I once figured the first Spotted Owl on the Life List of the majority of birders was one of “Smitty’s owls.” The main reason a mountain owl is the best known of its family in a desert state is because Robert Smith, before his death in 1998, guided a guesstimated 7000 birders, including yours truly, up Scheelite Canyon in the Huachucas to see “his” owls. And for every one of those there are probably ten others who know of these birds and made the pilgrimage on their own because of his lifelong devotion to the owls’ well-being. Nonetheless, if you’re going up this year or have birding friends who want to see Spotted Owl, send them up Miller Canyon, not Scheelite.
The reason is both simple and complex. Simply stated, Miller Canyon’s Spotted Owls, fairly reliable for years above the second stream crossing, need your help. In case you haven’t paid attention to what’s happened in Miller in the aftermath of last summer’s Monument Fire, the tapestry of complexity features the warp of nature and the legal definition of “wilderness area” and a weft of disparate threads including Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party, and the “town too tough to die.” Let me weave the tapestry for you.
After June’s disastrous fire, July brought record monsoon rainfall to the Huachucas and subsequent walls of water raging down the denuded mountain slopes, wiping out trees, trails, and the twenty-five springs which feed the water supply of Tombstone, twenty-six miles out in the high desert. The town too tough to die has some wells, but after the wooden frontier town burned to the ground twice, a pipeline was completed in 1881 to carry water to a 1.2 million gallon reservoir above the town. The Monument fire melted some of the pipeline and the avalanche of water, boulders, and debris buried most of the springs, some of them to a depth of twelve feet.
Yes, those springs are in the Miller Peak Wilderness Area. If you love wilderness and the respite it gives nature from civilization, you probably also know two things: officially designated wilderness areas weren’t even a gleam in someone’s eye until the Wilderness Act of 1964, and “motorized” and “mechanized” equipment is prohibited in a wilderness area. The Miller Peak Wilderness was created in 1984. There is a paper trail dating back 130 years which proves Tombstone’s unbroken chain of water rights.
When the Tombstone reservoir ran dry last August, Tombstone Water got tired of waiting for special emergency permits to clean out the springs, and drove an excavator into the wilderness. Coronado National Forest threatened to arrest the workers, then banned the use of wheelbarrows because the wheels make them “mechanized,” then relented and said “motorized” equipment could be used, but only to complete work the bulldozer had “illegally” begun. Tombstone is suing the federal government and the Goldwater Institute is representing the town. No matter which side you’re on you can earn points by joining the Tombstone Shovel Brigade, scheduled for sometime in June. Time is tight. The monsoon starts all over again in July.
Tombstone is saying there’s nothing in the canyon that a little bulldozer and backhoe action would harm. Meanwhile, back in the canyon, Miller’s Spotted Owls are nesting, Tom Beatty is suggesting that everyone should come up Miller for them, and he’s counting and taking names to prove Tombstone Water wrong. Tom’s B&B is the portal to Miller Canyon. Rush devoted one whole radio show to blaming this kerfuffle on Obama. Personally I’m blaming global warming, Smitty is turning over in his grave, and I’m looking into getting James Taylor on my ringtone.
