“Since November 2020, a group of local volunteers has worked to remove the garbage and invasive species surrounding the downtown reach of the Santa Cruz River in Tucson. Through their efforts, the group hopes to encourage the return of more native species to the urban ecosystem and foster stronger community connections to the river.
The group meets every Sunday morning under the Cushing Street Bridge. They are primarily focused on cleaning up the stretch of the river between Mission Wash and Congress Street, but they plan to work on some of the surrounding tributaries soon.
The project was initiated by Angel Breault, a local naturalist, educator, and documentarian who has lived in Armory Park neighborhood in downtown Tucson for most of his life. Growing up, he spent a lot of time in and around the dry riverbed of the Santa Cruz, which was about half a mile away from his childhood home.
Breault is calling the project ‘Reconciliation on the River’ or ‘Reconciliación al Río.’ The project has three objectives: reconciliation, learning and, most importantly, justice. He hopes to actively foster a sense of indigeneity along the river by not only reseeding native plants in the area, but by also teaching people about the diversity of connections to the river.
‘When I talk about justice and re-centering the idea of what it means to be from here, it means looking at each of our individual connections to this place to gain a more collective understanding,’ Breault said.
At a young age, Breault became involved in the environmental education department at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. His experiences at the museum fueled his passion for the cultures and biodiversity of the Sonoran Desert. Breault now serves as the program manager at educational nonprofit the Ironwood Tree Experience, where he develops intersectional environmental curricula relevant to the cultural and ecological systems of the southern Arizona borderlands.
‘The Santa Cruz is integral to the biodiversity that has historically been supported here and to the cultural legacy of this place,’ Breault said. ‘For millennia, ideas and goods and people have moved up and down this area just like biota.’
The land along the river at the base of Chuk-son — the Tohono O’odham name for “A” Mountain and the namesake of Tucson — has been cultivated by different peoples for at least 4,000 years. In fact, it is recognized as the longest continuously cultivated piece of land in all of North America. From the Hohokam to Spanish missionaries to Mexican rancheros, communities have relied the Santa Cruz to sustain them.
Up until about 70 years ago, the downtown reach of the river flowed year-round. ‘There are still people alive today who have seen the Santa Cruz with water and swam in the river underneath cottonwood trees in downtown Tucson,’ Breault said.
As more and more people started to move into the area during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the river slowly began to dry out. Between 1860 and 1960 alone, the population of Tucson grew from just 915 people to about 212,892 people, according to a report from the city of Tucson. During this time, ground water was pumped unsustainably to support the growing population and the economic development that soon followed. By the 1940s, the natural perennial reaches of the Santa Cruz in Tucson ran dry.”
View the whole story here: https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/current-affair-local-stewards-facilitate-ongoing-rehabilitation-of-the-santa-cruz-river/Content?oid=30481023