Danger funnels northward

Caught between the world's rich and poor, Arizona's parks, forests and wildlife refuges along its porous border with Mexico have become America's dangerous doormats.

The unrelenting flow of drug smugglers and people looking for work is jeopardizing the lives of recreational visitors and federal workers, according to land managers from Ajo to New Mexico who say they are woefully understaffed.

The traffic is also inflicting lasting damage on a fragile environment, as border crossers and their pursuers blaze new roads and disrupt habitat for endangered species.

Understaffing tolerated - until disaster strikes

Senior federal officials knew rangers at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument faced an "alarming possibility" of being killed or maimed by rampant smuggling of people and drugs through their park.

A 1999 National Park Service report to Congress told them that "armed confrontations, brandishing weapons and shoot-outs" were occurring "with significant frequency" around four parks on the U.S.-Mexican border.

But for years the Park Service and Congress mostly turned a deaf ear to Organ Pipe's pleas for help with understaffing. Other land agencies face the same problem, sending officers out to patrol beats larger than the city of Tucson.

Border's sensitive areas are trampled

Arizona's 372-mile border with Mexico ranges from sandy deserts and lava flows in the west, where 4 inches of rain fall in a wet year, to oak-dotted grasslands and mountaintop forests in the east, where snowfall may be measured in feet.

Few areas in North America boast such natural diversity, yet cutting across this varied landscape is a unifying problem: Ecologically, the entire border region is getting hammered by wave after wave of illegal border crossers.

By foot, horseback, bicycle, motorcycle, all-terrain vehicle, car, truck, even ultralight glider, they stream across the border every day and night. They dump tons of trash and human feces on places set aside for their scenic beauty. They blaze hundreds of new roads and trails through fragile desert soils. They ruin habitat for endangered species.

Sonoran pronghorns in a 'crisis situation'

The United States is close to losing its last remaining population of Sonoran pronghorns, skittish, fleet-footed animals that many people mistake for antelopes.

Largely due to the drought, the endangered pronghorns' numbers in southwest Arizona have plummeted from 140 in December to between 25 and 50.

"We probably lost all the fawn crop from last year," said Roger Di Rosa, manager of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. "It's a crisis situation now."

Border crossers tied to costly wildfires

Illegal border crossers are suspected of causing eight major wildfires in Southern Arizona this year, sticking taxpayers with $5.1 million in firefighting costs.

Those eight fires charred 68,413 acres - nearly 108 square miles - near the border, according to an Arizona Daily Star review of public records and interviews with land managers. Only fires bigger than 100 acres were included in the analysis, but officials say border crossers caused many smaller blazes that were quickly controlled.

Besides extending an already busy fire season, the presence of border crossers in the back country is causing fire managers to rethink some of their strategies.