Saguaro Land: What do we do when people love our desert too much?
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Caroline Tracey loves the Sonoran Desert. She’s based in Tucson and has basically devoted her career to covering it as a journalist for publications like High Country News. But, her training is as a geographer. That taught her to think about space in a critical way.
And, she’s watched as Instagram and other platforms have turned a spotlight on the desert in ways she finds both refreshing — and troubling. What do we do when people love our desert too much?
Full interview
CAROLINE TRACEY: I grew up with a love of big open spaces, but I think that, you know, as I've gotten older, I've developed not just a love of, you know, big sky and everything, but a love of the details of the ecosystem. So the plants and the insects and the different adaptations and the biodiversity and how much that enriches one sort of vision of the world.
That's really interesting. So I think for a long time, the image maybe in pop culture and maybe in movies and films in American history. This idea of the desert was sort of like a wasteland, right? Like, I think when I went to college in New York, what, 15-20 years ago, like everyone assumed when I said I was from Arizona that it was like Sahara. It, like, it was like, it was like rolling hills of sand, right? But I think that's really changed. Have you kind of watched that shift happen?
TRACEY: Absolutely. I think, I think growing up in Denver, I probably had a little bit of that attitude about Arizona, even though we're basically right next door. But I know that there was a very much kind of like a hinterland mentality to the West and the Southwest for a long time. But I definitely think that especially with the rise of Instagram and the, the way that the images circulate now, I think it's very different. And people have a lot more interest, you know, for better or for worse, in the region.
And we'll get to the better and the worse. But I mean, I think it's interesting and it just to begin with, right, like that, I think for a while it was like, the trend was put a bird on it now. It's like, put a cactus on it, like it's everywhere. You know, people are really interested in this idea. What do you think it is about the desert? Especially the way it's being portrayed now online that people are drawn to.
TRACEY: One thing that comes to mind is an article that my friend Julia Sizek, who's an anthropologist of the southeastern California Desert, wrote where she looked at the history of all the music videos that featured Joshua trees. And it's like this long and continuous history of pop music really features this one specific landscape in California. And I feel like it's, it's back to that circulation of images that happens through social media, but predates that there is this sort of attachment of coolness to the desert that probably used to happen mostly through music videos and now is mainly happening through Instagram.
Yeah, absolutely. So there are, as you said, good things and bad things about this popularity, this trendiness, right? Let's talk a little bit about the concerns that this brings up for you. You are a geographer, you've really studied the region in like an ecological sense. It sounds like, you know, it really well. What are the things that are top of mind when I ask about concerns?
TRACEY: You know, one thing that is on a lot of people's minds right now is the energy transition and in the desert that brings up two big things. So there's one, there's the actual impact of renewable energy development in the form of solar and wind farms and the very real impact that that's having around the desert region. And then secondly, there's the towns that have historical, we had a resource extraction economy of gas or coal or oil sort of, what economy are they in a transition to? And often the solution is, is assumed to be tourism or that's the best solution on the table, right. And so we've ended up in a situation where like the economy of the desert right now is on one hand, resource development and on the other hand, tourism, and both of those are very intensive industries.
So on some level, I'm like, it would be better if everyone just thought it was a wasteland and left it alone. Not that, when people thought it was a wasteland, it was so they could justify like dropping bombs and stuff. It's not as though it was just left alone when it was a wasteland. But I do think that there's, there's an intensity to the interest in the desert that ends up having a very physical impact ...
So there's like the the one level like the tourism impact, but then there's also just the the massive urban sprawl, like, what does it do when millions of people move to a place?
TRACEY: Absolutely. The kind of amenity migration or permanent tourism or, sort of those are terms that geographers use to describe that kind of urban sprawl in, in unexpected places that aren't necessarily next to cities. Obviously, Phoenix is a big city, there's a mixture of both, there's both sort of just regular urban growth and there's kind of amenity migration or retiring migration, that kind of thing.
Yeah. So, I mean, are there ways that we can do that well, I guess? Like, are there ways in which we can balance the, the draw the economic boost that might give people in communities around the Sonoran Desert? But also like the, the real risks in that for this place that we love, for the land that we all say we love. And, and part of the reason so many of us came here.
TRACEY: Yeah, I mean, so one factor the desert has that can work in its favor is that it is mainly public land, which is a form of protection of the land. And I think that's partially why it's developed such popularity, which is that if you compare it to, you know, one region that comes to mind just because it's also the border. is south Texas is this like thorn scrub region, and it's an absolutely a biodiversity hotspot, but there's about 3% of it left intact. And now that's exactly where they're gonna build border wall. So it's like because there's no protected federal land, that landscape actually has basically been treated as a wasteland.
Whereas here we're very lucky in Arizona, we have tons of state and federal land that's, that's protected from certain things. Obviously, now we're seeing new resource development on those lands. And there are impacts of tourism on those lands. But we're, we're pretty fortunate that the desert does have that federal state protections. And I think that the other really promising thing I'm seeing in Arizona right now are the citizen-led active management areas. So taking advantage of the provisions that are in the state's groundwater legislation and getting on the ballot, these groundwater protection areas. I think that that's really promising because it's a way of people who live here themselves saying we need to figure out a way to do this more sustainably.
So when you look at the sort of trendiness of it and the kind of Instagram influencer side of that, which is sometimes tourism-based, sometimes, you know, lifestyle-based, but there's a big draw for that, especially online right now and probably is at least part of the reason some people come here. Is there sort of a next step that we should all be thinking about or we should be holding people to, especially the ones who are sort of benefiting from this trend?
TRACEY: It's a, it's a really challenging question because on some level I'm sucked in, I mean, I'm not an influencer, but I do use Instagram, and I do know that I'm persuaded by the way the images circulate, and I see that they, they have real importance and I participate in circulating them, right? So I think many of us who who use social media have gotten very used to that it just like a daily habitual activity.
And we kind of have to like recalibrate to how much impact it has on the ground in terms of a next step from like desert influencers, I guess, you know, I would love to see a bit more kind of consciousness on the part of influencers. I think that influencers, you know, become very good at selling high consumptive lifestyle, even the kind of eco-influencers. I feel it's all about brand partnerships and lifestyle, and all those things entail a lot of consumption.
There are, it sounds like, things you can do to live here well and to appreciate the Sonoran Desert and to like benefit from the trend, right? Like there's, there can be a win, win.
TRACEY: Yeah, I think that there are so many things to learn about the desert and there's so much to teach others about the desert. And so I think there would be ways to use one's platform to be like, here's the Latin name of each plant in this image frame, rather than like buy this cool sprinter, you know.
