Today, as she looks at the map of Arizona, Linda McNulty takes real satisfaction in the numerous wilderness areas already protected across the state, for her fingerprints are on many of these wild places.
Growing up in Massachusetts, Linda’s grandparents told her stories about the wide open spaces they’d visited in the West. With a nursing degree in hand, she set off, driving across the country with her parakeet protected with wet towels over its cage. Nearing Tucson, she saw the saguaro cactus and knew she’d found her new home.
Always a hiker, Linda read about the local Sierra Club group and went to a meeting. In a not-uncommon next step in the “career” of a volunteer wilderness activist, when no one else seemed interested in filling the vacant position of conservation chairman, she did.
Before long, Linda had met her local congressman, Rep. Morris “Mo” Udall, one of the greatest champions of wilderness protection ever to serve in Congress. In 1977, he became chairman of the House committee that handles park and wilderness legislation, and soon introduced the epochal Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation bill. Through her Sierra Club role (she was by this time editing the club’s Arizona newsletter), Linda was one of the scores of grassroots leaders who traveled to Washington, DC to be citizen lobbyists for the Alaska bill.
After the Alaska legislation was enacted in 1980, Chairman Udall turned his attention to a vision of protecting wilderness across Arizona. He assigned one of his staff members, Mark Trautwein, to look into the possibilities. Mark asked Linda to introduce him to Arizona conservation leaders and show him some of the potential wilderness areas on national forests around the state. “Linda McNulty was a conservation activist in Arizona when it wasn’t easy to be a conservation activist in Arizona,” Trautwein recalls. “It was a bit lonely and most of the political cards were stacked against her. But no one knew the political and desert landscape of Arizona better.”
“I took him first to Sycamore Canyon,” Linda remembers, “for it is such a special place of wildlife habitat and uncommon plant life, and very vulnerable, so most in need of protection. The idea that we could get statutory protection for these wild places really appealed to me.” Trautwein’s work, with Linda’s help, led Udall to champion a statewide national forest wilderness bill. When it was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the “Arizona Wilderness Act of 1984” designated 27 new wilderness areas across the state, the 7,500-acre Pajarita Wilderness among them.
Here are a few facts about the Pajarita Wilderness (from www.wilderness.net): Hugging the border of Mexico, Pajarita is dominated by the narrow and twisting steep-walled Sycamore Canyon. While the stream only flows on a seasonal basis, it does have year-round pools of water and serves as a major migration corridor for wildlife. Rolling hills and oak woodlands are dissected by several canyons. More than 660 species of plants have been identified within its borders, 17 of them found nowhere else on Earth.
“I could not have been luckier than to have Linda as my working partner over many years, protecting Arizona wilderness,” adds Trautwein. “A few years later, when Mo championed the Arizona Desert Wilderness Act of 1990, her advice and counsel, not to mention her wicked sense of humor, got me through many a day. She’s just a gem, and proof that New England can flourish in the desert.”
Amid her conservation activism, Linda the nurse decided to pursue a second career and became a lawyer. And along the way, she met and married Mo Udall’s chief of staff, Michael McNulty. Today, Michael and Linda are partners in a leading Tucson law firm, and enthusiastic supporters of conservation organizations, including the Tucson-based Sky Island Alliance. Among its projects is the campaign to enact Rep. Raul Grijalvia’s pending legislation to designate the Tumacacori Highlands wilderness, which would expand and better protect the Pajarita area.
Linda is an avid birdwatcher (and laughingly describes her husand as “an SOB – Spouse of Birdwatcher”). Summing up her work to protect wild places, Linda says, “for me, wilderness has always been both an opportunity to experience the earth without encroachment of manmade things, but it is also habitat vital for other creatures to live.”
