CONSERVATION ELEMENTS OF AND A BIODIVERSITY MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR THE BARRY M. GOLDWATER RANGE, ARIZONA CONSERVATION ELEMENTS OF AND A BIODIVERSITY MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR THE BARRY M. GOLDWATER RANGE, ARIZONA John A. Hall Sonoran Desert Program Manager The Nature Conservancy, Tucson, Arizona Pat Comer Senior Ecologist The Nature Conservancy, Boulder, Colorado Anne Gondor Geographic Information Systems Specialist The Nature Conservancy, Tucson, Arizona Rob Marshall Conservation Sciences Program Manager The Nature Conservancy, Tucson, Arizona Stephanie Weinstein Independent Consultant Tucson, Arizona October 2001 The Nature Conservancy of Arizona, Tucson Preferred Citation: Hall, J.A., P. Comer, A. Gondor, R. Marshall, and S. Weinstein. 2001. Conservation Elements of and a Biodiversity Management Framework for the Barry M. Goldwater Range, Arizona. The Nature Conservancy of Arizona, Tucson. 199 + ix p. + 15 unpaginated figures. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This document provides the results from The Nature Conservancy’s site conservation planning process for the Barry M. Goldwater Range (BMGR), Arizona. The identification herein of conservation elements, and their subsequent use in the development of management goals and standards, serves as a biodiversity management framework that can be incorporated into the BMGR’s Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan (INRMP). Contexts and Scope The Military Lands Withdrawal Act of 1999 (Public Law 106–65) authorized the continued withdrawal of lands constituting the BMGR for 25 years. The Act, however, also stipulated a change in management authority for natural and cultural resources on BMGR withdrawn lands from the Department of the Interior to the Secretaries of the Navy (western portion of the range) and Air Force (eastern portion of the range). The Act further required the development of an INRMP specifically for the BMGR in accordance with the Sikes Act, as amended (Title 16, United States Code 670a et seq.), and other Withdrawal Act provisions. The Sikes Act directs the Secretary of Defense to carry out a program that provides for the conservation and rehabilitation of natural resources on military installations. To facilitate such a program, the Act requires the secretary of each military department to prepare and implement an INRMP at installations under their jurisdiction. Such plans ensure that natural resource conservation measures are integrated with military mission requirements and are consistent with federal stewardship requirements. The Navy and Air Force departments have decided to prepare a single INRMP for the BMGR. In September 2000 the 56th Fighter Wing, Luke Air Force Base and The Nature Conservancy signed a Cooperative Agreement wherein both parties agreed to cooperate in the development and execution of an INRMP for the BMGR. In accordance with the Cooperative Agreement, Luke Air Force Base and The Nature Conservancy subsequently agreed to an initial project scope of work that supported development of the BMGR’s INRMP. The specific tasks identified for accomplishment reflected The Nature Conservancy’s expertise in the areas of ecoregional and site-level conservation planning. Previous funding from the Department of Defense Legacy Resource Management Program enabled The Nature Conservancy and its conservation partners to develop an ecological basis for conservation throughout the Sonoran Desert Ecoregion, a 55 million-acre region of the Southwest within which the BMGR is located. The Sonoran Desert Ecoregion and the current and projected status of its biodiversity provide the appropriate ecological context for natural resources management planning on the BMGR and for assessing the relative significance of the BMGR to conservation and protection of the ecoregion’s biodiversity. The Nature Conservancy’s site conservation planning methodology uses a focal set of natural communities or species (conservation elements) to capture for planning and management purposes the overall native biodiversity of an area. The approach is modified herein to serve as a biodiversity management framework that addresses the scale and unique aspects of federal land management, especially in the context of the BMGR’s military training environment. Overview and Benefits of the Biodiversity Management Framework The biodiversity management framework for the BMGR described in this document provides for the following: ES.1 Biodiversity Management Framework • identifies a suite of conservation elements that when managed appropriately provides for the conservation and protection of biodiversity on the BMGR • uses broad expert input from the scientific community to evaluate the ecological characteristics and status of each conservation element • identifies major threats to the long-term viability of each conservation element • derives desired future ecological conditions for each conservation element to serve as element- specific management goals • identifies an initial set of monitoring objectives for each conservation element • identifies conservation-oriented management standards for spatially delineated land management categories that are based on the BMGR’s mission and other land uses, strategies appropriate to eliminate or minimize major threats, and presence and condition of conservation elements • identifies opportunities for cross-jurisdictional coordination of natural resources management with adjoining land administrators The primary benefits of the biodiversity management framework and the process The Nature Conservancy used to develop it for the BMGR include: • provides a well-documented and science-based approach for making natural resource management decisions in the context of appropriate ecological boundaries, land management agency mandates, and land management unit land uses • provides access to regional scientific and agency experts that typically do not participate in agency planning processes thereby ensuring the best available and most contemporary scientific information can be integrated into the BMGR’s INRMP • can be used as an exportable model to raise the standards of biodiversity management across the Sonoran Desert Ecoregion (or at more local scales) to ensure an equitable distribution of management responsibility among jurisdictions and to facilitate an ecosystem approach to management • demonstrates to regulators and the public the ability to manage biodiversity through an informed decision-making process that leads to explicit management standards, which may result in a stream- lining of environmental review and listed species consultation processes in the future. Methods The Nature Conservancy used a multi-step process to select conservation elements appropriate to the BMGR. Selected conservation elements were: • representative of biodiversity within the Sonoran Desert Ecoregion • relevant to natural resources management on the BMGR • representative of the occurrence of biodiversity elements at different spatial scales, across taxonomic categories (for example, plants, birds, mammals, and so on), and across different levels of rarity ES.2 Executive Summary • inclusive of natural community and species conservation elements that had specialized management needs. We used interviews, questionnaires, and workshops involving regional scientific and agency experts, as well as reviews of the applicable scientific literature, as the foundation of the entire process. We also made extensive use of geospatial data both as raw data (for example, species occurrence information) and as the components of analytical models (for example, to model the occurrence of natural communities). The information gathered pertaining to ecological attributes and desired future conditions of individual natural community and species conservation elements was then considered in the broader contexts of the BMGR land management unit missions, land-use constraints and opportunities, landscape features, and cross-jurisdictional coordinated management opportunities. We assessed, delineated, and assigned individual land areas on the BMGR to an appropriate land management category based on the occurrence and condition of conservation elements, current land use, and principles of conservation biology. A primary consideration of the above assessment was to identify areas that qualify to be managed as Special Natural Areas, which is a Department of Defense designation for areas containing natural resources that warrant special conservation measures. These are areas that represent one type of land management category that share characteristics of high biodiversity value, low anthropogenic disturbance levels, and opportunities for coordinated management with one or more adjoining jurisdiction. Finally, we developed sets of recommended management standards corresponding to each land management category to ensure adequate management of the full extent and natural variation of the conservation elements. Findings and Recommendations Because of its size and east-west orientation the BMGR incorporates much of the diversity of landforms, rainfall, and elevation gradients that are present within the Sonoran Desert Ecoregion in Arizona and that contribute to this ecoregion’s biodiversity. To capture the resultant biodiversity we identified a total of 25 natural communities, species, and aggregates of ecologically similar species (guilds) that are proposed to serve as a focal set of conservation elements for the BMGR. The natural community conservation elements, when appropriately managed to ensure the long-term persistence