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Two of the region's long-running disputes — access to public lands and the Mexican gray wolf program — just became the subject of separate lawsuits in federal court.

One of the suits seeks to end fees to access Mount Lemmon and the other to keep Mexican gray wolves in the wild.

Defenders of Wildlife and other environmental advocacy groups filed their suit last week against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior, as well as high-level federal officials, in an attempt to keep reintroduced Mexican gray wolves in the wild.

While the suit calls for certain environmental reviews, and raises questions as to the validity of a multiagency oversight committee, much of its focus is on a policy that removes wolves from the wild if they kill domestic livestock three times in a year.

Since the "three-strikes rule" was adopted in 2005, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of Mexican gray wolves removed from the reintroduction area known as the Blue Range in Eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, the suit states.

"The frequency of management killing or removal of wolves has dramatically increased, causing the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction effort to significantly falter," the suit says.

The Mexican gray wolf was listed as an endangered species in 1976, and although more than 90 have been reintroduced over the last 10 years, recent counts show the number of wild Mexican gray wolves in the Blue Range to be about 60, according to Star archives.

The reintroduction effort has been criticized for a number of reasons — a limited reintroduction area, for example — but the suit contends the "three-strikes rule" has been a major factor in the declining population.

"Population numbers of wolves have declined the last three out of four years and the number of breeding pairs decreased by approximately 50 percent between 2006 and the latest count at the end of 2007," the suit says.

Meanwhile, a handful of avid hikers are continuing their fight against the Mount Lemmon recreation fee.

The group of four hikers includes Christine Wallace, who recently was fined for refusing to pay the recreation fee after an unsuccessful court fight; and Daniel Patterson, an ecologist and Southwest director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who is also running for the state House of Representatives.

Federal law allows the U.S. Forest Service to collect a recreation fee for destinations classified as "high-impact recreation areas."

Essentially, an area earns such a distinction if it has designated parking, permanent restrooms, trash bins, an interpretive sign or kiosk, picnic tables and security officers. The fee is used to help develop the accommodations.

Mount Lemmon has nearly all been deemed a recreation area, so visitors driving up the Catalina Highway to Mount Lemmon must pay either $5 per day or $20 per year if they are going to use any of the amenities along the 28-mile stretch of road.

The group argues that the recreation fee should not apply to undeveloped portions of Mount Lemmon such as back-country trails or primitive campgrounds.

"The areas adjacent to the Catalina Highway corridor are dispersed back-country areas," the suit says. By charging a fee to park anywhere within the recreation area, "the service is precluding hikers from freely accessing the Forest to hike in dispersed areas," it says.

The suit also argues the fee has a "significant chilling effect" on a person's "right to travel on the Catalina Highway and stop en route to enjoy the scenery, take a break or have a picnic along the highway."