The Transformation of a Landscape: Culture and Ecology in Southeastern Arizona

Abstract

Soujtheastern Arizona hosts one of the most unique and ecologically diverse landscapes in America. It is the meeting place of four major North American bioregions: the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, and the Rocky Mountain and Sierra Madrean forests. Each of these reaches the limits of its range in southeastern Arizona. The mountains and valleys here contain a rich, unparalleled mix of plant and animal species, attracting the attention of biologists from all over the world.' In the past one hundred years, however, the landscape has undergone significant changes, both physically and culturally, Following United States acquisition of this territory in 1853 (the Gadsden Purchase), Anglo-Americans slowly but steadily established hegemony over the land and its indigenous inhabitants, the Chiricahua Apache, displacing both a culture and an ecology. Coveting the rich natural resources, armed with powerful technologies, and motivated by a belief in their destiny to conquer and civilize the wilderness, the new American culture occupied and radically transformed the landscape. Scientists now judge the huge scale of ecological alterations that occurred in southern Arizona during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as comparable in scope to those that occurred during the late pleistocene.2 From almost any perspective these changes proved undesirable: An indigenous people lost their land and way of life; a healthy, stable environment deteriorated; and the natural resource productivity of the land significantly declined. Climatic factors played some role (the region's climate appears to have become