A coalition of conservation groups, including the Sierra Club and Friends of Wild Animals, filed a formal objection Monday to a plan by the Tonto National Forest to allow hundreds of helicopter landings in five wilderness areas to capture and manage bighorn sheep.
The conservation groups — noting that motorized equipment is not usually allowed in wilderness areas — contend that the Tonto Forest plan “violates the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act, and will harm wildlife including bighorn sheep, as well as other wilderness values.”
Groups joining the Sierra Club and Friends of Wild Animals in filing the objection included Wilderness Watch, WildEarth Guardians and SPEAK (Supporting and Promoting Ethics for the Animal Kingdom).
Forest Service officials said a final decision on the plan won’t come until they have reviewed objections filed Monday.
Thirty sheep were captured in the Tonto Forest northeast of Phoenix by the Arizona Game and Fish Department in November by officers using net guns fired from helicopters. The bighorns were taken to the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson as part of an effort to rebuild a herd there. Game and Fish officials said three bighorns died during the recent capture.
Conservation group members noted that those sheep were captured in areas not designated as wilderness because environmentalists’ earlier objections delayed approval of helicopter flights in wilderness. They said this shows that it’s not necessary to “violate” wilderness areas with helicopter flights.
“It is ironic and truly outrageous that during this 50th anniversary year of the Wilderness Act, the Forest Service is considering projects that knock a hole in the wilderness protections for some of our key wilderness areas, including the Superstition Wilderness and Four Peaks” in the Tonto Forest, said Sandy Bahr, director of the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club.
“The Game and Fish Department was pushing the Tonto National Forest to allow helicopters in wilderness areas to capture bighorn sheep (in November), but when approval for that didn’t come through in time, they took sheep from outside wilderness areas,” Bahr said. “That indicates that they don’t have to go into wilderness areas to collect sheep.”
Cyndi Tuell, spokeswoman for the Friends of Wild Animals, said the Game and Fish Department also is seeking approval to use helicopters in the Pusch Ridge Wilderness in the Catalina Mountains, an area occupied by the transplanted bighorns.
“This is a terrible violation of the Wilderness Act in Tucson’s backyard,” Tuell said.
Carrie Templin, a spokeswoman for the Tonto National Forest, said a 45-day objection period for the draft helicopter decision ended Monday.
“By the regulations, the agency has 45 days to respond to the points that are raised in the objections,” Templin said. “Until we read through it and work with the groups to go through those points, we don’t have a comment.
“Game and Fish has made this request” for helicopter use in wilderness areas, she said. “We are analyzing it. The public is giving us their concerns, and that’s what the process is for.”
Templin said the plan, if approved, would permit up to 450 helicopter landings over a 10-year period “to allow the department flexibility in achieving wildlife management objectives.”
Mark Hart, a spokesman for the Game and Fish Department, said that “the Wilderness Act provides for exceptions to take permitted management actions.”
He said it would be “much more efficient” to have the flexibility to land helicopters in wilderness areas — allowing wildlife officers to collect the needed number of sheep in one general location in some cases.
