San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area / Tucson Field Office

The Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Tucson Field Office (FO) has responsibility for administering about 800,000 acres of public lands in southern Arizona within an area bounded to the south by the international border with Mexico, to the west by the Tohono O'odham Indian Nation, to the east by the Galiuro Mountains and Sulpher Springs Valley and to the north by the Tonto National Forest and San Carlos Indian Reservation. Tucson FO manages seven areas within the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS). These include Ironwood Forest National Monument (NM), San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area (RNCA), Las Cienegas NCA, and the Baboquivari Peak, Coyote Mountains, Needle's Eye and White Canyon wilderness areas. The remainder of the public lands managed by the Tucson FO is a mix of small, scattered parcels and larger blocks of public land.

Tucson Planning Area

The Tucson planning area covers about 408,500 acres of public lands scattered across southern Arizona in Cochise, Gila, Pima, Pinal, and Santa Cruz Counties (see map of Tucson planning area). The public lands within Las Cienegas NCA, Ironwood Forest NM and San Pedro RNCA are not included in the Tucson planning area as they are or will be covered by separate stand-alone land use plans.

The Tucson planning area includes a wide variety of significant resources and public uses. Habitat for twenty proposed and listed threatened and endangered species and numerous special status species are found across the planning area. Significant prehistoric and historic cultural sites are also present representing more than 3,000 years of human occupation in the southwest. The Baboquivari Peak, Coyote Mountains, White Canyon and Needle's Eye wilderness areas and the Middle Gila River wild and scenic river study area are present in the planning area. Recreational opportunities abound, including hiking, horse-back riding, mountain biking, off-highway vehicle touring, primitive camping, hunting, river rafting, sight-seeing, wildlife viewing and bird watching. The public lands also support ranching, mining, utilities and communication sites, commercial recreation, and Recreation and Public Purposes (R&PP) leases providing schools, fire stations, parks, and other public purpose facilities.

Lands adjacent to the Tucson planning area include: BLM-Phoenix Field Office, BLM-Safford Field Office, Saguaro National Park, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, Coronado and Tonto National Forests, Tohono O'odham Indian Nation, San Carlos Indian Reservation, San Xavier Indian Reservation, Arizona State Trust Lands, Arizona State Parks, Arizona Game and Fish Department, Pima and Pinal County Parks, and a wide variety of private lands including ranches, mines, and subdivisions.  

San Pedro RNCA & Tucson FO

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San Pedro RNCA

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Agua Fria NM - Bradshaw Mountains

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San Pedro RNCA Planning 

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San Pedro RNCA Planning Area

The San Pedro RNCA planning area (see map of SPRNCA planning area) covers about 56,500 acres of public land located in Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, stretching along the San Pedro River from south of the town of Benson to the U.S.- Mexico Border. The San Pedro riparian area was designated by Congress as the nation's first Riparian National Conservation Area on November 18, 1988. The RNCA contains about 40 miles of the upper San Pedro River supporting a nationally significant riparian area. The San Pedro riparian area has been recognized by the National Audubon Society as the first Globally Important Bird Area and attracts birders from all over the world who come to see some of the more than 400 birds found here. The segment of the San Pedro River through the RNCA is a Wild and Scenic Rivers study area. The RNCA provides habitat for five proposed or listed threatened and endangered species. The RNCA also contains significant cultural resources dating back approximately 11,000 years to the Clovis people, the first known human inhabitants in the upper San Pedro River Valley. The RNCA provides a variety of recreation opportunities including birding and wildlife viewing, hiking and backpacking, primitive camping, hunting and fishing. An interpretive facility, the San Pedro House, is located on the river at highway 90 and is staffed by volunteers from the Friends of San Pedro. Interpretive exhibits are located at the historic town site of Fairbank, the Murray Springs Clovis site, the Presidio Santa Cruz de Terrenate, and the San Pedro House. Interpretive exhibits will be placed at Millville and the Petroglyph Discovery Trail in February 2005. There are four active grazing allotments within the San Pedro RNCA boundary.

Land Use Plans

Tucson FO currently manages public lands under three land use plans (LUP) and four LUP amendments.

The LUPs are as follows:

The four amendments to the plans are listed chronologically:

  • Safford District Resource Management Plan Land Tenure Amendment (July 1994)
  • Statewide Amendment to recommend suitability for Wild and Scenic Rivers (1996)
  • Statewide Amendment for Standards and Guides (1997)
  • Statewide plan Amendment for Fire, Fuels, and Air Management (2004)

Need for Resource Management Plan

The Phoenix RMP is now more than 15 years old, and the Safford RMP is more than 13 years old. Evaluations for the Tucson FO portions of the Phoenix and Safford RMPs completed in 2000 revealed that several decisions were no longer valid or were out of date for lands within the Tucson Planning area. In addition, there are a number of emerging issues which were not previously addressed in land use planning for the Tucson planning areas, including significant resource damage from impacts of illegal immigration activities; new listings of threatened and endangered species and critical habitat; and increasing demands for land use authorizations as well as increasing recreational pressures as the Tucson and Phoenix metropolitan areas experience rapid growth.

Although the Safford District RMP evaluation of 2000 concluded that the decisions for the San Pedro RNCA were still valid, a decision about livestock grazing in the San Pedro RNCA is currently needed. The San Pedro RNCA is also experiencing significant impacts from illegal immigration activities as well as pressures from expanding recreational demands. In addition, in order to comply with Section 321 of Public Law 108-195 passed in November 2003, BLM needs to actively participate with the Upper San Pedro Partnership to reduce and monitor groundwater use in the Sierra Vista sub-watershed to reach sustainable yield in the underlying aquifer by 2011. Another consideration is that the policy of the NLCS office in Washington is that all NLCS units should have stand-alone land use plans, and the San Pedro RNCA currently does not have a stand-alone RMP.