The Southwest Showdown at Emerald Peak
The University of Arizona encounters resistance from Native Americans and environmentalists for trying to build a telescope at Emerald Peak.
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by Jake Page
The Mount Graham red squirrel is not the only issue on
Emerald Peak.
So is the fate of rare plants.
EMERALD PEAK, AZ— The sky is so
clear you're sure it will crack and descend in a cataract
of starlit fragments - you speak too sharply in the night.
And that is the problem up on Mount
Graham, located in the Coronado National Forest, a couple
of hours northeast of the neon lights of Tucson, Arizona.
It is an ideal place to look at the stars. And on one of
Mount Graham's several peaks, Emerald Peak, the University
of Arizona wants to build a $200 million observatory
consisting of seven telescopes. To this eight-acre island
of science would also troop a holy alliance of astronomers
from West Germany, Italy and two of the most venerable and
revered institutions in the world, the Smithsonian and the
Vatican.
The trouble is that Emerald Peak is inhabited already by
two other entities, one invisible and the other nearly so.
Invisible to all but the nearby San Carlos Apaches are the
mountain spirits who taught the tribe to hunt. Nearly
invisible until recently are some 100 members of a
subspecies known as the Mount Graham red squirrel. In
addition, the peak is home to several species of plants so
rare they don't even have names yet.
How muddy can waters get in the more noble affairs of man?
Few of us will deny that the goals of astronomy are pure:
to see back in time to the faintest objects in the
expanding universe, to look in on the origins of the
creation. That the Vatican itself is involved in a dialogue
between science and theology puts a wondrous spin on the
whole affair. But the Mount Graham red squirrel is
protected under the secular laws of the United States, in
particular the Federal Endangered Species Act, and
environmentalists fear that institutionalized stargazing
here could well push the squ'rrel--and some of the rare
plants-into that fearful extinction abyss. So activists are
furious.
Acting on the advice of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
Congress approved the project in 1988, and construction
began. Demonstrations were held at the Smithsonian, and
Earth First!- flung themselves before advancing bulldozers.
As of March 19go, a suit brought by the Sierra Club and
other environmental groups to seek an injunction against
further construction was still pending.
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