HUACHUCA CITY — Mike Hayhurst looked for Holly Richter’s footprints in the sand of the dry Babocomari River bed. He had expected her to be there, but couldn't find any trace.

“We know she didn’t go by because there are no tracks,” he said. “And there’s no grass pushed down or anything.”

He turned quiet. “I don’t think she came down here.”

Richter was walking in a canyon, likely less than a mile away. She could hear birds chirping in trees. Cicadas buzzed in the heat. She was down to the last of her water.

Richter,a riparian ecologist and hydrologist, had left Hayhurst earlier, upriver where she’d dismounted her horse and handed him the reins.

She set out on foot down the steep, narrow canyon to walk a portion of the river, recording in a handheld GPS device and on a clipboard any location where she found water.

“I’m getting a little bit worried about her,” Hayhurst said. His ranch, where he has raised cattle since the late 1980s, was a couple of miles away.

Richter would find him in a matter of minutes, but it was still too long for Hayhurst’s comfort. “When you’re out there, ya know, there’s a myriad of things that could happen to a person,” he’d say later.

In search of water in a river

For many of the last 12 years, Hayhurst and Richter have ridden along the Babocomari, a tributary of the San Pedro River, in search of water, plotting on a map wherever they found it. It’s how they became unlikely friends.

In 1999, Richter started recruiting citizen scientists to map water in a portion of the San Pedro during the driest week of the year. In time, she expanded her data collection to more reaches of the river in Arizona and eventually into Mexico, where it originates.

Amid years of controversy and debate over the health of the San Pedro, the information Richter collects every year lets her know exactly how the river is doing, she said.

This information has helped inform efforts to conserve and research the Southwest’s last free-flowing river. But that’s not Richter’s only concern.

Mapping water in the river is also about bringing people together to make things happen, part of a larger goal of heremployer, the Nature Conservancy.

On paper, Hayhurst, who relies on the land for his livelihood, and Richter, whose job it is to help protect the environment, might seem like opposites.

But on hot summer days, through thickets of thorny brush along the Babocomari, they’ve managed to build an increasingly rare relationship that bridges the nation’s historic political divide.

“I think we know there’s stuff we don’t agree on,” Richter said, “and I think that’s OK.”

In the 2016 presidential election, Hayhurst voted for Trump. Richter voted for Clinton.

When it comes to the Babocomari, they put aside their disagreements. Together, they’ve seen the river trend toward less water, year after year, and together they’re trying to save it.

Common ground, but not for everyone

For problems facing the greater San Pedro River, as with problems facing a divided nation, some people still reject certain solutions found on common ground.

Richter and Hayhurst want to use Hayhurst’s cattle to help restore native grasslands on land upstream from his ranch. When the Nature Conservancy bought the land, it was in rough shape and restoring native grass to it could help the river's ecosystem in multiple ways, Richter said.

They came up with the idea on horseback while they mapped the Babocomari in June. And Richter said the Nature Conservancy, which buys land in fragile ecosystems and works to restore it, has started building fences around the land to prepare for the cattle.

Nevertheless, many environmentalists are skeptical of any plan that involves livestock.

“Who came up with this cock-and-bull story to feed seeds and let the cows stool them out along the river that the cows have destroyed?” said Robin Silver, the co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity. “That’s insane.”

Silver and other environmentalists point to a list of studies documenting the negative impacts that livestock grazing has on riparian habitats in the West. Cows have hugely damaged Western rivers, Silver said.

“There is no place for cows in the arid West,” he said. “None of our rivers evolved with cows. They have nothing to offer.”

Passions run high over how to save the San Pedro River. And the arguments start to feel personal.

Silver calls Hayhurst a “destructive” hobbyist because Hayhurst works another job besides ranching.

Hayhurst helps support himself as the head football coach at Tombstone High School and has had a long teaching career. When he was 74, the Eloy Enterprise dubbed him the coach who’s “too tough to quit.”

While some people have 401(k) or retirement plans, Hayhurst has put everything into the ranch, he said. Now 77, he works the ranch with his grandson.

He has his own opinions of Silver. Many people who work for conservation organizations, like Richter, are dedicated and wonderful, he said, but he thinks some do it for other reasons.

He singles out Silver as one of them. He doesn't think Silver cares about the environment. "I think he’s on a power trip and on a destruction trip.”

Silver has never joined Richter’s project to map water in the river, but he said he’s been involved in efforts to save the San Pedro River system since the 1980s, which have included fighting multiple courtroom battles.

Silver’s a different brand of conservationist than Richter, and Hayhurst, for that matter.

Richter describes the San Pedro’s health in long, diplomatic phrases, citing concerns over drought and groundwater pumping. She said some reaches of the San Pedro have declined in health, some have improved and some have stayed the same. For the past two years, however, lower flows in the Babocomari have been “of concern” to her.

Silver, on the other hand, used coarser language to describe the situation. And the picture he paints is dire: Pumping water drains the aquifer, which diminishes the river’s flow. Climate change is making it worse by reducing the the amount of water seeping back into the aquifer. He recently lost an Arizona Supreme Court case to curb a developer’s groundwater pumping.

In the meantime, the developer, which is planning to build nearly 7,000 units five miles from the San Pedro, is concerned about water consumed within the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

“Pueblo does not support a general goal of 'restoring ecosystems' that is not examined in the context of minimizing water needs and the impacts on surrounding landowners and communities,” attorneys wrote on behalf of the developer, Castle & Cooke, Arizona Inc., and the Pueblo Del Sol Water Company it owns, in response to the federal draft management plan for the conservation area.

The fisherman of years past

Richter’s data shows that 2018 was the one of the three driest years for the Babocomari since she and Hayhurst started mapping the river in 2007.

“The places that I remember always being wet were dry,” she said when she found Hayhurst waiting for her by the sandy Babocomari River bed in June. “There was one puddle that was like three feet in diameter, and it was so stagnant that it was really stinky.”

Hayhurst handed the reins back and they set off toward the Babocomari’s confluence with the San Pedro.

Hayhurst didn't need the data to know the Babocomari is on a general drying trend.

When he bought the ranch in 1988, he was teaching and coaching football at Marana High School. He and other coaches would bring their kids to the Babocomari to go fishing.

They’d catch smallmouth bass, bluegill and lots of catfish, he said.

“We caught tons of fish right here,” he said, his horse standing in the riverbed sand, not a drop of water in sight.

“Must have been 20 kids down here and none of them were disappointed," he said. "I mean it was full of fish.”

Some fish still swim in a few places upriver, he said, but not like they used to.

Even though Arizona has endured an extended drought, there was still water in a portion of the Babocomari by Hayhurst’s house in June.

Groundwater levels can make all of the difference for the amount of water that flows in the river.

“You can see the flow is really slow,” Richter said, standing near the water’s edge. “But the groundwater table is really high. And that’s why there’s water here even though there’s been negligible rain for months. It’s just basically groundwater that has seeped out and keeps the river flowing.”

The conflict over pumping

Silt has filled many of the fishing holes since Hayhurst would bring other coaches and their kids to the river, he said, adding that these days, even if you were to dig a fishing hole it wouldn’t fill up with water.

Richter started explaining why. “It’s that there’s …”

“... no water,” Hayhurst said, jumping in with a chuckle before Richter finished her sentence.

“… lowered groundwater levels,” Richter said, completing her thought as he spoke.

Both Hayhurst and Richter pointed to groundwater pumping as one source of concern they have for the San Pedro system, including the Babocomari.

It’s a concern that they share with Silver, who argued in the courts that groundwater pumping by Pueblo Del Sol Water Company to supply the nearly 7,000-home development would affect the flows in the San Pedro.

The case that Silver and his co-plaintiffs, including the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, lost in the state Supreme Court hinged on what state water regulators are required to consider when determining if developers have adequate water. The court upheld the regulators’ conclusion that the development had an adequate supply of water for 100 years.

Justice Clint Bolick wrote in his dissent, however, that the ruling “has eviscerated” a consumer-protection law that now stands “without meaningful analysis that water will be legally available.”

He wrote that the developer’s increase in groundwater pumping could conceivably conflict with federal water rights reserved for the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, adding that the court has previously found that “Arizona has consumed far more groundwater than nature can replenish.”

Groundwater pumping from the regional aquifer has already taken water that would have added to the San Pedro River’s base flow, according to research cited by the federal draft management plan for the conservation area.

And groundwater-conservation measures are necessary for the “long-term sustainability” of the water in the national conservation area, according to the draft plan.

Meanwhile, the developer is concerned about how the conservation area could affect the land surrounding it.

“While quick to point to regional groundwater pumping as potentially adversely impacting streamflows within (San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area) in the future, the (management plan) completely fails to examine the potential adverse impacts of actions within (the conservation area) on the lands and people surrounding (the conservation area),” the developer’s attorney wrote in response to the draft management plan.

Projects that put water back into the aquifer are also necessary for the sustainability of the conservation area, according to the draft management plan.

The Cochise Conservation Recharge Network is a series of projects designed to do that. It's a collaboration between local governments, a ranching conservation group and the Nature Conservancy. The yearly mapping data that Richter collects have helped determine where to build such projects.

Richter hopes to work with the developer, Castle & Cooke, Arizona Inc., to find ways to minimize the impacts that increased pumping will have on the river. She wants the recharge projects to offset some of the impacts.

If the Cochise Conservation Recharge Network can secure funding to build the remaining projects in the network, it will keep the river flowing through at least 2075, Richter said. The projects also will need water to recharge the aquifer.

These projects use stormwater runoff and treated effluent. And both sources are needed to do the recharge, Richter said.

Silver thinks too much faith is put into this plan.

“The recharge projects are not going to save the San Pedro,” he said. “The only thing that’s going to save it is diminished groundwater pumping.”

Cautious of a changing climate

Climate change may make it harder to save the river.

“The problem is you can’t recharge when you’ve got decreased precipitation,” Silver said.

Researchers reported in a 2017 study that less water will likely seep back into the aquifer below the San Pedro due to climate change. And pumping is already overdrafting groundwater — taking out more than is returned — from the aquifer.

Even so, when it comes to climate change, Richter is cautious with her words.

“I don’t think anybody argues that we’re in a drought period," she said. "I think people might disagree as to why there’s a drought, but the thing we can agree on is that … there’s less precipitation, less water.”

Hayhurst said he can’t blame the drought on climate change.

”I’m not going to say that there’s no climate change,” he said. “I think that there may be some minor changes, but I think that if you listen to Al Gore very long you’re listening to a bunch of ...” And he invoked a term not unfamiliar to a rancher.

International scientific consensus repeatedly has agreed that current changes in the climate are happening at an unprecedented rate and it’s extremely likely that it's caused by human activity.

A solution or an insult?

Silver said his immediate concerns about livestock trump his groundwater concerns. “In the shortest term, we need to not put cows back,” he said.

Tensions over livestock grazing in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area have been high since the BLM released the draft management plan for the conservation area in June. The bureau floated the possibility of allowing livestock to graze more than 26,000 acres of the conservation area.

The previous resource-management plan from 1989 prohibited livestock grazing as part of the bureau’s plan to enhance and protect the river’s riparian ecosystems. But grazing continued on about 7,000 acres of the conservation area, according to the draft plan.

By 2003, researchers reported that the density of certain types of vegetation had increased “four- to six-fold” in the years after livestock were removed from riparian and mesquite communities in the conservation area.

And the researchers detected an increase in birds of many species, writing that removing cattle from these riparian areas can profoundly benefit breeding birds.

The draft management plan also cited evidence that the San Pedro's ecological health has improved largely due to prohibited livestock grazing along the river.

“The major variable that happened in the late 1980s was that we removed cows. That’s why we’ve had recovery,” Silver said. “And that’s why it’s so offensive that they would even think about trying to put them back.”

And that’s why the idea of Hayhurst and Richter using cattle to restore native grasslands seems to Silver like a sketch on "Saturday Night Live."

Richter says the cows will eat native grass and leave behind native seeds in their stool for a brief period before the rains come in the summer. And the Nature Conservancy will monitor the project to see if it’s an effective way to distribute native grasses.

“No one’s done that,” Richter said, sitting at Hayhurst’s kitchen table after riding for hours on horseback through the Babocomari. “We just thought of something that no one has done.”

The land was highly disturbed when the Nature Conservancy acquired it, she said. Restoring native grasslands to it would combat erosion and allow more water to seep into the aquifer.

“It can be a demonstration project to show what can be done,” Hayhurst said.

He considers himself a conservationist, despite what environmentalists like Silver say about ranching. He has been recognized in the past for his range restoration work by the Society for Range Management.

The Bureau of Land Management signaled in its draft management plan for the San Pedro conservation area that grazing would not be allowed in riparian areas, except along the Babocomari, where Hayhurst said he would run his cattle.

The draft plan also cited a “functional at risk” rating for the lower Babocomari from a 2012 federal report. It describes conditions such as “disturbance from livestock trampling and overutilization of forage.”

Hayhurst called this "misinformation" in his public comments about the plan.

"This is in direct opposition to the studies we have done in conjunction with the (Natural Resources Conservation Service)," he wrote. "I invite any impartial observer to visit the Bobocomari allotment and show me any negative impact other than an occasional cow pie."

Richter said it’s not advisable for year-round grazing in riparian corridors, but praises what she calls Hayhurst's diligent, careful and seasonal grazing practices.

Silver, on the other hand, called Hayhurst a "notorious abuser of the federal allotment his cattle already graze and said he shouldn't be allowed to use it.

“I think they're going to cut me out,” Hayhurst said, to the added acres he would graze under the BLM's preferred option in the draft management plan. The BLM has faced significant backlash over the amount of grazing the draft plan would allow.

Environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity and Western Watersheds Project were “totally alarmed” that the plan proposed allowing grazing in the Babocomari riparian area, he said. “And they know nothing about it. They know nothing of what we’ve done.”

'I’m not the bad guy'

By the time Hayhurst and Richter finished the water mapping on the Babocomari that June day, the desert brush had cut the top of Hayhurst’s hand. Blood had dripped on his sleeves.

He cracked open a can of beer before heading back to the ranch. There, Richter and Hayhurst sat around the kitchen table. They reminisced about the river and mulled over their plan to feed native grass to Hayhurst’s cattle.

If two people as different as longtime Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill and Republican President Ronald Reagan could work together years ago for the sake of the nation, Hayhurst said, then surely it could be done for the San Pedro River.

While environmentalists like Silver shun ranching in the arid West, Hayhurst calls ranchers who don't conserve the environment "takers."

And while Hayhurst questions whether Silver “believes in American ideals,” he's found someone he trusts in Richter.

“I’m not the bad guy,” he had said earlier as he waited for her on the dry riverbed.

And Richter doesn't see him that way.

Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow the azcentral and Arizona Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and at OurGrandAZ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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