ABSTRACT
Places where visitors can experience pristine natural viewsheds are becoming increasingly rare. “People need natural-appearing landscapes to serve as psychological and physiological ‘safety valves’ . . . Once plentiful natural-appearing landscapes are becoming more scarce” (U.S. Forest Service 1995, p. 14). The 12 “Sky Island” mountain ranges (i.e., mountain ranges, many over 3,000 m in elevation, surrounded by desert) in the Coronado National Forest are arguably the most important natural landscapes and providers of high-quality scenery in southeastern Arizona. Most effects to scenic resources are cumulative, boundaries for scenic resources are difœ- cult to deœne, and numerous small project effects cumulatively add up to big effects. This chapter explores implications related to the successive loss of this treasured resource. A proposed transmission line is used as a case study.
