A DEADLY, FRAGILE DESERT

Tuesday, June 04, 2002 - Drug traffickers and illegal immigrants are
destroying a fragile desert wilderness in one of the West's most unusual
national monuments. The appalling damage shows, with awful clarity, how the
government's foolish penny-pinching in the national parks budget will cost
our country more than dollars can measure.

Nestled in southern Arizona immediately above Mexico, Organ Pipe Cactus
National Monument was set aside in 1937 to protect a rare and diverse swath
of the Sonoran Desert. On its expansive flats and rugged peaks, a
cornucopia of animals and plants has adapted to summers of 110-degree days
and chill-tinged winters. One cactus species, the organ pipe, is related to
the well-known saguaro. But unlike saguaro, whose arms unfold from a single
trunk like a cowboy waving howdy, organ pipe grow many arms from the ground
and look like 20-foot-tall porcupines. Organ pipe are common in northern
Mexico but scare in the United States, where they exist almost exclusively
in this monument.

Of Organ Pipe's 330,000 acres, 312,000 acres are designated wilderness,
where motorized vehicles are outlawed. For wilderness lovers, this desert
of starry nights and colorful wild flowers should be an arid paradise.
Instead, it's a war zone.

There aren't enough rangers to patrol the entire monument. The 32 full-time
employees, including seven law officers, must cover 500 square miles and
are on duty only 14 out of 24 hours. So when the lights go out in the
visitors center, it's a signal for unwanted legions to invade.

Most pernicious are caravans of drug traffickers, who drive high- powered
off-road and sport utility vehicles across the unroaded and delicate desert
soils, terrifying wildlife, smashing wildflowers, uprooting young cacti,
and tearing through fragile creeks. Ruts, oil spills and trash heaps mark
the criminal passages.

For six years, since the U.S. Border Patrol pulled most of its officers
into urban areas, the monument also has become a pathway for 200,000
illegal immigrants annually. Most come on foot, but still inflict
environmental damage. Their discarded, empty plastic water jugs mar the
landscape. Because most such immigrants are ignorant of good wilderness
travel practices, scarce water sources get polluted with human excrement.

This desert can be deadly. The callous "coyotes" who smuggle illegal
immigrants into the United States feed these would-be desert travelers
fatal lies, such as the crazy idea that it takes just eight hours to cross
the 50 miles through the monument, or that a gallon of water is plenty for
an entire family. In reality, even strong hikers need at least two days to
traverse the monument, and should carry and consume a gallon of water per
person, per day.

The monument has only two year-round water sources, both crucial for
wildlife, but last summer illegal traffic completely depleted one of them.
"With the drought we've had, we're worried that this summer, even those two
water sources may dry up," said Bill Wellman, the monument's superintendent.

Wellman fears that in the coming months, more illegal immigrants could die
in the blistering heat, as 10 immigrants did last year. "If we find them,
we'll save them," he said. "But we don't always know they're there. And we
don't have the people to go looking for them."

No matter their political leanings, park rangers show human empathy for
immigrants when they find them lost, thirsty and desperate. But the rangers
express a smoldering rage for the drug traffickers and the scars - which
may prove irreparable - that they carve on the desert.

The political implications are enormous. America's war on drugs ignited a
kind of gold rush through the wilderness, with crooks wrecking eco-systems
that Congress supposedly protected six decades ago.

The problems with illegal immigrants serve as a political ink-blot test.
Liberals claim the dangerous desert treks show why the United States should
loosen its legal immigration policies, but conservatives argue the
environmental damage is yet another reason to seal the border.

Wellman's concerns are purely pragmatic: He would like to have the budget
to hire enough staffers to have a ranger - preferably two, because it's
dangerous for a lone law officer to confront drug traffickers - on duty 24
hours a day.

Once drug runners and illegal immigrants know there's even a small a chance
they might be caught, they likely would stop trampling through the
wilderness. They might just find some other place to cross, but at least
they wouldn't be wrecking a national monument.

Why doesn't the National Park Service assign more rangers to Organ Pipe?
Because the entire national park system is so financially sick that it
can't protect natural resources and historic sites nationwide, literally
from Gettysburg to Yosemite. Congress has delayed vital maintenance and
resource protection work year after year. Now, the perennial budget crunch
is mutating into a genuine crisis for our entire national park system,
whose maintenance backlog exceeds $4 billion.

More rangers to staff the monument 24 hours a day: That's all Organ Pipe
needs. That, and someone to pick up the trash - and to research whether
it's even possible to repair the damage already done.