A lawsuit filed by environmental groups against federal land management agencies this week calls for more stringent protections for a historic trail that spans five U.S. states — including Arizona.
In a complaint filed in D.C., attorneys argue the Department of Interior has failed to protect the Old Spanish National Historic Trail. It runs from Santa Fe to Los Angeles and was a trade route used in the mid-1800s when much of the Southwest was still Mexico.
Retired National Park Service employee John Hiscock is a plaintiff in the suit. He says today, the trail crosses several stunning landscapes under federal jurisdiction — including the Colorado Plateau and other areas.
“The law calls for protection of the trail and really the trail landscape,” he said. “And what we were finding over many years is that the federal agencies in their management of their federal lands that the trail crosses — primarily those federal agencies that allow for multiple-use, like the Bureau of Land Management — were not necessarily doing everything in accordance with the law to make sure that those landscapes part of the trail were being protected.”
Despite being designated as a historic national trail in 2002, Hiscock says public land agencies have allowed development projects that have hurt the integrity of the trail, and risk causing more damage with future projects.
“Whether they be oil and gas drilling, and pads for those things, other types of energy development, mineral sales, they all involve substantial alteration of the surface and the landscape immediately surrounding the trail,” he said. “What that does over time is it degrades the overall meaning and significance of the trail.”
Attorney Laura Dumais says agencies are supposed to create the plan for all designated historic and scenic trails. But the lack of one at Old Spanish Trail has hampered efforts to protect it.
“Groups have been for the past 20 years kind of playing whack a mole trying to object to individual developments, on the basis that Old Spanish Trail isn’t being taken into account, and it just really needs this comprehensive plan like the vast majority of other scenic and historic trails have,” she said.
Dumais says unlike other designated sites, which normally have one managing agency, this trail is assigned dually to the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. The agencies came together to create a plan several years ago, but failed to finalize it.
“So the fundamental problem here was that they did try to do a Comprehensive Management Plan with full analysis, environmental analysis, pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act,” she said. “They had gone through the whole scoping process, they got a lot of public comments, but then they disagreed as to various aspects of it and they just, that's where the process ended.”
Dumais’ suit seeks to compel the Department of Interior to finish creating the plan. The agency must now respond to the suit or file a motion to dismiss it.
