Special Reports

Flora, fauna last in line for water

When it comes to water in Arizona, it's all about people. Farmers are likely to score sizeable profits from land sales. Tribes will get to choose between a wealth of water or money. City-dwellers in the Southwest will probably get to keep the golf courses, decorative fountains and backyard pools. The losers, experts say, will be of the non-human variety - the plants and animals that depend on nature's water courses for their sustenance and their homes. "The real reason we manage water is so more people can come in - not to keep free-flowing streams," said Larry Dozier, deputy general manager for the Central Arizona Project. That's distressing to hydrologist Jeanmarie Haney of The Nature Conservancy in Tucson. "We've lost 91 percent of natural flow in our big rivers," she said. "Because we've lost so much, we really need to focus on what's remaining." That the once-perennial Santa Cruz River has dried is part of Tucson's reality. But Haney and others have struggled for decades to get protection for the San Pedro River, which has suffered from groundwater pumping in Sierra Vista and nearby Fort Huachuca. But while myriad laws and policies protect water for people, environmentalists have few tools to protect the remaining free-flowing rivers and streams. Biologists say their decline has already taken a dramatic toll on birds like the yellow-billed cuckoo, which depends on riparian habitat. Although it's not federally listed, biologists say the cuckoo's numbers have plummeted as natural waterways have been diverted or dried. While only about half of Arizona's 31 native fish species are federally listed, Haney says all of them are threatened. One plant species, the federally endangered Huachuca water umbel, lives only at the fringe of the water and land at 15 streamside sites in the Southwestern United States and into Mexico. At least one riparian critter - the leopard frog - has been trying to adapt to the vanishing riparian areas by hopping in tanks and ponds built for cattle. Besides providing crucial habitat for riparian species, free-flowing streams are crucial stopovers for animals with wider ranges, said David Goodrich, a research hydraulic engineer with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Southwest Watershed Research Center in Tucson. Streamside environments are often dramatically cooler and more humid than the surrounding desert, making them important refuges in the hot Southwest, Goodrich said. "I've heard them referred to as gas stops for birds. All of these areas are magnets for birds and mammals," he said. Which is exactly why Haney and her colleagues lament the threat of their loss. But they aren't giving up. The Arizona Department of Water Resources issues certificates for in-stream water rights, but that policy is undergoing its first court challenge at Cherry Creek, a tributary of the Salt River in the Tonto National Forest. Last fall, the Phelps Dodge Corp. challenged Cherry Creek water rights the Department awarded the U.S. Forest Service for recreational and wildlife purposes. Even if the certificates are deemed legal, most would be among the lowest-priority rights on their streams - and the first to be cut in a shortage. So environmentalists are working to be able to divert senior irrigation rights, when they're retired, to riparian habitats. A 2003 settlement giving seniority to in-stream rights for a sacred Zuni Pueblo riparian area in the Four Corners region has opened the door for similar practices elsewhere, said Tom Collazo, director of conservation for The Nature Conservancy in Tucson. Collazo believes such moves have public support. In a recent statewide poll, nine of 10 people interviewed said they valued the protection of free-flowing water sources. For Haney, it's more of a gut feeling: "When people go camping, how many of them would prefer to end up at a wet stream, rather than a dry wash?"