A researcher holds a Western yellow-billed cuckoo. Environmentalists and some federal biologists worry that livestock grazing in the Santa Ritas and elsewhere could jeopardize critical habitat for the threatened migratory bird.

For years, experts with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have documented damage from livestock and called for cattle to be fenced out of fragile riparian habitat in the mountains south of Tucson.

Instead, their agency has signed off on plans by the U.S. Forest Service to continue its current grazing program in the Santa Ritas and elsewhere in the Coronado National Forest, despite its potential impact on endangered species.

Government records obtained by the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity reveal concerns raised since at least 2018 by several Fish and Wildlife Service scientists about critical habitat for the threatened Western yellow-billed cuckoo, Chiricahua leopard frog, Northern Mexican garter snake and other protected animals.

Water development for livestock and overgrazing in areas along springs and creeks are exacerbating threats posed to these areas by warming and drought, according to memos from one longtime biologist for the agency.

β€œWe cannot control climate change, but we can control livestock impacts from grazing, trampling, erosion, and soil compaction,” wrote Susan Sferra, a yellow-billed cuckoo expert for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Arizona, in a memo from November.

Other internal documents from the past six years note extensive cattle β€œoveruse” in riparian areas across the Coronado National Forest, including well-known recreation spots such as Madera, Florida and Box canyons in the Santa Ritas and Sycamore Canyon near the U.S.-Mexico border northwest of Nogales.

Experts ignored?

The Center for Biological Diversity obtained the records this year through the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents will be cited extensively in a lawsuit β€” expected to be filed late this month by the center and the Phoenix-based Maricopa Audubon Society β€” challenging the Fish and Wildlife Service’s biological opinion on ongoing grazing in the national forest.

Center co-founder Robin Silver said the federal officials charged with protecting endangered species are effectively ignoring the best available science and β€œacting against the advice of their own experts” by allowing the current grazing program to continue.

β€œThe experts are saying in writing that it doesn’t work, (but) the experts are overruled by their own administration,” Silver said.

In a written statement, Fish and Wildlife Service officials said they were still evaluating the claims made by the two environmental groups in a February letter to the agency announcing their intent to sue in 60 days.

Spokesman Al Barrus said the service is drafting an official response to the letter and declined to comment further on the pending litigation.

The Forest Service did not respond to several messages left with its Tucson office.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, man-made ponds and tanks for livestock in Southern Arizona now play a critical role in the recovery of the threatened Chiricahua leopard frog.

At issue are plans to continue livestock grazing on 177 active allotments throughout the Coronado National Forest, which covers almost 1.8 million acres scattered across five counties in southeastern Arizona and one in southwestern New Mexico.

Silver said the center conducted surveys in 2020 and 2021 along 114 miles of designated riparian critical habitat in the national forest and found moderate to significant cattle grazing damage to nearly 75% of it.

Instead of fencing off sensitive areas as it does in other forests in the region, Silver said, the Forest Service manages habitat conditions across the Coronado through monitoring and forage-utilization metrics that favor the viability of cows over the needs of endangered species.

β€œThe reality is the managing agency, the Forest Service, is not protecting these riparian areas,” he said. β€œAnd it’s not just us saying it.”

Silver pointed to a November report from the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Sferra that showed β€œyoung trees lacking” at all five yellow-billed cuckoo sites she and her team looked at in the Santa Ritas and along Fraguita Wash near Arivaca.

She wrote that last year’s wet monsoon could help replenish some trees β€œlost to drought and livestock” if enough moisture persists and the new growth is protected from cattle.

β€œThe tree and shrub regeneration in drainage bottoms has a greater probability of survival to maturity if livestock are prevented from accessing new growth,” her report states.

Madera Canyon as seen from the Nature Trail.

Settlement sought

In a separate memo, also from November, Sferra and others call on the Forest Service to do a better job overseeing its own range management plans by reducing livestock numbers when damage occurs, immediately removing trespassing cattle, repairing broken fences and adjusting grazing-utilization rates that β€œoften exceed standards for healthy ecosystems.”

That memo lists a host of management actions to protect cuckoos and β€œother riparian or ephemeral drainage-dependent species.”

The recommendations include prohibiting grazing year round in areas where cuckoos breed, blocking new stock water developments that could reduce riparian habitat, shutting off water developments that are causing riparian habitat to decline, and restoring areas damaged by water withdrawal for livestock or by the cattle themselves.

The agency’s biological opinion stops well short of that.

Though it acknowledges that the Forest Service’s plan for the Coronado could adversely affect the cuckoo and seven other protected species, it also notes the β€œbeneficial role” of grazing on the forest, namely through the development of livestock ponds that provide water and habitat for endangered wildlife.

In particular, such man-made ponds and tanks in the Santa Rita, Atascosa and Pajarito mountains have become a critical component in recovery efforts for the Chiricahua leopard frog.

But environmentalists argue that providing incidental, artificial water sources for frogs is not the same as restoring and preserving their natural habitat, much of which is under threat from overgrazing and so-called β€œrange improvements” for livestock.

Silver and company have repeatedly sued Fish and Wildlife and the Forest Service for violating the Endangered Species Act by failing to control cattle on public land.

A 2020 lawsuit resulted last year in a three-year agreement requiring the agencies to step up inspections, fence repairs and removal of wayward livestock in Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and New Mexico’s Gila National Forest.

Silver expects to reach a similar settlement with federal officials on the Coronado.

β€œWhat can they argue, that everything is fine?” he said.

Documents by some of their own scientists seem to suggest otherwise, Silver said.


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Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@tucson.com or 573-4283. On Twitter: @RefriedBrean