After a wet, snowy winter, maybe it’s time to head south to Arizona to soak up the sun and listen to migratory birds. We think of the Bureau of Land Management as owning thousands of acres of canyons, cliffs, and deserts, but they also own riparian areas.

One of the most notable is the San Pedro Riverbank National Preserve in southern Arizona, located on 57,000 acres and 40 miles of the San Pedro Riverbed. Amazingly, until the 1980s, BLM owned not even an acre.

A bird’s paradise, almost half of the nation’s birds are found along the unusual river corridors, chirping under a canopy of willows and tall cottonwoods. The San Pedro River is “his one of the world’s rarest treasures, the river of the desert,” says author and naturalist Ralph Walt. It’s one of America’s most treasured sites, supporting an astonishing diversity of life. “

Imagine 450 birds, both local and passing, sharing space with Gila monsters, ocelots, coati and the occasional jaguar. Mammalian species are abundant with 90 native species, including koji deer, black bears and cougars, and bird life is exceptional, including parrots and rare hawks.

Nominated as one of the “Last Great Places” by the Nature Conservancy, the National Audubon Society considers San Pedro an IBA or Important Bird Area. The American Bird Conservancy named San Pedro the organization’s first “Globally Important Wild Bird Habitat.” Nestled between the desert mountains of Dragoon, Huachuca, Grindstone, and Santa Catalina, the river begins 20 miles south in Mexico and flows 140 miles north, ending in the towns of Sierra Vista and historic US military bases. It flows into Arizona near Fort Huachuca.

The landscape is all part of the Spanish Land Grant and the abandoned adobe Presidio Santa Cruz de Santa Cruz, founded by a rogue Irishman who worked for a Spaniard named Hugo O’Connor. – Includes Terenate (1775-1780). He got the rank of colonel. I roam the former jackal structures of this place, with their stone bases and walls of woven wood, standing guards of soldiers, constantly harassing and attacking the fort in a quick I’ve seen the remnants of adobe rooms that were looking for Apaches in motion.

More than 250 historical and prehistoric sites have been identified within the San Pedro River NCA, including a rare 11,000-year-old Clovis-era mammoth killing site, and the cultural history of the area is rich. It has become as important as its unique natural history. But how did river corridors move from land grants to private property to public land?

To answer that question, I had to track down Dean Bibles, who was the BLM director for the states of Arizona, Oregon, and Washington. He told tales as colorful as the rare birds found along the river: Yellow-billed cuckoos, green kingfishers, Bell’s vireos, Lucy’s warblers, Abert’s tawee. His story began with his son’s passion for the elusive Gray Hawk.

In August 1985, his son Brent, a wildlife major at Utah State University, said, “Dad, something needs to be done about San Pedro.”

Brent Bibles was doing valuable research on hawk nests and habitats. The oil company Tenneco owns acres of riverbed land, and Dean Bibles and Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt agreed that something should be done.

BLM is often given less credit for landscape protection. Environmentalist slams his BLM for too many cattle, too much grazing, too many acres leased for oil and gas. Beware of precious natural resources and irreplaceable landscapes. Their staff deserve a lot of credit. Their stories are usually unknown. Dean Bibles fits that category and this story has a happy ending.

Former BLM Arizona Director Dean Bibles speaks at the San Pedro Riverbank National Conservation 30th Anniversary. (Courtesy of Dean Bible)

The BLM was created in 1946 by the merger of the General Land Service and the Grazing Service by President Harry Truman. No one wanted the nearly 245 million acres of land in 11 western states and Alaska that BLM now manages. All high-altitude grasslands and mountain parks became the US Forest Service, and America’s acres of spectacular landscape were entrusted to the National Park Service. BLM did not really receive its own identity and mission from Congress until the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976, by which time a major demographic shift had begun.

In the 19th century, Americans came west in covered wagons. In the 20th century, we drove station wagons full of rowdy kids growing up in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Grand Junction, St. George, Tucson and other western cities. BLM didn’t own land near the Sierra Vista and San Pedro River, but it didn’t have to. By the mid-1980s, Sunbelt cities exploded, and desert developers sought more contiguous land. BLM had a lot.

A land exchange with Tenneco on the San Pedro Corridor seemed impossible, but perhaps a third party exchange would succeed. It was March 8, 1986.

“This is how the government is supposed to work for the American people,” says Dean Bibles. He feels lucky to work during the “golden age” of political compromise.

“There was little to no party resentment in the Arizona delegation because they were able to decide what was best for Arizona and the country and do it,” he says. “The Arizona delegation will meet in either Senator Goldwater’s office or Congressman Mo Udall’s office to discuss what needs to be done and how to make things happen, and when we decide, we will make it happen!”

Politicians willing to work together to ensure land never owned by BLM is now protected for all Americans, as well as the millions of birds that fly the San Pedro River Corridor each year . For the National Park Service, votes in Congress create new national parks. For BLM, national reserves are established and designated by a parliamentary vote. And it can’t be assumed that it all started with a young college student’s obsession with the Greyhawks.

Brent Bibles returned to San Pedro to do additional research, eventually earning his doctorate. It’s a paper about Greyhawk, so of course I didn’t look at it. It was late March when I visited the Gray Hawk Nature Center to meet director Sandy Anderson. She gave us clear instructions on her phone as to where to park and how to meet her. She was a little embarrassed to leave the car because she had heard she loved and respected rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, but she agreed to stay overnight at her quarters. Thanks for the offer.

Anderson came out with a warm smile and a firm handshake, and after a few lessons in birdwatching etiquette, we sailed down the river listening to the distinctive whistle of a Greyhawk. , she said. Must be a young rattle. It’s the first warm day. Be careful where you put your hands and feet. ‘ She forewarned, and I followed her as best I could.

Birdwatcher and tour guide Sandy Anderson poses with a slow-moving Gila monster. Anderson is licensed to raise and restore rare and endangered species. (Andrew Galliford/Durango Herald)

“I came to Arizona to be a bird guide. I’m watching, but in the spring it takes a while to pick up speed,” she said, walking along the riverbank in what she calls “a 57,000-acre backyard.”

Anderson lashed out at owls when he spotted a Great Horned Owl in his Zonetail Hawk’s Nest. “Last year the bastard killed and ate at least two Greyhawks,” she complained.

Anderson also spoke of local county commissioners who were more concerned about jobs and growth in the Sierra Vista suburbs than protecting the San Pedro River’s watercourse and its deeply drawn aquifers. county commission. Late in the afternoon, she heard a goshawk call and quickly pointed out where it perched in a tangle of leafless branches. I couldn’t see her with her binoculars, but I saw her fly down.

I marveled at its size and diminutive form and thought about the importance of my son sharing his love for this hawk species with his father. You can also. Landscape-level protection is now one of the key goals of the BLM’s national reserve system, and we are all beneficiaries.

Andrew Gulliford is an award-winning author, editor, and professor of history at Fort Lewis College. He can be reached at gulliford_a@fortlewis.edu.