Support builds for Santa Cruz River refuge from Mexico to Marana

Like water rolling downhill, momentum is building behind a proposed national wildlife refuge on the Santa Cruz River through Southern Arizona.

The most recent show of support came Wednesday, when the Tucson City Council voted unanimously to draft a resolution in favor of the idea.

Since April, Pima County, Santa Cruz County and the San Xavier District of the Tohono O'odham Nation have all endorsed the creation of a Santa Cruz River Urban National Wildlife Refuge stretching 90 miles from Mexico to Marana and centered around a future riverside park in Tucson.

The proposal is being pushed by a growing coalition of civic leaders, community groups and environmental nonprofits that see the establishment of a refuge as a way to draw national attention to the river corridor and efforts to restore it.

The Santa Cruz River Refuge coalition now boasts support from 50 organizations and individuals.

"Everyone seems supportive of the idea," said Mike Quigley, Arizona state director for The Wilderness Society , one of the coalition's founding members. "It's all coming up green."

River advocates first suggested the refuge in 2021. Over the past year or so, leaders from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of the Interior have visited the area to learn more about the proposal.

Establishing a national wildlife refuge does not require congressional approval, Quigley said. If the Fish and Wildlife Service decides such a designation is warranted, the Interior secretary can make it happen through administrative action.

That decision could come as soon as early next year, he said.

Arizona is currently home to nine national wildlife refuges , including two in Pima County: Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge near Sasabe and Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge west of Ajo.

This would be the first wildlife refuge in Santa Cruz County and the first urban refuge anywhere in Arizona — a designation the Fish and Wildlife Service reserves for protected lands located within 25 miles of population centers of at least 250,000 people.

Willing sellers

According to Luke Cole, director of the Santa Cruz River Program for the Tucson-based nonprofit Sonoran Institute , urban national wildlife refuge status provides "the highest permanent federal protection" for greenspace and wildlife, without forcing anyone off their land or restricting development or water use on neighboring properties.

"This is not a land grab," Cole said.

Quigley added that property owners within a so-called "acquisition boundary" along the river would be free to sell their land to the government, place a conservation easement on it to protect it from development, or choose not to be a part of the refuge at all.

The result would be a refuge made up of a "patchwork" of properties gradually acquired from willing sellers "like pearls on a necklace," he said.

Already, one of Santa Cruz County's largest landowners has expressed interest in adding his holdings to the proposed river preserve.

Quigley said Rio Rico resident Andrew Jackson approached the coalition last year about land he owns and wants to see protected along almost 12 miles of the Santa Cruz. The property includes flowing water that feeds lush stretches of gallery forest and mesquite bosque.

"That's a natural riparian system right there. That's what I'd love to see on the Santa Cruz in Tucson," Quigley said. "I'm hoping it's in my lifetime. The first step is (getting more) water in the river."

Jackson also owns large tracts of land in some of the canyons that feed into the river from the east side of Rio Rico. If that property was also set aside, it could protect vital wildlife corridors between the river and the sky island mountain ranges that bracket it, Quigley said. "From a wildlife perspective, those side canyons are very intriguing."

Jackson made headlines last year when he floated plans for a roughly 3,550-acre, mixed-use development on a 9-mile stretch of Interstate 19 in Rio Rico.

He later withdrew his proposal when local residents objected to the community-altering project, but not before he offered to add an open-space easement through the entire development to preserve the Santa Cruz and the riparian area surrounding it.

Dry subject

Cole said the refuge designation could open up access to federal funding and grant money to pay for land acquisitions and continued restoration work along the river, including efforts to restore its flow by expanding releases from upgraded sewage treatment plants along its course.

The 184-mile river begins in Santa Cruz County's San Rafael Valley and flows south into Mexico before hooking north and crossing back into the U.S. just east of Nogales. From there, it runs north past Rio Rico, Tumacacori, Tubac, Amado, Green Valley, Sahuarita, Tucson and Marana on its way to join the Gila River at the southern edge of Phoenix.

Though the Santa Cruz is dry for much of its length today, perennial flows in centuries past gave rise to Indigenous farming communities, Catholic missions and eventually the Old Pueblo itself.

By the middle of the 20th century, diversions, groundwater pumping and drought had drained the river dry in Tucson, but efforts are well underway to bring it back.

Wednesday's City Council vote came as river advocates marked 10 years of treated effluent releases into the Santa Cruz by Pima County and five years of releases upstream by the city of Tucson.

The Sonoran Institute's latest Living River report highlights how that clean and consistent supply has produced what it calls "transformative environmental progress" along the waterway, including the reintroduction of native fish species and the growth of new riparian habitat.

Thanks in large part to almost $2 billion in wastewater-treatment upgrades by communities along the river in recent decades, Cole said, roughly 40 miles of the Santa Cruz have water once again. He said those flows are providing "more and more quantifiable wildlife habitat" for everything from urban bobcats near downtown Tucson to the rare jaguar crossing between mountain ranges in southern Santa Cruz County.

A refuge designation would only accelerate that progress, Cole said.

And it's not just the river that stands to be healed.

During a briefing before Wednesday's council vote, Rebecca Perez, urban to wild program manager for The Wilderness Society, said the proposed refuge provides an opportunity to recognize "millennia of river stewardship" by Indigenous people and to acknowledge decades of environmental justice issues suffered by low-income and minority communities living along its once-neglected banks in Tucson.

To ensure that the refuge is developed in a way truly reflective of the community, Perez said the coalition has brought together a diverse, grassroots membership that includes neighborhood associations, history and heritage organizations, environmental advocates, academics and outdoor groups.

A conceptual design for the refuge through Tucson envisions growing stretches of restored riverbed linked by future park and pedestrian-bridge projects to help maintain equitable access to the Santa Cruz.

But the effort will require both commitment and patience. Quigley said it could take "years and decades of work" to provide amenities such as a permanent visitor center and to return the river to its former, flowing, tree-lined glory through Tucson.

Declaring it a refuge is just the start, he said.

Contact reporter Henry Brean at . On Twitter:

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