Roundup, fence work target stray cattle problem at San Pedro River

Several dozen stray cattle have been removed from the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, and federal officials say fence repairs are now underway to keep more livestock out of sensitive parts of the river preserve 80 miles southeast of Tucson.

According to Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman June Lowery, 79 cattle, including 22 calves, were rounded up on April 15 by a private landowner in the area.

Lowery said the BLM, which manages the conservation area, did not actively participate in the roundup beyond providing access to the area and keeping the public safe by temporarily closing an 8-mile stretch of the San Pedro River between Arizona Highway 90 and Hereford Road.

Meanwhile, work is progressing on repairs to the boundary fence surrounding the almost-57,000-acre conservation area.

A crew from the Arizona Conservation Corps surveyed 102 miles of boundary fencing and provided the bureau with a condition report last month, Lowery said.

In February, the conservation corps began work on 11 miles of fence repairs using materials supplied by the BLM. Lowery said that work is scheduled for completion by the end of May, as are repairs to fences damaged by the Williams Fire, which burned about 500 acres along the river south of Hereford Road in early April.

Ranchers in the area are also repairing their own fences in and around the conservation area with BLM assistance. Over the past year, Lowery said, the bureau’s Tucson Field Office has provided 12 miles of fence material to three of the four ranchers who hold grazing allotments within the conservation area.

“We hope to address the remaining fencing as resources are available,” she said in an email.

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San Pedro advocates have complained for years about stray livestock trampling the river’s banks, stripping them bare of vegetation and contaminating the water with their droppings.

Robin Silver, co-founder of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, said his group has lodged roughly 135 complaints to the BLM about trespassing cattle in the past three years alone. More than 80 of those complaints have come since the bureau agreed in August to step up its response to the problem as part of a legal settlement with the center.

Until the conservation area is properly fenced off, Silver said, no amount of roundups will protect Arizona’s last free-flowing river and the ribbon of precious habitat it supports.

“The cows will just come back,” he said. “We already documented cows in the same area as the (latest) roundup two days after it was done.”

The BLM recently extended the four livestock grazing allotments within the conservation area for another 10 years, despite objections — and several lawsuits — from Silver’s organization and other environmental groups.

The cattle that were collected on April 15 were taken to a Willcox livestock auction to be sold.

Silver was furious when he heard about that. He said ranchers should not be allowed to graze their livestock illegally on federal land and then pocket the profits they make from doing so.

“These cows are getting fat destroying public land and critical habitat for endangered species, and now they’re being sold at record prices,” Silver said. “What a giant scam.”