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Dear Editor,
Ms. McNulty's subject article about the failure of the Board Of Supervisors to re-up with the Verde River Partnership (VRP) for another six month term at their recent meeting was accurate and probably not to surprising. I guess it takes a 2 x 4 to get some folks attention. Hopefully, the Upper Verde Coalition at their January 24 meeting here in Prescott will reconsider their decision not to join the VRP and look to all the benefits of signing up as members. This emphasis of having only elected officials make scientific study decisions for the VRP is short sighted and technically indefensible. As noted in Joanne Dodder's report in the Prescott Courier of January 20, on the recent meeting of the Yavapai County Advisory Water Committee in Sedona some members of the group (elected officials) seemed confused by a brief technical discussion of the latest geologic model of the Verde. The presentation by Matt Fry, a Northern Arizona University graduate, a digital hydrologic framework model of the Upper Verde River headwaters, until pictures were shown was too complex for some (and probably would be for most of us citizens). To think of such a group ordering scientific technical studies is downright scary.
Management of complex ecosystems is not for amateurs. It combines the principles of ecosystem-level ecology with the broad-scale policy requirements of resource and public land management. Ordering of studies requires an understanding of the concepts of biological diversity, ecological process, biotic integrity, and ecological sustainability that underlie ecosystem management. Certainly not the province of locally elected officials.
Loui Bellesi
Prescott
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