Where does this uniting passion for the land come from? Has it formed partnerships or fostered community?

Brandon: There’s a substantial community of people who love, study and nurture these mountains. Though I visited them separately, several of these groups have overlapping projects, such as in the conservation work on waterways. For instance, I wrote about one Tucson organization’s work to repair fire-damaged springs atop Mount Lemmon, and another’s work to remove thirsty non-native plants from a creek that receives some of that spring water at the mountain’s base. This kind of complementary work figures to increase as the federal Interior Department is doling out cash specifically to protect these mountains and the vital wildlife migration corridors between them.

Cultural ties to Sky Islands

You spoke with Austin Nunez, the chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s San Xavier District, about the cultural ties that Indigenous people in Southern Arizona have to the Sky Islands. He elaborated on a specific region of the Sky Islands, the Santa Rita Mountains, where his ancestors would find refuge. That region is now at the center of copper mining claims. Can you clue us in on what is going on in the Santa Rita mountains?

Brandon: The mine in question, Copper World, has been a long time in the making, having originated as a proposal called the Rosemont Mine. That initial project was on U.S. Forest Service land, and it ran into some legal snags restricting the company’s ability to store waste rock on government land. It has now shifted to the other side of a ridgeline, onto private land that needs no federal approval. The company, Hudbay, has done a lot of exploratory work there, just south of Tucson and near Vail, and is now in the process of getting state environmental regulators to sign off on water and air pollution permits. Some observers expect Hudbay will eventually seek federal approval to expand onto its federal claims as well. Chairman Nunez is hoping to block that, as it’s in a culturally and environmentally important area for the Tohono O’odham. But a law that Congress passed in the 1800s to encourage mine development is still on the books, and there’s an expectation of increased demand for copper as we electrify more of our economy. We’ll be reporting more on those developments and tensions later this year.

This newsletter is written by Raphael Romero Ruiz. Reach him at rromeroruiz@gannett.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @raphaeldelag.

How climate change, wildfires, mining endanger Sky Islands

They are an almost magical realm in the desert, unique ecosystems that could buckle under the pressure of too many threats.

READ MORE

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