ABSTRACT
In July 2002, a monstrous wildfire scorched most of the watershed above the town of Cibecue on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona. Clouds began to gather in the late afternoon, signaling that the summer monsoon rains were soon to arrive. An emergency response team composed of technical experts from various federal agencies and the White Mountain Apache Tribe was preparing for the impending floods. One of the team’s first proposals was to clear debris from underneath the two bridges that connected the western half of the town to the larger world beyond. The team was concerned that the bridges would be damaged or overtopped if debris from the fire piled up during floods. Much of the debris was composed of sediments that had washed down in the wake of a smaller wildfire six years earlier. After that earlier fire, we had initiated a stream restoration project in the community in our capacity as employees of the Tribe (when capitalized in this chapter, the Tribe refers to the tribal government). As part of this project, coauthor Delbin Endfield had guided local schoolchildren in replanting cattails and other native plants in a popular and well-known site at the upper bridge (see Figure 10.1). The products of their work now lay in the path of a bulldozer. One resident of the community, whose opinion was shared by others, declared: ‘The stream is more important to us than the bridge. We do need the bridge; but if nature takes the bridge, that’s OK. We don’t want you to destroy that place. Our kids worked to make it beautiful again.’
