Download Rio Yaqui Fishes Two Refuges Sustain Them

Volume 3, issue 2
Joining Research and Management
Rio Yaqui Fishes Two Refuges Sustain Them
A
small refuge in southeastern Arizona can lay
claim to being the first large-scale refuge project
conducted by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)
with a mission to protect and restore native fishes
and their habitat. San Bernardino National Wildlife
Refuge, located in Cochise County along the
Mexican border was established in 1982 for the
preservation of endangered and threatened fishes
native to the Rio Yaqui drainage.
Eight species of native fishes once occurred in
the U.S. portion, or upper drainage, of the Rio
Yaqui. San Bernardino currently contains
populations of the Yaqui chub (Gila purpurea),
Yaqui topminnow (Poeciliopsis occidentalis
sonorensis), beautiful shiner (Cyprinella formosa),
and longfin dace (Agosia chrysogaster). Four other
species will eventually be reintroduced onto the
refuge from Mexico. In 1988, a second refuge was
acquired to protect these fishes and the rare ashwillow-cottonwood riparian forest that occurs
there—Leslie Canyon.
These refuges provide critical habitat for the
Yaqui fishes—particularly the endangered Yaqui
chub. Federally listed in 1984 and by Arizona in
1988, this chub is restricted in its distribution in the
United States to the refuges and a private ranch,
where the species has been reintroduced. The Yaqui
topminnow's total range lies solely in the Rio Yaqui
basin that straddles the international border. Longfin
dace, found principally in the Gila and Bill Williams
drainages, is the only species of its genus found in
Arizona. Extirpated in the United States in 1970, the
beautiful shiner was reintroduced at San Bernardino
in 1990 from fish collected in Mexico. The Yaqui
catfish (Ictalurus pricei) has also been collected in
Mexico and will eventually be released into refuge
waters.
San Bernardino relies on ten artesian wells to
supply water for fish habitat, as well as several small
springs and perennial water along Black Draw.
Leslie Canyon contains a small perennial stream that
supports the Yaqui chub and topminnow and longfin
dace. Continued water supply is dependent on
regulated groundwater removal from the San
Bernardino valley aquifer in Mexico. In addition to
1 Bajada, 1995:3(2)
considering groundwater conservation, it is
important to keep in mind that although the species
for which these refuges are managed occur in
Mexico, the status of these fishes there may not be
known. This focuses on the critical need to maintain
these species in the United States.
The recovery of the Yaqui fishes is a
cooperative effort between organizations and
countries. The refuges were purchased from The
Nature Conservancy, which had acquired the
properties to protect the fishes and habitat. Essential
components of the recovery plan for the Yaqui fishes
outlined by FWS include developing a cooperative
effort with Mexico, securing habitat and water
sources for the fishes in the United States and
Mexico, conducting research on the fishes' biology
and habitat requirements, managing the fishes and
their habitats, introducing and maintaining selfsustaining populations within their historic range,
and monitoring existing and established populations
and habitats. Current research on the refuges is
oriented to learning about the habitat requirements of
the various fish species so that management actions
can be tailored to benefit them.
Kevin Cobble
INSIDE BAJADA
6Que Pasa? 2
Networking 3
Managers' Forum 4
Coyotes and Humans 5
Native Fishes 6
HDMS Database 7
Razorback Sucker 8
Gila Topminnow 9
Quitobaquito Pupfish 10
Field Notes 11
Meetings of Interest 12
Tumacacori NHP, page 4
North Pond at San
Bernardino, where Yaqui
fishes can be managed
without threat of
nonnative fishes.
National Biological Service • Cooperative Park Studies UniVThe University of Arizona
Management Paradigms What Is Going On?
T n case you haven't looked out your window lately,
Many issues surfaced in
the articles of this edition
of Bajada. Those
associated with the
management of
endangered fish species
are highlighted here by
the unit leader of the
National Biological
Service Cooperative Park
Studies Unit at The
University of Arizona.
I let me be the first to tell you, "The world is
changing." The way that we do the business of
managing resources is in a state of flux. Most of us
deal with questions and uncertainty every day
instead of answers and "business as usual."
From my perspective, I see that resource
management is moving from simple protection (put a
fence around it and it will be okay) through a
realization that ecology and ecosystems are very
complex to a place where we will be practicing
management of people, places, and resources. A few
years ago, we were all talking about "ecosystem
management." Today we are wondering if there is
going to be any federal research and management
left after we have reinvented government and
Congress has cut the budget. Today we are moving
toward a realignment of disciplines to try to answer
the complex issues of resource management.
This new alignment is happening because of a
better understanding that natural and cultural
resource management is as much a people
management problem as it is an ecology or landscape
problem. This new field is a convergence of
psychological insight and environmental concern and
goes by the name of ecopsychology.
In the pages of this issue are many discussions
about specific management of specific resources. In
every article there is discussion of partners, the
concern for differences in adjacent land uses,
teamwork, getting people from various agencies and
organizations together to solve problems, and so on.
This is what is happening. More and more, we are
making decisions based on information and with
fuller discussions with all people that will be
affected by those decisions.
Consider the issues involved in managing
endangered fishes, the focus of the April Bajada:
The endangered species act itself. It tends to
create an atmosphere of conflict and stress. Federal
and state agency managers, as well as miners and
ranchers, tend to view the act as taking away their
power, limiting their abilities to make decisions on
management. Fish and Wildlife Service biological
opinions often stipulate conditions the management
agency does not have the financial resources to
cover. In addition, there is still a great deal of public
misunderstanding of what can and cannot be done
under the act. All of this tends to cause tension even
before any discussions begin about the "rights" of
the last population of a species or the real desires of
land managers to protect species.
National Biological Service • Cooperative Park Studies Unit/The University of Arizona
Multiple-use mandates. In a climate of need to
manage lands for a variety of uses, it is almost
always difficult to justify protection of species as a
primary use. Managing endangered species has
traditionally been low on the management priority
list. For southwestern fishes in particular, decisions
on consumptive uses of water for farming and urban
needs historically almost never included a use-bynatural-resources component. It happened far too
frequently that land managers paid lip service to
taking proactive measures for the benefit of the
resources. We seem to be moving from a place
where the use (grazing, hunting, mining, etc.) was
given the benefit of the doubt to a place where good
of the land and resources are considered first and
where sustainability is an important concept in use.
Interagency relations. To have meaningful
interagency discussions, it is often necessary to get
over feelings that "they" don't understand or do it
right, when it comes to management. These relations
are often strained just because both sides are making
judgements and assumptions. When a dialog begins
and understandings start to happen, there is usually
more trust and ability to come to consensus.
Local community issues. As more and more
people come into a region, there is increasing
pressure for "open space" and increasing conflicts
about what to do with the decreasing natural and
cultural resources. With this growing pressure comes
a greater difficulty in carrying out decision-making
processes.
Financing and political pressures. The money
goes where the politicians want it, so we spend far
more on stocking trout than on managing endangered
fishes. We spend far more on helping people to use
our lands (including recreational uses) than we do on
research and monitoring to understand what the
impacts of those uses are.
All of these issues come back to people. People
manage the landscape. Therefore, it is important that
land managers begin to bring psychological
understandings into their decision-making process.
Whether we continue to use the term "ecosystem
management" or not, resource management has been
forever changed to making decisions based on the
best scientific information available and with frank,
open discussions that lead to consensus of a group.
The days of making decisions based on the belief of
the few are waning. We all better get prepared to
work for and with the good of the many.
Bill Halvorson
1995:3(2), Bajada
2
epefeg
Conservancy at 303/444-1060.
A research associate with the NBS Cooperative
Park Studies Unit at the University of Las Vegas, Bill
Pelle is focusing on aquatic ecology, primarily fish
management and amphibian research, at Lake Mead
National Recreation Area. For information about the
Native Fish Work Group, call him at 702/293-8936
or Tom Burke of the Bureau of Reclamation at 702/
293-8711.
Biological technician Charles Conner has been
involved with desert pupfish since 1988 as a
volunteer interpreter and can be reached by voice
mail at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, 520/
387-7661, ext. 7113. Charles has attended a number
of annual meetings of the Desert Fishes Council,
organized in 1970 for the conservation of native
desert fishes. For information about the council, call
Phil Pister, 619/872-8751.
A budget analyst with the Arizona CFWRU
(520/621-2161), Dixie Bounds is pursuing a doctoral
degree, studying various inventory and monitoring
methods for reptiles and amphibians at Buenos Aires
National Wildlife Refuge located in southern
Arizona. Bill Shaw is professor of wildlife ecology
and renewable natural resources and chairman of the
Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences program in the
School of Renewable Natural Resources at UA, 520/
621-7265. His research focuses on the socio-political
aspects of wildlife conservation and on the planning
and management of parks and protected areas. Dixie
and Bill recently coauthored "Managing Coyotes in
U.S. National Parks: Human-Coyote Interactions" in
Natural Areas Journal 14:280-284.
When I discovered the diversity of places where
Pat Phelan has lived, I put away my brag bag. She's
had assignments at Cape Cod National Seashore,
Everglades and Grand Canyon national parks, and
before accepting the superintendency at Tumacacori
National Historical Park (520/398-2341) in early
1994, she spent more than 6 years as chief financial
officer for the Alaska Region.
Last fall, I paid my first visit to Tumacacori.
The atmosphere there magically transposes one back
in time. It's easy to see Pat's interest in documenting
vegetation of an eighteenth-century mission garden.
Data from such a project could form the basis for
replanting and maintaining the park patio garden,
developing a "living history" interpretive program,
and could provide information relevant to restoring
the cultural landscape of adjacent mission grounds.
—Editor
)pomieN
tarting in this issue of Bajada, we will examine
3 the flora and fauna of the warm deserts. An
overview of the status of native fishes is presented
on page 6 by Gene Maughan, unit leader of the
National Biological Service (NBS) Arizona
Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
(CFWRU) at The University of Arizona (UA).
Before NBS came into existence 2 years ago, Gene
had already put in a productive 22 years in fisheries
science with the Fish and Wildlife Service, 8 years
of which were spent with CFWRU. His broad-based
expertise extends as well to fishes of the Midwest
and East. You may reach Gene at 520/621-1959.
In addition to protecting native fishes, refuge
manager Kevin Cobble of San Bernardino and Leslie
Canyon national wildlife refuges has also had charge
since 1989, when he came to the refuges, of some
270 species of birds and more than 350 species of
plants. The Mexican garter snake, Chiricahua
leopard frog, San Bernardino springsnail, and
Huachuca water umbel are unique. To find out more
about the Yaqui fishes, call him at 520/364-2104.
Jeff Simms, a Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) fishery biologist of 4 years, works out of the
Tucson Resource Area office in the Safford District.
For more information about the upcoming ecosystem
management plan for the Empire-Cienega Resource
Conservation Area, contact Jeff at 520/722-4289. He
is also working on projects that involve protection of
native fishes in the BLM segments of the Virgin
River and Beaver Dam Wash, Bonita Creek in the
Gila Box Riparian Natural Conservation Area, the
Aravaipa Wilderness, and the Muleshoe Cooperative
Management Area.
Since 1979, Barry Spicer has been associated
with the development of the Heritage Data
Management System (HDMS); for the past 2 years,
he has been coordinator. In addition to the services
described in his article, HDMS biologists coordinate
several workshops a year on selected special status
species for certain geographic areas, at the request of
agency biologists and in cooperation with other
agencies. Contact Barry for workshop information:
602/789-3615. To request a retrieval of HDMS data,
call 602/789-3600 if the purpose is project related; if
the purpose is not associated with a project, call the
data manager at 602/789-3612. Requests that are not
related specifically to the database should be routed
through the Education or Nongame branches of the
Arizona Game and Fish Department. For general
information about the database network, call at the
Western Heritage Task Force of The Nature
Contributors to Bajada
form the core of a
network of experts who
have important
information to share.
Contact them for more
details regarding their
stories, which are told in
brevity within this Bajada
issue.
Bajada is made available, free of charge, three times per year by the National Biological Service (NBS) Cooperative Park Studies Unit at The University of Arizona (CPSU/UA). The purpose of Bajada is
to increase the amount of effective communication between researchers and managers for the benefit of resources in the warm deserts. Contributions of articles, news items, and photos are encouraged.
Contributors may submit articles by cc:Mail, by fax, or by sending a disk (accompanied with a double-spaced hard copy). Deadlines for submission are 1 November for the January issue, 1 February for
the April issue, and 1 June for the August issue. To submit articles and other copy for publication or to send address changes and requests for subscriptions, please write Gloria Meander, editor;
Bajada; CPSUNA; 1415 N. 6th Ave.; Tucson, AZ 85705. Phone: 520/670-6896; Fax: 520/670-6525; cc:Mail: Gloria Maenden Internet: [email protected]. Staff at CPSUAJA are Bill Halvorson,
unit leader; Peter Bennett and Cecil Schwabe, research ecologists; Mike Kunzmann, ecologist; Kathy Hiatt, biological technician; Barbara Ball, cartographer; Joan Ford, research unit assistant; Gloria
Maender, editorial assistant; Mary Greene, secretary.
3 Bajada, 1995:3(2)
National Biological Service • Cooperative Park Studies Unit/The University of Arizona
Managers' Forum
Sam Barr, president of
the Southwest
Archeology Team applies
protective capping to an
exposed surface of the
"old schoolhouse" at
Tumacacori National
Historical Park.
Sharing the Effort to Keep Our Spanish Ruins
n ancient Spanish ruin" was the romantic
description of Tumacacori Mission, preserved
as a national monument by presidential proclamation
15 September 1908. In 1990, the site was designated
a national historical park and expanded to include
two other Spanish colonial sites, also representative
of Jesuit missionary activity in the Americas during
the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
The added sites are Los Santos Angeles de
Guevavi, the first cabecera (mission community
with a resident priest) on what was the northern
frontier of New Spain, and the visita rancheria
(community periodically visited by a priest) San
Cayetano de Calabazas. Both Guevavi and Calabazas
have remnant historic adobe structures and numerous
archeological sites. As a group, the expanded park,
the nearby Tubac Presidio (a unit of the Arizona park
system), and the Juan Bautista de Anza National
Historic Trail represent an important component in
regional, national, and international history.
The 1990 legislation significantly expanded the
scope of management responsibilities without
increasing funds or staff. Visitation in 1994 broke a
12-year record, exceeding 66,000 visitors.
Addressing visitor and resource preservation needs
exceeds current staffing (paid and volunteer). The
new sites remain closed to the public; volunteers
under National Park Service (NPS) direction aid in
monitoring and emergency preservation efforts. Only
limited historical research and archeological surveys
have been conducted for Calabazas or Guevavi, and
those for the Tumacacori site provide an incomplete
picture.
To address these issues, we are revising the park
General Management Plan and developing a
comprehensive Natural and Cultural Resources
Management Plan. We are also pursuing alternative
approaches to accomplish high-priority needs.
Breaking recurring work into progressive series of
one-time projects lends itself to funding support
from small-grant sources and may increase the
attractiveness of such projects to potential partners.
One success is a newly formed partnership with the
Southwest Archeology Team (SWAT), a volunteer
organization in Mesa, Arizona.
During two weekend sessions in late 1994,
SWAT archeologists, working with NPS employees
and volunteers from Tumacacori, Tubac Presidio, the
NPS Southern Arizona Group office, and the
Arizona Site Steward Program, applied protective
capping layers to the most at-risk historic adobe
surfaces at Calabazas, Guevavi, and Tumacacori.
Funded by the National Park Foundation, the 1994
phase achieved the most critical ruins preservation
work in a timely manner and at lower cost, while
developing a stronger support constituency in the
private sector and improving the related skill levels
and expertise of all parties involved. The 1995 phase
of this work is being supported by the NPS
Challenge Cost Share Program. Most importantly,
the agreement being prepared for the current phase
will be "expandable" to include future phases as
funding becomes available.
There is also an opportunity to capitalize on
special skills being developed locally. An
international team of conservators—supported by
funding from the Patronato organization and the
Guggenheim Corporation and working seasonally at
San Xavier del Bac Mission south of Tucson—have
been training apprentices from the Tohono O'odham
nation. Three of these apprentices are working at
Tumacacori under special hire authority for one to
two pay periods each year, applying the cleaning and
conservation techniques they learned to the painted
surfaces in the church sanctuary.
Last but not least, the park is accomplishing
projects it could not undertake alone, but which meet
the goals of several parties. One example is a threeway agreement with neighboring Tubac Presidio and
the Anza Coalition of Arizona involving installation
of trailhead signs and rest benches along the
Tumacacori–Tubac section of the Anza National
Historic Trail.
More partnerships and volunteer successes
similar to these will help reveal the dynamic story of
intersecting cultures and land-use changes over
4 centuries at Tumacacori.
Tumacacori NHP
Pat Phelan
National Biological Service • Cooperative Park Studies Unit/The University of Arizona
1995:3(2), Bajada 4