The woman chosen to be the next director of Arizona’s state parks once carved her name into a historic park’s property in southeastern Arizona.

She also helped recover thousands of acres of burned parks land in San Diego County and launched an innovative system to allow people to make campground reservations online.

The Arizona State Parks Board’s unanimous selection of Renée Bahl to take over the parks system next month has polarized state leaders.

Parks officials say she is a dynamic, experienced professional who will help lead the parks system out of a historic budget crisis.

Bahl, 40, is “a vigorous, intelligent, resourceful person who knows how to get through the most difficult of times,” said Bill Scalzo, who led the selection committee for the Arizona State Parks Board.

But at least one lawmaker says her selection as director is inappropriate given a vandalism incident that took place a decade ago.

Bahl, a former assistant state parks director, oversaw historic preservation at the San Rafael Ranch.

In 1999, another employee caught her etching her first name and the year into the wall of a historic adobe barn.

Bahl was disciplined but remained in her job until 2002, when she left to become director of parks and recreation for San Diego County in California.

State Rep. Daniel Patterson, D-Tucson, criticized the selection.

“Bahl should be fully questioned about her vandalism of state historic properties, and rejected as a poor choice for this important job,” Patterson wrote on his blog. “Someone as clueless as Bahl on protecting state treasures is clearly not appropriate to head state parks.”

Through a spokeswoman, Bahl declined to comment. Officials said they were impressed with Bahl’s education, which includes a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public administration with a focus on natural resource management.

Scalzo said Bahl brought up the vandalism incident during an interview and apologized for it, saying she had made a mistake.

“One thing I really appreciated is she brought that up,” Scalzo said. “She didn’t say, ‘I’ve had a perfect career I don’t make mistakes.’ ”

Bahl, who will make about $140,000 a year, will take over for Ken Travous, who is retiring after 23 years leading the parks system.

Lawmakers swept $36 million from parks coffers in the last year, prompting the closure of three parks and threatening several more with closure. The board is working to prevent further cuts proposed by the Legislature’s Republican leadership, which board members say would devastate the system.

Scalzo called criticism a distraction from the parks board’s most pressing problems.

“We need help; we don’t need criticism,” he said. “We need to have this new person come in here with everyone wishing her the best, because she’s going to need every bit of it.”

ABOVE: Gabriel Baca (left), his brother Antonio Baca (center) and Jose Rivera enjoy the new sodded athletic field at St. John's Community Park, 3610 S. 12th Ave.

LEFT: Stephanie Prinzing's dogs Hopper (front) and Spike wait to get a drink from the dog water fountain at Jacinto Park, 2600 N. 15th Ave.

BELOW: Sandra Ramirez pushes daughter Natalia Navarro, 3, on a swing at Jacinto Park.

It was a long wait, but residents of the Miracle Manor Neighborhood finally have a park with amenities like other city parks.

“We’ve been asking, ‘Why can’t we have equipment in a park that is 60 years old?’ ” Jim Quinn, vice president of the Miracle Manor Neighborhood Association, said Thursday.

Neighbors will gather at 9 a.m. Saturday at Jacinto Park, 2600 N. 15th Ave., to dedicate improvements that neighborhood residents had sought: a ramada, connecting sidewalks, a swing set with rubberized safety surfacing, a drinking fountain, picnic and game tables and a basketball half court.

Getting them was a chore since funds came from both the city and Pima County, said Marsha Quinn, the neighborhood association’s liaison with Tucson and Pima County.

The project’s $268,331 came from four sources: a $203,331 Pima County Neighborhood Reinvestment grant, $30,000 each from the Mayor’s Office and Ward 3 Back to Basics programs, and a $5,000 grant from PRO (People, Resources, Organizations) Neighborhoods.

St. John’s Community Park, 3610 S. 12th Ave., will be dedicated at 2 p.m. Wednesday and also will have new facilities.

The land is owned by St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, which is leasing it to the city as a park site for 25 years.

Funds for the improvements came from grants from both the city and county, said Leslie Nixon, of the Pima County Neighborhood Reinvestment and Preservation Office.

A $500,000 Pima County grant funded construction of a skateboard facility at the park, Nixon said.

Other improvements include crushed stone paths, athletic field landscaping, a ramada, picnic tables and benches.

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK – The main roadway leading to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon is set to reopen on Friday morning for the summer season.

Grand Canyon National Park officials say all North Rim facilities, including the historic Grand Canyon Lodge North Rim, will also reopen on Friday.

Arizona State Route 67 leading to the North Rim was closed on Dec. 1 for the winter season. Most facilities closed on Oct. 15 and are set to close on Oct. 16 this year.

Rim operations also include camping, camper services, food services, groceries and a service station. Park rangers present daily programs.

The more popular South Rim of the canyon stays open year-round.

The Arizona Trail Association is requesting help in winning a $50,000 grant for a trail project in Saguaro National Park-Rincon Mountain District.

Through midnight May 31, citizens may vote twice daily among five national finalists for this Redwood Creek Greater Outdoors Project grant. Redwood Creek, a California winery, will give the money to the project receiving the most votes.

Anyone may vote once a day online and once a day by text message. To vote online, visit www.blazethetrail.com/greatoutdoors/vote. Send text message votes to 39668 with the voting code “trail.”

The grant money would fund the Saguaro National Park Connector Trail, a five-mile stretch of the Arizona Trail into the park that must be constructed by hand due to its remoteness and the rugged landscape.

The trail would allow access into backcountry areas and protect a sensitive riparian area.

For more information, visit www.aztrail.org.

Tucsonan due to complete last leg of 800-mile walk

Tucsonan Sirena Dufault, who has fibromyalgia, plans to complete an 800-mile hike of the Arizona Trail on Tuesday.

When she set out to hike the 800-mile Arizona Trail last spring, Sirena Dufault worried that she might not finish.

The daunting trail stretches from Utah to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Tucsonan Dufault’s concern stemmed from her decade-long battle with fibromyalgia, a little-understood chronic pain disorder.

“I was a little hesitant to publicize it because I didn’t know how far I could go,” Dufault said this week. “Now I can comfortably do a 15-mile day with a big pack, no problem.”

Tuesday – on national Fibromyalgia Awareness Day – the 35-year-old will make a final, eight-mile hike north of Oracle to complete the trail, trudging from the Tiger Mine Trail head to the American Flag Trail head.

Dufault kept an online journal throughout her trek, which she made mostly by herself in one- to five-day trips. Tuesday’s leg will mark the 80th day Dufault has spent on the trail.

Dufault said she hopes her success will inspire the 10 million Americans who suffer from the disorder. “There’s not a whole lot of positive information out there about people getting their lives back after fibromyalgia.”

Fibromyalgia’s symptoms include chronic, widespread body pain, according to the National Fibromyalgia Association. Symptoms can stem from an acute illness or injury, as in Dufault’s case. Her diagnosis came in 1998, a year after she was hit by a car as she crossed a street. For months afterward, even as her initial injuries healed, Dufault’s pain and fatigue worsened.

“I saw her probably at her worst,” said Angi Edge, a nurse and massage therapist who treated Dufault after her diagnosis and became a fast friend. “So many people give up on themselves. They become their disease. She was just not going to give up.”

Dufault’s pain has not flared up in a major way in the past three years, she said. “I attribute that to being very, very active.”

For her next big adventure, Dufault might hike the Tonto Trail in the Grand Canyon. She walked 25 miles of that 90-mile trail last winter.

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Read about Sirena Dufault’s experiences hiking the Arizona Trail in her online journal: www.aztrail4fms.org.

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK – Search crews on Friday found the body of one of three people who were swept away after they jumped into the Colorado River on a visit to the Grand Canyon.

Canyon officials are waiting to identify him until they can tell his family.

The search continued for the other two. Searchers used a helicopter, a dog and other efforts to try to find them.

Garrick Taylor, a spokesman for the Tri-City Baptist Church, said the men were part of a 30-member group that went on a planned three-day hiking trip on Wednesday that the church organizes each year.

Grand Canyon National Park spokeswoman Maureen Oltrogge identified the three as 15-year-old Saif Savaya, and two brothers, 16-year-old Mark Merrill and 22-year-old Joey Merrill. None were wearing life vests.

The group was in the canyon bottom just upriver from the main park headquarters on the South Rim. The river is cold at this time of year, with water temperatures of about 50 degrees. Currents are swift in the area.

“All those factors work against them,” Oltrogge said.

Taylor said the rest of the group returned to Tempe and is praying for the missing to return home safely.

Joey Merrill is a student at the International Baptist College that the church runs in Tempe, Taylor said. His brother, Mark, lives in the eastern Arizona town of Sanders and went along for the trip.

Savaya is a member of the Phoenix Arabic Bible Church, Taylor said.

The humpback chub, a closely watched indicator of the Grand Canyon’s ecological health, has grown steadily in number since 2001 as changing conditions on the Colorado River have created a more hospitable habitat.

The population of the endangered fish grew by 50 percent over the past eight years, the U.S. Geological Survey reported Monday. By the end of last year, there were an estimated 7,650 adult chub, fish at least 4 years old, near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers. That’s up from about 4,000 fish as recently as 2000.

Scientists offered several possible factors for the higher numbers, including drought-related spikes in water temperature, the removal of non-native fish from the river and a series of experimental water releases from Glen Canyon Dam.

Put together, those factors essentially re-created some of the conditions that once supported larger populations of the chub.

“It may be that the synergy, the combined impacts of all of those, is the thing that helps humpback chub survive best,” said Matthew Andersen, a USGS biologist. “We have great confidence in the population trend. We’re still investigating the reasons behind it.”

The chub, found in just six locations on the Colorado River and its tributaries, has become a measure of the Grand Canyon’s overall condition in recent years. The chub’s numbers in the lower Colorado dwindled after the 1963 completion of Glen Canyon Dam shut off the river’s natural flow, altering the habitat.

Finding more fish in the river is encouraging, environmental advocates said Monday, but work remains to ensure the species’ long-term survival.

“This is not a result that should have us sitting back comfortably in our chairs,” said Nikolai Lash, Colorado River program director for the Flagstaff-based Grand Canyon Trust. “It should have us leaning forward, trying to figure out how to take advantage of whatever it was that led to a small improvement.”

A decision is expected in the next few weeks in a case the trust and others filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, challenging the government’s management of the river and the chub habitat.

The chub, named for a protruding hump on its back, can grow as long as 20 inches and can live for 30 years or more. It uses its prominent fins to glide through the water and find insects to eat. Over 4 million years, the chub evolved to survive in warm sediment-laden water.

The construction of Glen Canyon Dam to store water and generate electricity changed the fish’s environment on the lower Colorado. The river’s flow was controlled artificially and, because water was released from the lower depths of Lake Powell, its temperature cooled.

As a result, native-fish populations plummeted. Responding to lawsuits from environmental groups, Congress passed legislation in 1992 that ordered federal agencies to manage the dam in ways that would help restore habitat, but until about 2000, fish numbers remained low.

In 2001, the population started to grow, Andersen said. Scientists began looking at three factors:

• A long drought lowered water levels at Lake Powell, which allowed the sun to reach deeper into the lake and warm the water.

• Non-native fish have been removed from parts of the river where the chub live. Non-native fish compete for food and eat young chub. From 2003 to 2006, the non-native rainbow trout population near the Little Colorado confluence dropped 80 percent.

• The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has conducted a series of experimental test releases from Glen Canyon Dam. Andersen said it’s possible some of those tests have helped improve conditions.

Bill would fine dumpers, make them clean up trash

Holding photos of the trash, Mammoth rancher Laurie Mercer stands next to an area that once contained steel, tires and other items dumped on land she and her husband lease from the state.

MAMMOTH – Laurie Mercer is proud to show off the high desert where she and her husband, Mike, graze cattle. Saguaros and creosote bushes hug a bumpy trail as her ATV climbs to a point offering a panoramic view of arroyos and distant mountains.

“The further up you go, you get into the oaks and junipers, and it’s really pretty,” she said.

But she also took a visitor to areas that make her heart ache, such as an open spot containing the front half of an abandoned truck, rusted, stripped of parts and riddled with bullet holes. The truck’s bed lies nearby, upside down.

There’s a patch containing a rotting mattress, two vacuum cleaners and an ice chest. And another with discarded clothes, sheets and knapsacks – probably a campsite for border crossers, Mercer said. And along the ATV trail: discarded water bottles, tire treads, a pair of pink panties.

“It’s like having a dump in your front yard,” Mercer said later.

Adding insult to injury, unless they can catch someone in the act of dumping it’s the Mercers’ responsibility to remove the mess from this rangeland, which they lease from the state.

In 2006, Pinal County threatened the Mercers with a $27,800 fine for failing to promptly remove 47 tons of steel and hundreds of tires dumped on their land. It wasn’t theirs, Laurie Mercer said, but the couple couldn’t persuade officials to drop the fine.

“It freaked me out,” she said. “I was like, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me!’ ”

The community rallied around the Mercers, removing the mounds of garbage free of charge. The county withheld the fine but warned the Mercers against letting it happen again.

The couple’s story reflects a problem facing ranchers, farmers and landowners across rural Arizona. Open land is an attractive place for those looking to discard construction materials, appliances, vehicles, tires and other items rather than disposing of them properly.

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality holds summits and runs other programs to discourage illegal dumping. Mark Shaffer, the agency’s communications director, said officials sympathize with landowners and leaseholders who get stuck cleaning up messes they didn’t create.

“People don’t want to go to the trouble,” Shaffer said. “They’ll just go out to the desert and dump it.”

The Mercers helped inspire Rep. Barbara McGuire, D-Kearny, to introduce legislation that intends to provide some relief to those in their situation.

HB 2424, which is awaiting action by the full House, would provide an appeals process exempting property owners from fines if ownership of rubbish, debris, trash or filth can’t be determined. However, property owners would still be responsible for removing it.

McGuire’s bill would require judges to fine dumpers no less than $1,800 in addition to making them responsible for cleanup costs.

It also aims to make it easier for officials to hold dumpers responsible. If investigators find mail, pay stubs or other items pointing to a person, it would be the accused dumper’s responsibility to prove that the items don’t belong to him or her.

Having grown up in a rural area where illegal dumping was every bit the burden to landowners that it is today, McGuire said she feels for those who get saddled with fines.

“Do you think that if somebody dumped a bunch of garbage or old cars in your front yard, so to speak, do you think that it would be fair for them to tell you, ‘You clean it up,’ when it wasn’t yours?” McGuire said.

“This legislation has a little more teeth into it,” she said.

Scott Porter, enforcement manager with the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality, said he’s especially excited about the idea of a mandatory fine because it would help discourage dumpers from committing the crime again. He said he sympathizes with landowners and hopes the legislation eases some of the strain on their wallets.

“I’ve seen them spend in excess of $10,000 to remove wildcat waste,” he said. “They’re certainly victims.”

Patrick Bray, deputy director of government affairs for the Arizona Cattlemen’s Association, said his organization worked with McGuire on the legislation. He said it’s important that identifying documents in garbage be used as evidence and to put the burden of proof on accused dumpers.

“It would be a great help to us in making sure folks are responsible for their trash,” Bray said.

K.C. Custer, Pinal County’s lone environmental investigator, said he understands the burdens landowners face when it comes to dumping.

“It is costly to them, but they are responsible for their property,” Custer said.

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HB 2424, which aims to cut down on illegal dumping

• Make illegal dumpers responsible for all costs associated with removing and disposing of garbage;

• Establish a fine of at least $1,800 for misdemeanor dumping;

• Require those suspected of dumping because of evidence left at sites to prove that they didn’t dump the material or prove with receipts that they have properly disposed of it;

• If the identity of the dumper cannot be determined, the owner can enter an appeals process and prove that he or she was not the offending party, relieving him or her of civil penalties.

The Arizona Game & Fish Commission has extended a moratorium on killing mountain lions on the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge until July 31, but conservationists said Thursday they aren’t satisfied.

Federal and state officials put the ban in place a year ago after state officials killed two of the cats because they were feeding on bighorn sheep in the refuge outside Yuma.

Conservationists objected and wildlife officials said they would study whether the mountain lions were responsible for declines in sheep herds. The moratorium expired last Friday, but a day later the state commission that directs the Arizona Game & Fish Department voted to extend it.

“It’s a national wildlife refuge, not a state game farm, and it needs to be run as an ecosystem, and that includes protecting these lions,” said Daniel Patterson, a spokesman for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, known as PEER.

The cats, which are also called cougars or pumas, are rare in low-desert, low-elevation environments like the Kofa refuge. But neither they nor the desert bighorn sheep population found on the Kofa are listed as endangered.

The mountain lions were targeted after the refuge’s once-robust sheep population plunged by more than half, from a high mark estimated at 812 in 2000 to 390 in a 2006 survey, Game & Fish spokesman Doug Burt said.

The die-off was attributed to factors including drought, readily available food and predation.

The refuge population was estimated at 438 as of last fall’s survey, he said.

By law, Game & Fish manages the state’s wildlife, including on national refuges, unless a species becomes threatened or endangered, Burt said.

“While sheep are not endangered, they are at a very low number,” he said. “Our goal is to repopulate the sheep in those areas where they once were . . . They’re an iconic animal and they’re very important to us and they’re very important to the Southwest.”

The Kofa herd is one of the strongest available for repopulating other areas, he said.

PEER threatened court action last year to stop the killings. It said Thursday that neither the study nor an environmental assessment for a refuge mountain lion management plan has been completed.

“We believe there would be a serious legal problem if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continues to permit Arizona Game & Fish to continue to go after these lions if they don’t have this environmental assessment done.

“That’s why we’re concerned about the short extension,” said Patterson, an ecologist and Southwest director for PEER, which is representing some concerned Fish and Wildlife employees on the issue.

Fish and Wildlife regional spokesman Jose Viramontes in Albuquerque, N.M., said the agency has been working closely with state officials. He said the assessment might not be completed by July 31 but that the service intends “to move forward as quickly as possible on completing” it.

Patterson also said environmental organizations are concerned about what he called a loophole for Game and Fish that might allow a lion on the 665,000-acre refuge to be killed if it kills a sheep and it leaves the refuge.

The worry is that if the area’s mountain lion population is wiped out, it will be difficult to get the animal re-established.

He said a solution can be reached but would require a recognition that there is a national interest and responsibility at the refuge and that Game and Fish must recognize that there is room for lions to exist on it.

Nineteen national parks, monuments and historic sites in Arizona will share in more than $20 million in stimulus funding, officials said Wednesday.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar released details of more than $750 million in projects paid for with money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

By directing money to the parks, Salazar said, “we are creating a new legacy of stewardship for our national park system while helping our economy stand up again.”

Grand Canyon National Park will receive more than half of the $20.4 million set aside for national park sites in Arizona. Among the projects funded by the $10.9 million for the Canyon are repair and upgrade work on the historic trans-Canyon trail, repair work on North Rim trails and structures damaged by wildfire, repair and preservation work on 130 miles of road and the purchase of five alternative-fuel transit buses.

A sampling of other sites receiving money:

• Canyon de Chelly National Monument in northwestern Arizona will get $2.9 million for work on roads, restrooms and trails.

• Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona will get $1 million for work on a visitor’s center, campground and roads.

• Saguaro National Park, outside Tucson, will receive $1.5 million to restore landscape and habitat, install gates, repair trails and seal hazardous mine sites.

• Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site at Ganado on the Navajo Reservation will receive $86,000 to rehabilitate the historic picnic area and do farmland preservation work with the Navajo Youth Corps.

• Chiricahua National Monument in southeastern Arizona will get $838,000 for road and trail work and repair work at two historic structures.

National parks get $750 million in federal economic stimulus money Wednesday to chip into a to-do list that includes repairing historic buildings, constructing new trails and increasing renewable energy use from Independence Hall in Philadelphia to Yosemite in California.

“This is probably the most significant investment made in more than a generation,” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said in an interview before the Earth Day announcement.

More than 750 projects in 48 states are expected to create 30,000 to 40,000 jobs starting this summer. That includes 15,000 jobs in a 21st Century Youth Conservation Corps.

Though smaller in scale than the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps, which opened camps for young men who built trails and campgrounds still in use, Salazar says the Depression program is an inspiration to “resurrect the treasures of America.”

The stimulus funds won’t clear the National Park Service’s $9 billion maintenance backlog, says spokesman David Barna, but they will pay for long-deferred projects at many iconic sites:

• Independence Hall, birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and Constit-ution, will get nearly $5.5 million to repair its crumbling tower and replace a weathervane, clocks and masonry.

• Ellis Island in New York Harbor will get $26.1 million to repair a sea wall and stabilize the 1908 baggage and dormitory building.

• The Old Courthouse in St. Louis will get nearly $5 million to replace a leaky roof that has damaged seven rooms. The site of the pivotal Dred Scott slavery trial that hastened the Civil War is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and “almost as much of an icon as the Gateway Arch itself,” park superintendent Tom Bradley says.

• Shenandoah National Park in Virginia will get nearly $9.5 million to reconstruct stone walls and wood guardrails.

The stimulus package includes $14 million for solar panels at 26 national parks. Yosemite expects its $5.6 million project to pare electricity costs 10 percent. Zion National Park in Utah will get 20 percent of its power from solar energy once panels are installed.

Big Bend in Texas, Glacier in Montana, Grand Canyon in Arizona and Rock Creek in Washington, D.C., are among parks slated for trail repair.

PHOENIX — The Arizona State Parks board on Friday announced reduced days and hours of operations at six parks as part of a cost-cutting plan.

Assistant Director Jay Ream says Yuma Territorial Prison park and Yuma Quartermaster Depot park will be open Thursday through Monday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays starting Tuesday.

Ream says Tubac Presidio State Historic Park and Tombstone Courthouse State Historic Park will have the same Thursday-Monday schedule from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. starting April 21 with Fort Verde State Historic Park switching to that shortened schedule on May 5 and Oracle State Park doing the same on May 9.

After state lawmakers made budget cuts in January, the Parks Board authorized park officials to close individual parks up to two days a week.

Ream says the parks also are dealing with a 26 percent reduction in ranger staff.

PHOENIX – Gov. Jan Brewer announced Monday that she has appointed a veteran wildfire official from Washington state as Arizona’s new state forester.

Victoria “Vicki” Christiansen served as Washington state forester, beginning her career for the state Department of Natural Resources as a wildland fire fighter and rising in the ranks through a variety of management posts. Christiansen served as Washington’s forester from 2006 to early 2009.

Brewer, a Republican, appointed Christiansen to replace Kirk Rowdabaugh, an appointee of former Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat. Brewer became governor on Jan. 20.

An Arizona Senate committee on Monday endorsed Christiansen’s appointment and recommended that the full Senate confirm it.

Christiansen told the committee that her first priority is to “look, learn and listen” and that she then wants to “engage” with communities regarding forest restoration.

“The bottom line is our citizens want to feel safe,” she said.

Arizona earlier this decade had several large wildfires that devastated forest communities in eastern and southern Arizona, and there has been extensive debate over the locations and scope of forest-thinning projects.

Route eligible for protection, funds

More than 20 years after work began on the 817-mile Arizona Trail, it has received national recognition garnered by just 10 other paths.

Late last month, the Arizona Trail received National Scenic designation through an act of Congress signed into law by President Obama.

The honor, last bestowed by Congress 25 years ago, is reserved for outstanding trails at least 100 miles long.

The special designation is a culmination for a trail first envisioned in the mid-1980s by Flagstaff schoolteacher and avid hiker Dale Shewalter.

“The designation is very gratifying for me,” Shewalter, now retired, told The Arizona Republic. “I knew that the trail would be a unique, desirable trail. I knew it would be popular.”

The Arizona Trail – which passes east of the metro area, between Phoenix and Superior – spans the state from its northern border with Utah, //to the southern border with Mexico.

Along the way, the trail crosses canyons, deserts, woodlands and mountains, and passes through seven wilderness areas and four national parks.

“In places, it’s very popular,” said Dave Hicks, executive director of the Arizona Trail Association. “In other places, it’s very remote, so it doesn’t get many people.

“That’s part of the appeal of the trail.”

The trail’s first 7-mile section was designated and opened to the public in 1988.

Now, roughly 40 miles are all that remain to be completed, said Hicks, whose Arizona Trail Association was founded to promote and protect the trail.

Nearly the entire trail is already on public land. Federal designation as a National Scenic Trail provides added protection, Hicks said, and could help steer more federal dollars in its direction for maintenance and improvements.

“The designation basically says you can’t do away with the trail,” he said. “You might re-route it, but you can’t do away with it.”

Gov. Jan Brewer lauded the work of government agencies, business groups and private citizens in creating the trail, calling it “a testament to what can be accomplished through public-private partnerships.”

Brewer singled out the efforts of Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, along with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, in shepherding the legislation through Congress.

But the Arizona Trail began with Shewalter.

He first had the idea of linking a series of existing trails to create one continuous path across Arizona, and helped scout its current course.

Initially, Shewalter hoped the trail would be completed by 2000. Now, he’s shooting for 2012 – Arizona’s statehood centennial.

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On the Web

Arizona Trail Association

www.aztrail.org

Arizona Game and Fish eagle biologist Kyle McCarty sits in an eagle nest Thursday trying to catch two young bald eagles. They were lowered to the ground, where they were tagged and then returned to the nest.

Kyle McCarty, an eagle biologist with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, was 40 feet up a sycamore tree in the Tonto National Forest trying to gain control of a pair of young bald eagles.

It would not be easy.

Twigs snapped, and the branches holding the nest began to sway.

“There you go, there you go,” McCarty said. “You’re a fighter. Good for you. There you go.”

The nestlings’ parents soared overhead, squawking and displeased.

After placing leather hoods over their heads, and covering their talons with booties, McCarty placed the 6-week-old birds in a bag and lowered them to biologists waiting below.

What happened on Thursday, the first and almost certainly the last time these animals will ever be touched by human hands, would help determine their future.

The desert-nesting bald eagles of central Arizona are the only bald eagles still receiving protection as members of the Endangered Species List.

Getting and keeping that protection has not been easy.

In 1967, the bald eagle was listed as endangered under federal law.

After four decades of habitat protection and hunting prohibitions, the eagle was thriving.

In July 2007, eagles in the lower 48 states were removed from the federal protection list. But environmentalists in Arizona were not ready to let those protections lapse.

The Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson, and Maricopa Audubon filed a petition in federal court arguing that the desert-nesting bald eagle – sometimes called the bald eagle of the Sonoran Desert – should still be protected.

These birds, they argued, were not just any bald eagles but a distinct group.

In March 2008, the U.S. District Court in Arizona agreed with the conservationists and designated the animals as a “distinct population segment.” That means the birds, though they are the same species, are geographically, biologically and behaviorally distinct from all other bald-eagle populations.

That status gave the eagles, which live south of the Mogollon Rim and north of the Arizona/Mexico border, a protected position under the Endangered Species Act.

But the eagles’ travels through the court system are still not finished.

The judge ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to perform a status review of the eagles to determine whether they deserve the special protection.

Under the order, the birds cannot be removed from the list until a finding is made.

The information gathered on Thursday by Arizona Game and Fish will be part of that research.

After lowering the birds to the ground, McCarty stayed in the nest, gathering information on their diet.

There was a skunk tail, some duck remains, fish bones and rabbit fur.

The diversity of the diet was a good indication that these are healthy birds.

On the ground, Kenneth Jacobson, head of the bald-eagle management program for Game and Fish, started to measure the birds and place metal bands on their legs.

Each was a male, and each weighed about 6 pounds, 13 ounces.

The birds will not have the distinctive white feathers on their heads and tails until they are about 5 years old.

During the measuring and weighing, the hoods kept the animals calm and docile. They appeared to be in an almost trancelike state.

“The brains are pretty much run by their optic nerves,” Jacobson said. “You shut off the lights, he pretty much shuts down.”

The metal band markings, 23/U for the first and 23/V for the second, will identify the eagles. Scientists with high-powered lenses will track their movement in the years ahead.

Arizona Game and Fish will share this information with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The position of the state agency is that desert-nesting bald eagle deserves special protection.

There are just 50 breeding pairs of the eagles in the state.

“We do believe it deserves distinct population segment,” Jacobsen said. “It does deserve special protection. It’s such a magnificent bird.”