Sustainability Videos & Lecture Series

Introducer: Okay, our speaker this morning is Ian Dowdy. Ian is a conservation outreach associate for the Arizona Wilderness Coalition. It's a nonprofit organization whose mission is to permanently protect and restore wilderness and other wild lands and waters in Arizona for the enjoyment of all citizens and to ensure that Arizona's native plants and animals have a lasting home in wild nature.

Ian is an ASU graduate. He has a bachelor's degree in urban planning and a master's in business administration. His professional experience includes a substantial background involving land development and planning in public and private organizations throughout Maricopa County, including employment with a large consulting firm in the town of Buckeye where he has lived more than a decade.

Ian has worked for the Arizona Wilderness Coalition since 2012, and he is responsible for communicating information about the Sonora Desert Heritage Proposal, which is one of the things that you're going to hear about today. Now, ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome Ian Dowdy.

[Applause]

Ian Dowdy: So, wow, I'm on. I hope you don't mind if I get rid of my jacket because it is gonna get warm when I start doing my dance routine. So get ready for that. It's a pleasure to be here. I feel like I'm kind of back home, although I did go to the School of Architecture back in the day. In 2004 when I graduated from Planning, the Planning School was in the School of Design, so now it's in the School of Geographic Sciences.

It's good to be here. You probably saw my ASU pin. I'm very proud to be an ASU grad. In 2008, I graduated from ASU with a master's in business. Back then I thought, "You know, I could really do great things in the business community with development," because that's what I was doing at the time, was urban planning. Life takes interesting turns. So now I'm here doing great work, I think, with the Arizona Wilderness Coalition.

You all almost didn't have me today. Yesterday, last night, I was at PBS doing a very short interview. Somehow, I managed to stumble into the freight elevator at the end. I did. I was in the freight elevator, and it took me to the deepest depths of the Cronkite School, I guess they call it, there downtown. I was down in the loading area for some time, wandering around, looking up at these doors that had the red exit signs that said something like, "If you open this, you will be shot on the spot." So here I was, down there in the loading dock, and eventually I was about ready to just get a stack of cardboard and spend the night, but I did find a door that led me outside. So I'm here. So you were almost stuck with Dave Richans speaking this morning which—

Audience Member 1: Horrible.

Ian Dowdy: - yeah, it would be horrible. So here we are. Welcome to the wilderness. This is—I already talked a little bit about what I've done and why I'm here. Just so you know, I do have a business card on the table. Feel free to take one and communicate with me at times if you'd like to.

All right, here's a picture, a little bit dated, of our staff at AWC. You see five people. We can switch off one person, this fellow here, Matt Scott is no longer with AWC. He has taken a position up in Portland. So he's gone to the land where it rains once in a while, I'm told. But what you're looking at here are the folks that work at AWC, doing land conservation work throughout the state.

The Arizona Wilderness Coalition is the only Arizona-specific statewide group that does conservation. There are a lot of groups that do conservation work. AWC does it for the state. We were founded in 1979 as an ad hoc organization that did—basically, was trying to identify the best lands throughout the state that needed preserved through the wilderness system. Then in 1984, the Arizona Wilderness Act culminated in two and a half million acres, about, of land in the wilderness system on the Forest Service lands. Then in 1990, the Arizona Desert Wilderness Act created about another one and a half million acres of land in the BLM land system. Besides Alaska, we're the only state that has statewide bills for both BLM and Forest Service lands.

In 2000, AWC was reformed into a 501(c)3, and in 2009 we celebrated the Fossil Creek Wild and Scenic River designation. Today, we currently work with an inventory of lands. We have an inventory of 5.8 million acres of land throughout the state that has wilderness character but is not currently protected as wilderness. So that's kind of our goal. Our goal is to work with these lands that we know have wilderness character, but we want to see them protected in some greater way.

Here's a photo, a better one, I think, of our staff. If you look here closely, you'll see that I'm doing the ASU pitchfork against this rock. This is in the Dragoon Mountains earlier this year. We had the privilege as a staff to go on a staff retreat and experience some of the lands that we would like to see protected down in Cochise County in our Land of Legends effort.

I'm going to talk today in three parts. I hope I can get done in a really reasonable amount of time. I have a clock back there. I'll try to keep an eye on it. First of all, I'm going talk about wilderness, it's value and why we think it's important. Secondly, I'm going to talk about the Sonoran Desert Heritage Proposal, which I think is the most innovative of any conservation effort anywhere in the United States. I'm going talk a little bit about the current state of wilderness and whether or not we're going to see another 20 years of deadlock on wilderness issues in our state.

Of course, my title for the first section is, "Wilderness: A Diminishing Resource." My point is that wilderness, it in itself, is a resource that deserves conservation. First of all, I ask: What is wilderness? Ted Simons, last night on PBS, he asked me that question. It sort of made me think: What is wilderness? We can explain it, well, you know, it's this designation from Congress in 1964. No. Wilderness is what the entire earth once was. It is a place that is untrammeled by man, a place that has natural character, a place that we can get away. That's what wilderness is. It's not a designation. Places such as this, the Cedar Bench Wilderness, that was protected in 1984. Places like this, the Table Top Mountain Wilderness, down in the Sonoran Desert National Monument, protected in 1990. Places like this the Big Horn Mountains Wilderness, just west of Phoenix in western Maricopa County.

Now, unfortunately, because we're human beings, and we have laws and things, we have to draw lines. So what we do, is we identify an area that we would like to protect as wilderness, and we draw a line around it. We say this is a wilderness area, when, really, the land on this side is virtually indistinguishable from the land on this side. But since we drew the line, that's what we do. We protect the wilderness inside of that, make sure the values are not degraded, and we move forward.

If you look closely, you can see this is an area in the Big Horn Mountains Wilderness. It's between Hummingbird Springs and Big Horn Mountains. This area here is what we call, it's cherry-stemmed out. It's an area that was trammeled in some way, that no longer had wilderness character, whether it was mining, or whether it was roads. We cherry-stemmed roads into these areas to make sure folks still retain access. These are all things that we negotiate as we go through and designate wilderness because we want to see a pragmatic proposal that can be approved.

The definition of wilderness, per the1964 Wilderness Act, is "a wilderness in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself, is a visitor who does not remain." That's really the point. The point is make man a visitor. This isn't his permanent habitation. This isn't a place where he leaves his mark. This is a place that is retained for its natural character. So that's why we protect wilderness.

In 1964, Congress said, 9.1 million acres throughout this nation are now wilderness. They created a system whereby wilderness can be protected in the future through a variety of means, but they all have to be approved by Congress. So it literally takes an act of Congress to protect wilderness. Basically, the important rules for wilderness are that mankind has to remain a visitor. He can't damage it permanently. It has to stay a natural place. So some of the basic rules are no motorized or mechanized access. You can't drive your ATV into a wilderness area. You have to stay on a cherry-stemmed road or outside of the boundary. No permanent manmade structures or objects also can be in a wilderness area, because, again, making sure man is a visitor.

Now, there are some exceptions to these things. Not widely known, but the fact is border patrol can go out into wilderness areas and do activities to help manage those sorts of illegal entry and that sort of thing. There are many wildlife waters that are placed in wilderness areas, which are permanent, manmade structures, but their intention is to help enhance the environment for the wild animals. So there are some exceptions, or even, in some places, airfields, especially in Alaska, in wilderness areas. So there isn't a hard and fast rule. Generally known, it's a natural landscape without the permanence of man.

In the United States, 4 percent is wilderness designation of our land. Almost 6 percent of Arizona is designated as wilderness, but the main point that I have is that with our growing population wilderness is an essential resource to add to and to continue to protect, to help us have that sustainable outdoor recreation and opportunities for primitive and unconfined recreation in the future. Look at a map. Here we see wilderness areas. So it's this short of black color. If you look, you can see primarily they're in the West. Alaska has a significant amount of wilderness as well. There isn't a lot of public land in the East, so there isn't a lot of wilderness. Wilderness has to be public land. It has to be managed by the federal government.

In Arizona, you can see there is a number of wilderness areas. Areas that are green on this map are managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Areas that are pink are managed by the BLM. Areas that are orange are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Areas that are purple are managed by the National Park Service. So you can see that wilderness areas are managed, really, by a lot of different organizations in the federal government. If you look closely, you can see that they are very well distributed. Wilderness areas are all throughout the state. I encourage you to, if you're interested in wilderness activities, I encourage you to go to places like wilderness.net, where you can download Google Earth layers. You can actually see through all these layers—wilderness areas are on Google Earth—and experience them for yourself.

Here's some important facts about these things. A lot of folks don't—they feel like wilderness areas are places that we want to keep people out. That's really not the point. The point of wilderness is to help ensure that these resources are there for the future. Hunting, hiking, camping, fishing, all these activities are encouraged in wilderness areas. We want people to experience them. Roads often go around and often cherry-stem into wilderness areas so that folks have easy access. Granted, you can't take your ATV off the road into the wilderness area, but you do have access to the—often times into the heart of them so that you can easily get off on foot and hike to certain places.

Border security efforts, as I mentioned before, can occur in wilderness areas. There's a memo between the Department of Interior and Homeland Security that make it very clear that the border security efforts can be accomplished. Cattle grazing and prior mining claims can continue in wilderness areas as well. This is something that I really want to highlight. Wilderness is not a partisan ideology. I want us all—if nobody comes out of here with any other thoughts, I want you to have one thought in your mind, is that wilderness and conservation are not partisan ideologies. These are things that we have agreed on for many decades. In the 1980s, folks like Bob Stump had wilderness bills. Folks like Barry Goldwater had wilderness bills. John McCain co-sponsored wilderness bills. Of course, many folks like the late Mo Udall, as well, sponsored wilderness bills.

I'm going to get into politics a little bit, and it's something that you're not supposed to talk about in polite company, but you all look you're not very polite, so we're going to [laughter] go ahead with it, okay? The politics of wilderness. I stole this cartoon from the Chattanooga Times Free Press, and I changed the word. I think it said healthcare or something. I changed the word to wilderness conservation. I thought it made a good point. The fact is, is that you have to get these things through Congress. They have to be pragmatic. They have to be reasonable. They can't be partisan.

So you need to have, on the one paddle, the Democrat, and on the right paddle, or the left paddle in this case, the Republican. You've got to be able to agree. Teddy Roosevelt. Shocker. Republican and he was the founder of the modern conservation movement. Teddy Roosevelt was very important in the movement. He was very interested in seeing that the opportunities that the West provided for recreation and hunting and all those things could sustained into the future. So he was involved in the Antiquities Act of 1906 and, of course, these designated national parks that we all enjoy, we wander around in today. What he said back then is, "The conservation of natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life." See, that was his vision back in 1906. I think we should carry that forward today.

Arizona has a nonpartisan conservation movement. If you look at this graphic, you see this really huge red elephant in the room. That is, in fact, me. It may be, and I know there's at least one other Republican in here, but it may be that there aren't a lot of other Republicans in this room, and that's fine. The fact is that conservation is not partisan. It shouldn't be partisan. It should be something that we all agree on. Most conservatives support conservation. This is true. We know it's true. Polls show this all the time, that conservatives support conservation. I'll show you some polls about this shortly, in fact, right now.

District two. This is now Congressman Frank's district. Actually, this election, it's been redistricted. It's now a little bit different. It's mostly in what's called the River District now. But these are 400 registered voters in what I would say is the most conservative district at that time, in 2010, in this state. The question says, basically, the orange here, is, "We can protect public lands and natural areas and have a strong state economy with good jobs for Arizonans at the same time without having to choose one over the other." Eighty-one percent of folks in this district said, "Yes, we can." Of course, 13 percent of them, may be may not be in a very modern settings, may be under a rock somewhere, maybe in a cave. They said, "Conservation of public lands and natural areas and a strong state economy are in conflict." The fact is, by a four-to-one margin, folks said we can do both. The Colorado College poll, "State of the Rockies," earlier this year confirmed that again. Nine in ten Arizonans said that.

This poll, and I'm not going to read the whole question, because I'll be here all day. "Would you favor or oppose protecting additional public lands as wilderness in Arizona?" Again, CD4, a total of 65 percent would favor additional wilderness in Arizona. Thirty-five percent would not. So, as you can see, the largest number was the "strongly favor" at 40 percent. Public lands designated as national conservation areas, this is about national conservation areas because our Senora Heritage Desert Campaign has both national conservation areas and wilderness. Sixty-three percent said, "Yes, we would love to see more natural conservation areas in Arizona."

Excuse me, my button isn't working. Okay, this question said, it describes our proposal, it says, "There's a proposal being discussed to protect specifically federal-owned Sonoran Desert, located in west Maricopa County. This proposal would designate wilderness and national conservation areas in the West Valley, north of Interstate 8, and on both sides of Interstate 10. This proposal would protect a number of mountain ranges in the area, including the Belmont Mountains, Yellow Medicine Butte, Saddle Mountain, and Columbus Peak. Under this proposal, the most pristine areas would be protected as wilderness, and some other natural areas would be protected as national conservation areas. Based on what you have heard, would you favor or oppose this proposal?" Again, 76 percent, three out of four folks that we asked, said this would be great, we would favor this.

Now, we are talking about the partisanship thing. I wanted to ask them a question about partisanship, and this one says, "Would you have a more or less favorable impression of your member of Congress if he worked with someone from the other party?" We see that, by a large majority, 53 percent said it would be more favorable, 41 percent less, but if you look at the spread here, the—excuse me, 41 percent was "other." It was 6 percent less. Fifty-three percent was more favorable. Six percent was less. In other words, people are tired of partisanship. They want to see people work together.

This is an interesting question, "Do you consider yourself to be conservative, moderate, or liberal?" We find that 43 percent of polling respondents were conservative, self-identified conservatives, 38 percent moderates, and 16 percent liberals. So, by a large majority, these are folks who identify themselves as conservatives, yet they support this conservation plan. So I hope I put it completely to rest. Conservation is not a partisan ideology.

Let's talk about lands that have been designated. These are lands, if we look at this chart, we'll see the blue, traditionally is the Democrat, and the red is the Republican. These are the years that a president was in office, so, in this case, if the red—excuse me, a Republican president was in office. If they're blue, then a Democratic president was in office. If we look at this chart, you'll see that there, these spikes all over the place, especially in this year when Ronald Regan was president, from '80 to '88. You see this big spike. That was the Arizona Wilderness Act, among others. This huge spike is the Alaska Wilderness Act, massive 19 million acres all by itself. So you can see that wilderness has been designated all the time throughout these different presidencies.

If we look at wilderness acreage, when the president was in party, whether it was a Republican or a Democrat, you'll see that 46 percent of the wilderness acreage was designated when a Republican was president, and 53 percent was designated when a Democrat was president. I took out the Alaska Wilderness Act because that just totally skewed the data. It was an outlier, 19 million acres all by itself, but it makes the point. Folks like conservation. It's important to them. It's a critical time for us to conserve.

This is one of my favorite presidents, Ronald Reagan. He says, "I just have to believe that with love for our natural heritage and a firm resolve to preserve it with wisdom and care, we can and will give the American land to our children, not impaired, but enhanced, and in doing this we will honor the great and loving God who gave us this land in the first place." Obviously, a conservative president and did a lot for conservation.

Why conservation is important today. Now is a critical time to conserve, especially in Arizona. Increased population growth. There was a study I heard yesterday on NPR. It was talking about the study that ASU has just completed with regard to how the Sun Corridor is going to grow and how that's going to perhaps impact climate and all those things. The fact is that the Sun Corridor is the fastest growing megapolitan region in the United States. With that being the case, it's critical that we protect lands on the fringes of these so we have outdoor places to recreate, places to get away, and places for clean air and water.

Much of this growth will occur in the West Valley. I'll show you something in a second on that. The town of Buckeye, where I used to work, while I was there, from 2004 to 2006, approved over 200,000 housing units in master-planned communities. The town of Buckeye itself will likely be in the range of one and a half to two million people, if you think about it, in fifty years. So let's consider that growth is coming. Unmanaged off-highway vehicle use is a critical issue. I'm thankful that we've had some efforts in the recent past to help manage OHVs. We know there's a lot of great organizations that are out there working to help do education for OHV users, to make sure they know and understand what the rules are. I think that's making some difference, but it's important that we have lands that are untrammeled in the future.

Protection of military installations is critical as well. I'll talk about why the Sonoran Desert Heritage Campaign does a great job of doing that. Of course, conservation of Arizona's heritage, we have this place where we're the rugged individualists, right? We're the Arizonans that went out into the landscape and somehow carved a life for ourselves out of this really uninhabitable desert. Well, that's a heritage that we have that we should protect.

Fragmentation of these habitats could endanger native desert plants and animals. I'll talk a little bit about the Sonoran Desert tortoise. It's up for consideration for listing as a threatened species in 2014. We'll talk, you know, that could be a critical issue for military installations as well. West Maricopa County, in particular, it's a very important place to conserve, and that's where the Sonoran Desert Heritage Campaign is. This rapid growth that will occur there is going to merit the need for more protected land. It's unquestionable. It's necessary to have more availability of outdoor recreation opportunities. It's necessary to protect lands that have development occurring all around them. It's necessary to ensure that Luke Air Force Base, that just secured the F-35 Fighter last week as a part of their training mission, is able to get to the Barry Goldwater Range. It's important that we protect air and water resources.

You may have driven in today to ASU and saw the cloud of dust that was covering the valley. That's something that's really important for us to work on. We have some real issues with particulate matter in the valley. It could endanger our ability to get highway funding and other things from the federal government. It's very important that we find ways to manage the dust issues. One of those ways is to conserve land and help manage that land for dust issues.

Cultural resources. West Maricopa County, where the Sonoran Desert Heritage Campaign is, is one of the places that has the longest, continuous habitation from Native Americans. Saddle Mountain, in particular, has recorded habitation for three thousand years in the past. These are areas where these cultural resources are often times vandalized. Of course, wildlife habitat is being fragmented as we develop, as we build freeways. The I-11, it was approved in, what, July, Interstate 11 was approved to be part of Interstate Highway System. Well, one of the things we're doing with Sonoran Desert Heritage is making sure that the I-11 is able to accommodate wildlife passage. I'll talk about that as we go.

Growth. These numbers are just a little bit old, but it's still true. The Morrison Institute did a study on water recently. They pushed out this 9 million number to 2030. In here, it's shown at 2020. The point is, is that we are growing, and we are growing fast. It's important that we find ways to manage this growth and that we protect the important resources around the valley. The municipalities grew in the West Valley like crazy over the past 20 years. Buckeye grew 927 percent. Surprise, 1200 percent. Goodyear, 918 percent. These are all areas in the West Valley that are going to continue to grow at very rapid paces.

If we look at a map of Maricopa County, you can see here, and just for orientation, the green land is National Forest Service. The yellow is BLM land. The blue is state land. Then the white is private land. The gray are private lands that are under, that are incorporated into a city. So if we look here, you can see the White Tank Park in the West Valley. The town of Buckeye here. Out here is Queen Creek and other communities, Phoenix, of course, in the middle.

So here's the county line. I'm sorry, my laser is sort of dying, but if you look here, these are the lands we are looking to protect. Out here in western Maricopa County. Here's the Barry Goldwater Range. Here's Luke Air Force Base. These are places that are really in the path of growth. The coming millions of people that are coming to the Sun Corridor are going to have to move, in large part, to the West Valley, mostly because of the East Valley has been, in many ways, built up. We see the state land here out in the East Valley, but that state land develops ten years, basically, behind private lands because it's being held for higher values, and often times waiting for infrastructure to be put in.

So folks are going to be pushed into the West Valley, and it's going to continue to grow, moving people farther out. Even out here in unincorporated Maricopa County, there are dozens of master-plan communities that have lots of entitled homes. So when that happens, folks move out there. They say, "Great, this is awesome. We have this beautiful view. That's why we bought this house, it's because it has federal land right behind it. Oh, and I'm going to buy an ATV because I love going out in the desert." That's fine. I don't have a problem with that, but when you have this preponderance of OHV use, you also have continual fragmentation on the landscape. It's a fact. It's what happens. It's unfortunate, but we need to find ways to prevent it from happening. One of them is to conserve federal lands.

This is more or less the areas that we're looking at for the Sonoran Desert Heritage Proposal. Here's the Belmont Harquahala Mountains complex, and here is the Gila Bend Mountains complex. This is already protected as a national monument. It's the Senora Desert National Monument here. You can see that by having these conserved lands in the West Valley, it helps identify sort of a boundary around the city that says these are areas where it's going to develop. We know it will. These are all the private lands. Now we have more or less defined edges. We have national forests over here. We have national conservation areas over here. So people know and understand that these are going to be open landscapes that you can use and recreate into the future.

As we grow, here's the 2010, what was supposed to be our concentration. This map's a little bit outdated as well. You can see that we're going to start moving to the West Valley and up north as well. You can start to see by 2030 the amount of development that's going to occur west of Phoenix into west Maricopa County, right on the fringes of these natural areas.

Those of you who like to go out and recreate like I do, in the summer, I try to get out of the heat by going up to the forests somewhere, anywhere. I don't care. I throw my tent in the back of my car, toss my kayaks on the roof, and I'm gone. But anymore, you have to show up on a Wednesday to get a campsite, or, if you're really brave and go out to a wilderness area, which I don't do as often as I should, the fact is it's getting more crowded out there. As more and more people are going out into these—as we grow, more and more people are going out into our camping areas, and it's getting more crowded. This is why. As we grow, our forest acreage stays static, and we have fewer acres for each individual to go out there and use and recreate. So, based on some quick math I did, and I got my degree from ASU, so don't check these numbers [laughter]. You know, that joke works better at U of A. It does. In 2020, 1.4 acres per person, right. That's half of what it was in 1990 when I moved to the state.

The other issue you have is loss of public land. The state is predominantly federal land. Sixty-nine percent today is federal land. A lot of that is Indian reservations, but in 1962, 74 percent of the state was federal land. We have this switch from 12 to 18 percent private land, which is fine, because we develop on private land. We use it in a lot of ways. You can't develop on public land. The important thing here is that people have this concept that federal land will stay federal land. It will always be there. That's not the case. So many times we've seen federal land disposed into private land, and, of course, state land is going to be gone one of these days anyway. So it's important that we recognize the best public lands out there and we conserve them, especially near populated areas.

Sonoran Desert Heritage. I'm going to talk about this now. This is the most pragmatic proposal in the nation. No question. The reason it is, is because we want to see something done in this divided Congress. We are working very hard with our delegation from the right and from the left to put together a proposal that works for everyone, and we've done it. I'll show you how we've done it. These are our partners. Arizona Wilderness Coalition, which is me, the Wilderness Society, the Sonoran Institute, Mr. Richans is—wave, Dave, please, thanks, is here. Then we have folks from the Arizona Wildlife Federation who are working with us closely to make sure that sportsmen's groups are involved and are able to give input.

There are four main parts to what we're doing. I talked about them a little bit already. There's the Belmont Harquahala Mountains National Conservation Area, with wilderness in there. There's a Gila Bend Mountains proposed national conservation area, also with wilderness. The Sonoran Desert National Monument, adding additional wilderness units to that. Then two special management areas, which we'll talk about what those are. These are things that are put together in a very creative way to try to help resolve some federal land issues that are in the West Valley.

Special management areas are interesting. Basically, what it is, is it's, you look at finding ways to solve problems. We have two of them. Actually, I'll save talking about them until we look at a map. What they are, they're not restrictive in the sense that they're trying to prescribe that these lands be necessarily protected in their natural state. What they are is they are ways to say these are policies that we want applied to this land to help resolve some challenges.

National conservation areas. These are congressionally designated. They're similar to national monuments, but they're prescribed by Congress, and there's rules set in place for them to help protect natural resources, cultural resources, and/or management plans put together to help manage them. The public is involved in that. They're involved in giving input to them, and, ideally, they help solve a lot of challenges with competing uses and that sort of thing. They're much less restrictive than wilderness in most cases, often times which we use as permitted on existing routes. We went out there and spent days in the field, inventorying these units and recording what they have. We found that there are, for example, in this area, mines. We said fine, great. Mine. Enjoy yourself. We're going to cherry-stem right around you, make sure you have access, and we're going to protect the natural landscape behind your mine so that in the future, if and when your mine goes kaput, it's still a natural landscape. It's not being degraded by other competing uses.

We went out there and we said, "Okay, where are the roads? We want to know where the roads are because we want to make sure that people who go out here on their quads can continue to out here on their quads but we want them to keep them in the road, right. Novel idea. Keep them in the road. So we identified the roads. We cherry-stemmed the roads all in and around these units to make sure that existing users still have the roads to continue to use, but they can't go off the road because they are protected and will be protected by some sort of a designation. Around them, we identified the national conservation area. That's this red line, and the national conservation area is going to be, basically, a management plan for this landscape. It's going to tie them all together under unique management policies, and help protect them and ensure that there is some watching of what's going on.

If we move down south, south of Interstate 10 now, here's I-10. Here is I-8. Here is SR-85, right here. Here's the Sonoran Desert National Monument. If you look here, you'll see that there are existing wilderness areas, the gray. I didn't point this out on the other map. These gray areas are existing wilderness area, Big Horn, Hummingbird Springs, Harquahala. Up here is Hell's Gate, Hell's Canyon, one or the other. Down south, we have Woolsey Peak, Eagle Tail, Signal Mountain, and the north and south Maricopa Mountains.

So what we've tried to do here is we've, again, gone out on the landscape, identified all the existing routes, which are shown here. You can see them. We've identified the mines. We've identified all the competing uses that are out there. We've said, "Okay, great, you guys continue doing what you do. Go out there on your quads on these roads. Enjoy the landscape. That's what it's about. Go out there and, if there's mines, there are a couple mines out there, continue to mine, but we're going to identify the lands outside of them and say these lands deserve conservation."

That's what's really important behind what we've done here. To help make this the most pragmatic proposal we can, we've gone out to everyone we can think of. We've said, "Talk to us. What do you go out there? What's going on?" I had five open houses in the West Valley. Went out there and met with everybody in the community that would talk to me and said, "What are you guys doing? What can we do to change this proposal?" Gave them maps. "Draw on this. Show me where you do things out here that are not compatible with wilderness." We found that this proposal has accommodated virtually everything that we can possibly think of to help conserve the land and to help allow existing uses to continue. So we've tried to make it as practical as we possibly can.

The benefits of this conservation plan are unquestionable. Public lands in Arizona contribute $5.3 billion to our economy. Now, that's more than our golfing economy and our spring training economy put together. Think about that. Why would we destroy this resource? This is a huge part of what we do in Arizona. It supports over 86,000 jobs. Non-motorized recreation alone contributes $371 million in sales tax revenue. The conservation of these lands will lend permanence to this economy. If lands aren't conserved, what will happen is these numbers will decline gradually, year by year, because the lands will be degraded. They'll lose their appeal to people, and they will not be used in the way that they're used today.

The military. The military benefits hugely by this proposal. We're supported by both Luke Air Force Base and the Fighter Country Partnership. These guys care about the Air Force base. They want to see it sustained into the future. What we've been able to do is we've been able to show and demonstrate that our proposal allows both the Barry Goldwater Range and the Luke Air Force Base to be more sustained into the future. Luke itself has 7,000 employees and a $2.1 billion annual impact. The F-35 fighters, when they start coming in next year, there's going to be an additional over $100 million of federal funds that are going to be spent to help upgrade the base and make sure it's ready for the training mission.

Altogether, our military installations contribute over $9 billion a year to our economy. Without the Barry Goldwater Range, that $9 billion a year would be substantially less, because that's what makes Arizona appeal to the military is that there is a bombing range for training missions right there. It's easily accessible. It's not encroached upon, and it's very usable.

If we look at a map here, this shows overflight maps for what's called MDR, military training routes. Luke Air Force Base is right there. If we look closely, you'll ...

Audience Member 2: Are you using a pointer of some kind, because I can't see it?

Ian Dowdy: I am, but I agree. It's not working very well. Use my finger? Actually, I have another pointer. Hold on, let me grab it.

Audience Member 2: Okay.

Ian Dowdy: Because I'm so well prepared, I brought two pointers. So let me see if this one works better. Can you see that?

Audience: Yes.

Ian Dowdy: Is that better?

Audience Member 3: Yes.

Ian Dowdy: Okay, I apologize. I'll be doing the two-fisted thing here. It should be real exciting. All right. So these areas shown in white are the military training routes. They're flying all over the place, largely over these landscapes that are being protected by the Sonoran Desert Heritage Proposal. You see here in dark green, that's the boundary of the national conservation area. The light yellow are new wilderness additions. If we look closely—here, by the way, is the Barry Goldwater Range—if you look closely, you'll see that these flight corridors line up perfectly with the lands that we're trying to conserve, which is why this is so important to the military mission.

It prevents there from encroachment of homes and other uses underneath these flight corridors because the biggest challenge for Air Force bases and others is they want to stay open. The Base Reallocation and Closure, BRAC, as it's called, likes to close bases if people don't like them. So when in early 2000s we had all this growth underneath Luke Air Force Base and around Luke Air Force Base, tons of complaints were flying into the Department of Defense, and that's why the base was being—there is a lot of concern that the base could be closed because of encroachment. The same thing is true for areas underneath these low-level flight corridors. You don't want development to occur under those. You want to keep them in public ownership. Let the animals have their fun. Allow folks to go out and recreate, but keep homes out of it. So that's the whole point.

There's a lot of other benefits too, besides just the overflight corridors. It also saves the Department of Defense from purchasing conservation lands because the last thing that they want is for the Barry Goldwater Range to become a refuge of last resort for threatened and endangered species. Well, if that happens, guess what? They're going to have to manage the range more as a wildlife sanctuary than as a bombing facility. That's happened in a number of places throughout the U.S., including Camp Pendleton. It's a famous example where they have 12 miles of coast that they're supposed to do their training in, and they can only use two of them because the rest of them are filled with threatened and endangered species issues. So by doing this and protecting lands, making sure that there's a contiguous wildlife connectivity from the range to these areas, you can keep the bombing range from becoming a refuge of last resort.

It also demonstrates to the Department of Defense that we care about our military facilities. We know that we do, but we want to say, "Listen, this is important to us. We're going to work really hard to make sure that we're proactive. We look into the future, and we prevent these bases from being hampered by development and from being closed for other reasons."

I'm pushing the wrong button. All right, here's another thing I wanted to point out. Don't try to read this. It's not important. I want to, yeah, look at the spike right here. Now, this is our GDP, our gross domestic product. That spike represents none other than our real estate industry. A third of our economy comes from real estate, transactions, building homes, sales, all of those things. If we lost our beautiful natural desert landscape, our real estate economy would suffer incredibly. We know from surveys that one of the main reasons people move to Arizona is 'cause the sun. Shocker. We have sun. The other reason is for our natural beauty. They love to see the craggy rocks on the side of the road and behind their house, and they like to see the cactuses and all those wonderful things. I know I said that wrong. I'm seeing if you're awake.

So they come to Arizona to live because they think it's beautiful, and then summer comes, and they hate themselves, but that's fine, we have them. Now is the time to conserve. The Sonoran Desert Heritage Proposal is at a really critical place. Right now we're in silly season. We have all kinds of crazy people doing these election things, and they're yelling at each other, and they're calling each other names. That's fine, but wait until the primaries are over with, and we'll again approach Congress. We've worked with them. They know what's going on. We'll demonstrate to them that this is really the most important thing for us right now, and that they should support what we're doing.

Again, polling shows that this is popular. We know it's popular. We know it's the right thing. We know we've gone through the right process. We think we can see this happen. It's important to us to help other folks know. It's important to us to share this with others in the community. What we've tried to do is we've tried to say that—we've tried to meet with everyone, for one, and say, "Tell us what we can do better." We've done that. Now, we want to let our folks in Congress know that this is important, so people out there, by the hundreds, are sending letters in to our congressional delegation. We hope you will join them and send them in and let them know that this is important because we think it's really important.

I would suggest that you go to our SonoranHeritage.org, which is our website and look at the proposal for yourself. Take a very close look at it, and if you have any comments, feel free to let us know.

All right, I have just eight more minutes, so I'm going to try to cover this next section in exactly that amount of time. It's been 22 years since wilderness was protected in Arizona, and I have some suggestions for how we can do a better job. Again, I've already told you I'm a Republican, so you can basically just ignore everything I'm going to say from now on if you'd like to, but I think we have a problem. The problem is that I told you conservation is now partisan. It shouldn't be. That's part of our problem. It shouldn't be controversial. We should do the right thing for the right reason. The other challenge I have is that conservation, unfortunately, is mired in this debate about environmentalism. I don't think it has to be. I think they can be separate issues. We know that folks care about conservation throughout this state. Let's focus on that. Let's do what we can do. Of course, the partisanship issue, let's get rid of that. That's ridiculous, and let's be more pragmatic. Let's do more solutions like the Sonoran Desert Heritage Proposal, and let's find ways that we can help bridge the gap between different competing ideas.

Part of the controversy, of course, is politics. We also have special interest groups and lobbies who are out there saying, "We've decided on a national scale that we don't like conservation. We don't like wilderness, and we're going to oppose it. I don't care where it is. I don't care what you've done. We're going to oppose it. Unfortunately, that's something that we run into a lot. Even though we address all their specific issues, we meet with them, we resolve everything we possibly can, they say no. We don't want to do this." Of course, there's the ripple effect. Things happen in Utah, for example, and next thing you know they show up on our doorstep, whether it's a ballot measure or whether it's something that goes through a county commissioner's office. They're things that we have to deal with that just ripple down to us.

I talked about these national entrenchments, but this is a critical issue, is that people have made these entrenchments on these issues, and on a national scale, that are completely unpragmatic. Everyone's scared of setting a precedent. You try to say, "Okay, let's do this 'cause it's the right thing to do." They say, "Well, no, because Joe up in Alaska is going to say I want to do the same thing." Well, maybe we should do something that's the right thing for where we're at. Arizona. This is the way we do things in our state. Let's do it because it's the right things to do.

Of course, lack of diversity. Here's a picture of our team that works on Sonoran Desert Heritage, and if you'll look at them, you'll find that they are all white. Ninety percent Democrat, and they don't really represent the community as a whole. This is the best team anywhere in the U.S., but they're not diverse. We need to fix that. As a community in the conservation arena, we need to fix that. We need to have a more diverse representation of what we are. This group should have more folks that are Latino. It should have more African Americans. It should have folks from a diverse political background, and we should be able to look at these issues from a more diverse point of view, to have more pragmatic results.

Partisanship. I talked about this. I'm not going to cove this again. This is one of our biggest issues right now. We need to fix it. We need to find ways to have more Barry Goldwaters and Mo Udalls who can work together and solve problems.

Threats. We have some major threats right now in the conservation arena. Time is a major threat. These lands are beautiful, natural, pristine places that are going to be gone if we don't do something soon. There's a major anti-wilderness movement out there. We've had two in the last year, two really significant threats to what we're doing. In Cochise County, they did pass a resolution. Thankfully, we were able to get it modified somewhat to be a little bit more palatable, but the resolution more or less said, "Wilderness is the worst thing you could possibly do anywhere. It's bad for the economy, and we hate it." It was completely ridiculous because that's not true. We know that's not true, and so that's just one of them.

The other was recently the Arizona Game and Fish Department passed a policy statement that said they don't support lands under special designation. Well, that doesn't make any sense, right? We have wildlife critters out there who rely on these lands. It's important for them to be able to go out there and have a, well, for one, they're the Game and Fish Department, right? So these are—animals they're supposed to be protecting, but they'd rather leave them in multiple use, these lands in multiple use so they can be run over by ATVs, and they can be built on by solar panels and all of these things. It made no sense to us. But, you know what, this is the world we're in today. We're in a world where folks, for whatever reason, like to entrench themselves in one area or another, and they're not able to really think pragmatically.

We're trying to break through. We're hoping to continue to work with them and try to solve this problem, but it's a critical threat is when you have this important group of people that has such a large responsibility stand up and say, "We don't like what you guys are doing." It makes no sense at all.

Proposition 120, the great land grab that we have. Vote no on it. It's basically going to turn 25 million acres of public land in the state, and give it back to the state, to sell off. It makes no sense. We know it's going to fail because people in Arizona love public lands, but this is the type of mentality that we're facing right now. People who just are not thinking. Take our national interest groups. I talked about it a little bit ago. These national entrenchments that people have. We try to meet with them. We say, "Let's fix the problem, whatever it may be," and they say, "Well, we don't want to meet with you. We don't have to meet with you. We have the support of all of these people in Congress, and we don't care. We're going to say no, we don't like what you're doing, and we'll never meet with you to talk about it." It makes no sense.

Recent legislation. We have the Border Bill passed the House, will not pass the Senate. Basically, it said a hundred miles from the border, we're going to say all these environmental laws don't matter. We're going to override them. Completely ridiculous. Roadless Areas Release Act, another bill going through Congress, saying all these roadless areas throughout the U.S., they're currently protected administratively. We are not going to allow them to be protected. We're going to release them all. These are the types of things that we're dealing with today, and, of course, we hope that cooler minds will prevail in the long run.

Pragmatism. I talked about it. Sonoran Desert Heritage Proposal is the most pragmatic proposal anywhere in the U.S. It's solving problems. It's using conservation as a tool to solve problems. This is something that we should be doing. This photo is a picture of the Table Top Wilderness. This is a permanent, well, quasi-permanent manmade structure that is built in a wilderness area here to help protect from border incursions, something that we've gone out and looked at. We think it's doing its job. It's probably not ideal, but we're not opposing it. Why? Because just south of this is a Indian reservation. This landscape, that is natural wilderness, is being trammeled by all these border incursions that are going right across this wilderness. So the BLM said, "We need to build a barrier. They're destroying the wilderness." We said, "Great. Build a barrier. Do something to help protect this landscape." This is an example of a solution that we were able to work to help protect wilderness, but also, it fudges the lines a little bit. Yeah, it's a manmade structure in a wilderness area, but in the long run it protects this area from these incursions.

We need more win-win solutions. We're using the Sonoran Desert Heritage Proposal as a win-win solution. We think other conservation proposals throughout the state can also do that. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. Conservations versus preservationism. It's a long debate. You had people like Gifford Pinchot on one side and people like John Muir on the other side. They had this debate about what should you do. The point I'm trying to make is that this source, David Barnhill from the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, he uses wilderness as an example of preservationism. My point is, is that in today's environment, wilderness is no longer preservationist. In certain areas, in certain occasions, it is a conservationist perspective, especially when you're in a area that has rapid growth and natural landscape is diminishing, you need to do something to protect that resource. It's a more anthropocentric point of view. It says, "Let's protect this resource so our future generations can have places to recreate, places to hunt, and places to enjoy this natural landscape."

Here's a picture of me. I caught my first fish when I was ten. [Laughter] You know, family photo time. Sixty-nine percent of anglers and 66 percent of hunters describe themselves as conservationists. Fifty-one percent of sportsmen are conservative politically. Forty-five percent of them are Republicans, 21 percent Democrats. This is from Field and Stream Conservationist Blog. The point I'm trying to make here is that these are people who love the outdoors. Let's give them a voice. Let's make sure they have the opportunity to be involved in conservation efforts.

My point is conservation and preservation, both can co-exist. We can work together, and we can do good things for our state. It doesn't have to be one or the other. You can have folks like Barry Goldwater here and folks like Mo Udall, both working together. Maybe they have different perspectives on a lot of things. Maybe one of them wants to see more balanced proposals that incorporate other uses, but let's work together. My grandfather, Myron Altneeder, was a logger in the Northwest, great conservationist, but a logger. You think competing. The fact is that's the heritage that we have in the West. We have folks that relied on these landscapes for their livelihood and that who do today. He cared about these landscapes. Let's make conservation give them a chance to have a voice in our communities when we deal with these things. Let's give them a voice. In his poem book, he had this poem, it's called "Outwitted," and it says:

"He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in. "

There are a lot of folks in this community, especially in Arizona, a very conservative place, that have a lot of different perspectives. When folks like the Game and Fishery Department and Cochise County and others say, "This isn't important to us. We don't care." Let's find ways to bring them in. Let's find ways to talk to them. Let's find ways to help resolve their issues. Let's not divide. Let's work together.

Here's my solution to our challenges in conservation. It's an acronym. I went to business school, so I do this stuff. Different. Let's be different. Let's diversify the conservation community, bring in more voices. Let's integrate the broader community if we can, folks who may or may not have a lot of interest in the environmental side of things, let's bring them in and hear their perspectives. Let's find ways to find win-wins. Let's focus, focus on what's important. Sometimes we can be distracted. Let's focus on the priorities. Foster civility. Let's get rid of this partisanship. Let's get rid of this division. Let's talk in a civil way. Let's enable some solutions. Let's use conservation as a tool to provide solutions to the challenges that we have in our region. Let's build relationships. Engage divergent voices. Never accept a short-term gain for a long-term loss. We've seen this happen time and time again. It's one reason where we are today is that folks have taken a short-term gain. They've tried to take advantage of a situation in a way that really broke up relationships. Then let's think win-win. Let's provide solutions that can be like the Sonoran Desert Heritage, that can provide answers to a number of issues.

All right, that's all I have. Does anyone have any questions?

[Applause].