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Red squirrels' beautiful canyon home threatened

The Nuttall and Gibson fires are converging on a lush, stunning canyon that's rich in pioneer history, home to a 200-foot waterfall and crucial for endangered Mount Graham red squirrels. There are reports that flames have already entered the steep drainage, which plummets 6,300 feet in nine miles from the pine, fir, spruce and shimmering aspen trees at Old Columbine to the mesquite and prickly pears around Cluff Ranch, at the foot of the Pinaleno Mountains. The trail that follows the creek is so steep that the pain in your lungs while hiking up is matched by the ache in your knees while going down. It doesn't take much to imagine how flames would capitalize on the chimneylike drainage, which is choked with trees wherever soil overcomes gravity and erosion to maintain its purchase. Up top, at the start of the trail, there was still snow in shady spots six weeks ago, plus moss, ferns and mushrooms in a setting similar to the White Mountains or Northern New Mexico. Plastic flagging near the trail helps biologists locate the food caches, known as middens, that red squirrels rely on. In fact, the first red squirrel collected by scientists on the mountain was taken from the upper end of Ash Creek Canyon in 1894. "It's just some really mature forest that has always had good squirrel density," said John Koprowski, head of the University of Arizona's red squirrel monitoring project and co-author of "North American Tree Squirrels." "That's in many ways the heart of the red squirrel population," he said. "The fate of the red squirrel in some ways lies with the success in stopping that progression of the fire." The 8-ounce squirrels, numbering 284 in a May survey, aren't found below 8,000 feet elevation in ponderosa pine forests, but they use the Ash Creek drainage to access higher-elevation mixed-conifer and spruce-fir forests. Koprowski said it's ironic the flames are now using the same canyon to reach the trees near the summit that are vital to the squirrels. About 1.5 miles down, you come to a historic lumber mill site with a heavily rusted old boiler. John Nuttall, namesake of the canyon where the Nuttall Fire began June 26, logged here in the 19th century. So did the Cluff Family, which established a ranch in 1880 at the bottom of the canyon, six miles south of Pima. The ranch tapped the creek to irrigate grains, alfalfa and fruit trees, according to Forest Service historical documents. It took Moses Cluff's six sons seven years to build a 12-mile road up the mountain just west of Ash Creek so they could establish a lumber mill. Along the way, they lost several horses to falls off steep cliffs. In the 1910s, wood was sent downhill from the mill using a flume, according to the Graham County Historical Society. A mile farther down, the creek glides over a massive, tilted slab of metamorphic rock, forcing horses to take a long detour and imploring hikers to tread carefully along a path bolstered by metal grates. Keep descending and you start to hear 200-foot Ash Creek Falls, the tallest perennial waterfall in Southern Arizona, according to Erik Molvar's book, "Hiking Arizona's Cactus Country" (Falcon Publishing, 2000.) Climb up on a rock pile and you're rewarded with expansive views of the Gila River Valley and Phelps Dodge's colossal Morenci copper mine. At sunset, flesh-colored rock formations known as The Pinnacles blush on the canyon's eastern ridge. Rainbow and Apache trout are easy to see in deep pools formed where the cold, clear creek's inexorable plunge to the valley is delayed. Both fish were stocked here years ago, and while the Apache trout is endangered, this population isn't an important one because it has interbred so heavily with the rainbow trout, said Don Mitchell, fisheries program manager for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. "There's not anything too troubling to me right now from a fisheries standpoint," he said. Still, any loss of rare riparian habitat in Arizona is troubling, said Robert Fink, wildlife program manager for Game and Fish. The agency is also worried about what will happen downstream at its 788-acre Cluff Ranch State Wildlife Preserve, a popular local fishing hole fed by a 3-mile pipe that taps the lower reaches of Ash Creek Canyon. Besides being damaged by flames, the watershed may suffer dramatic increases in flooding and soil erosion after monsoon downpours strike denuded, charred slopes, as happened in the Santa Catalinas in 2002 and 2003. Pools in Romero Canyon got filled in with silt. Biologists evacuated nearly 1,000 rare Gila chub from Sabino Canyon, before ash-laden runoff made the creek look like an oil slick and smell like an ashtray. "Knowing what we know about Romero and Sabino canyons after the fires, with major flooding and siltation events, that could have a pretty substantial impact on the pipe," Fink said. "There's not a whole lot in the way of fishing in the area. If that fishery gets damaged, it'll be a big hit to the community."