LUKE AIR FORCE BASE, Arizona--In 1853, much of the desert now known as the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range was obtained from Mexico in the famed Gadsden Purchase. Almost a century later, the federal government assembled the lands into a unified parcel by sending out "Dear Rancher" letters with checks to buy out their claims. Since then, the 2.7 million sandswept acres--an area a little smaller than Connecticut--have played host to an unusual mix of military, wildlife, Indian and recreational pursuits.
Now, a century and a half after the Gadsden Purchase, government officials are once again trying to decide amongst themselves who should control the mountains, plains, sand dunes, desert washes and caves that make up the Goldwater Range. This summer, public hearings are to be held and environmental-impact drafts published, all in preparation for a congressional decision in 2001 that will determine who will manage the land: the Defense Department, the Interior Department, some combination of the two, or some other party entirely.
The review was ordained in 1986, when the Goldwater Range was given its name and, after years of working within fuzzy lines of authority, a formalized management status. The 1986 law stipulated that the range would be owned by the Interior Department but used by a wide variety of government entities. The Air Force, headquartered at Luke Air Force Base outside Phoenix, and to a lesser extent the Marine Corps, based at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, manage the lands' military uses.
The most extensive use of the Goldwater Range is as a training facility for military pilots. Goldwater is the nation's second largest aerial gunnery range, behind Nellis Air Force Range in Nevada. Overhead, fliers from the four military branches--and sometimes other entities, such as the Customs Service and the Arizona Air National Guard--practice air-to-air, air-to-ground and simulated warfare maneuvers. The site's four manned ranges include elaborate bullseyes on the ground that take hits from small practice bombs. "By far it has the best array of targets I've ever flown on," says Maj. Jim (Jake) Elwell, the operations officer for the Air Force's Range Management Office at Luke.
The ground-target areas, however, only account for about 5 percent of the range's land area; the rest of the site is used by the military mainly for its ample air space, rather than the mostly pristine wilderness underneath it. About two-thirds of the Goldwater Range is actually Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, and about one-third is the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, run by Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service. Adding complexity are the entities that border the range. To the southeast is Organ Pipe National Monument, run by the National Park Service. A long southern border is shared with Mexico, meaning that the Border Patrol, the Drug Enforcement Agency and Customs Service officials operate both alongside the range and within its boundaries.
It's far from clear who will end up controlling the Goldwater Range when Congress makes its decision in 2001. Already, serious challenges to the military's role are looming.
Environmentalists say DoD is not the best caretaker of lands that include endangered wildlife. In its forthcoming environmental impact statement, the Air Force must prove that its care of the Sonoran pronghorn antelope, an endangered species, has been adequate--not to mention the care it's taken of other rare species, such as the lesser long-nosed bat, the ferruginous pygmy owl and several species of cactus.
Already, the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife has engaged in legal skirmishing over the antelope's status. The group sued the Air Force, seeking an end to air-to-land strafing exercises during the antelope fawning season. The two sides have reached an out-of-court settlement, but Defenders of Wildlife's legal director, Bill Snape, said the group reserves the right to restart its legal battle if the antelope herds' condition does not improve.
"We're not against the Air Force continuing to manage the land, per se," Snape said. "The issue is that the Goldwater Range is part of the most spectacular Sonoran desert wilderness left in the country. We want to make sure that endangered species like the pronghorn continue to be protected, but also that the range itself remains as wilderness. The Air Force's rhetoric has changed in the last decade, but we want to see their actions live up to their word."
The Air Force must also demonstrate that its stewardship of the site's rich Native American archaeological resources, such as its rock shelters and petroglyphs, has been sufficient. Archaeological evidence suggests that the range has been used by native peoples for 10,000 to 12,000 years; historic migratory patterns have led no less than 16 tribes to claim cultural or religious significance for the land, says W. Bruce Masse, an Air Force archaeologist based at Luke.
"People look at the environmental impact statement as a waste of paper, but I like to look at it as a requirement that we're able to prove that we're able to do all this at the same time--conduct a military mission, comply with all laws, and preserve natural and cultural resources," says Bruce D. Eilerts, chief of the Air Force's Natural and Cultural Resources Management and Environmental Analysis Section. "The purpose is not simply to file a biblical document. It's to show the public and Congress what we've done and what we can do."
To meet these challenges, the Air Force reorganized its environmental and cultural specialists into a Range Management Office a little more than a year ago. "Before that, we had the operations and airspace people under their own unit, and we had the Native American and cultural resources people buried in civil engineering," Masse says. "Because of this fragmentation, it was hard to dialogue. Putting these people all together was difficult at first, because they each had their own ways of doing things. But we're now able to be proactive when we set up special training missions--moving our targets away from harm, or whatever it may be. It's been working very well."
With a somewhat unusual Air Force staff of two archaeologists and four biologists, Luke officials are attempting to gauge the present state of Goldwater's natural and cultural resources, so they can devise a comprehensive conservation plan for military, Interior and Indian officials. The task is substantial. In addition to Indian items, relics of other eras--from early Spanish conquistadors' lances to Cold War-era Univac computers and abandoned Korean War convoys--are found on the site.
"One of the things we're trying to do that's proactive is a community outreach program, where we talk to people in communities surrounding the range who might know about sites and mines and oral history of the area," Masse says.
The Air Force will also need to run a gantlet of public sessions during which citizens are allowed to voice complaints. The Air Force has already complaints about the noise from training flights. And Air Force officials will have to satisfy citizens who seek greater recreational use from the Goldwater Range. The degree of access for all-terrain vehicles will be controversial: Some citizens want them, while others consider the vehicles annoying and harmful to the desert ecosystem.
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