Recalling Mo Udall, his love of the land

Mark Trautwein

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Arizona Wilderness Act, the first of Mo Udall's two landmark statewide wilderness bills that define much of Arizona 's dynamic landscape. Mo was justifiably proud of these achievements, and it's a good time not only to look back but also, as Mo always did, to look forward.

Mo's vision was informed by what he often referred to as his "love of the land." It was both his starting point and his destination - the ethic he hoped would inform others to carry on great conservation work.

When he looked back, Mo saw what had happened to Tucson in his own lifetime. The parks and natural areas that now ring it were then distant points on the horizon. By 1984, Tucson had already begun to expand beyond those open spaces, now islands in an urban sea. Mo's love of the land taught him that isolation alone never protects open spaces forever. So in his two Arizona wilderness laws, as elsewhere, he was seeking to get ahead of that curve. eFlex_1')

Today, it's fair to pronounce the AWA - and the Arizona Desert Wilderness Act six years later - successes, but incomplete ones. Together those two laws went a long way toward fulfilling for Arizona the promise of the Wilderness Act itself: to preserve "an enduring resource" of land "retaining its primeval character and influence," where "man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

Yet Mo would never have regarded the Arizona Wilderness Act's success as complete. We've failed to get ahead of motorized recreation that has altered wildlands and wildlife corridors.

Many parts of the Sonoran Desert west of Phoenix are perfect examples. Some of these lands and other gems, like the Tumacacori Highlands in southern Arizona, richly deserve wilderness protection. More broadly, everything we now know about ecology teaches us that land, water, and wildlife are unique systems that must be managed wisely on a landscape scale. Wilderness designation will always be an effective conservation tool, but we are in dire need of a new land-management vision as well that can incorporate whole, ecological landscapes and embrace not just what Mo did, but what he believed.

The AWA was a seminal moment in popular awareness about the value of wildlands and the citizen organizations that work to protect them. And because Mo ran such an inclusive and civil legislative process that respected the rights and opinions of everyone, he showed that the democratic experiment can work.

Today, some express their regard for Mo's vision by opposing new land protections as violations of the agreements he forged a generation ago. But this is a false fealty. Mo's mission was never to preclude others from acting in new ways on the basis of new evidence to meet new challenges he himself could never anticipate. Instead, Mo Udall sought to inspire us with a love of the land and a passion for the great task of protecting it. When we celebrate the Arizona Wilderness Act, it is that love we should remember and use as our guide.

Mark Trautwein served Rep. Morris K. Udall on the staff of the U.S. House Interior/Natural Resources Committee from 1979 to 1992. He was lead staffer for the 1984 Arizona Wilderness Act and the 1990 Arizona Desert Wilderness Act.

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Source: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2009/08/28/20090828trautwein29.html

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