Mohave County may join tortoise coalition

A wild desert tortoise photographed during the summer of 2009 east of the Hualapai Mountains. (JC AMBERLYN/Miner)

Kim Steele
Kingman Daily Miner

KINGMAN - The Mohave County Board of Supervisors has been asked to consider joining forces with other counties to push for the removal of the desert tortoise from the endangered species list.

The Board recently received a letter from Steve Sisolak, a member of the Clark County Board of County Commissioners, which includes Las Vegas, seeking to gauge interest among the 12 counties affected by the desert tortoise's protected status. Those counties include three in Nevada, one in Utah, one in Arizona and seven in California.

The Board will consider Sisolak's request during a meeting at 9:30 a.m. today in the Mohave County Administration Building, 700 W. Beale St.

Officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service couldn't be reached for comment.

"It's been more than 20 years since the desert tortoise was listed as endangered and as far as I know, the federal government hasn't saved any," said Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson, District 3. "They keep placing restrictions on us, but they won't share any of their information. I'm all for saving the desert tortoise, but they've got to tell us something. Right now, we've got nothing that shows anything they're doing is helping them."

In his letter, Sisolak noted that Clark County has been a dedicated partner in the protection, conservation and recovery of the desert tortoise since it was added to a list of endangered species on an emergency basis in 1989 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Sisolak said Clark County has done its part to minimize and mitigate impacts from urban development on the tortoise, spending about $16 million since 2001.

"Clark County has watched patiently as the federal government has spent more than $100 million on tortoise recovery efforts but is unable to report what progress, if any, has been made towards the recovery and delisting of the desert tortoise," wrote Sisolak. "If the FWS and federal land management agencies had properly invested the $100 million available and implemented effective recovery actions since 1989, the tortoise would presumably be on the cusp of recovery."

Sisolak added the FWS suggests that in order to recover the tortoise, it has to measure stable or increasing populations for a generation of tortoises, which is about 25 years. Instead, Sisolak wrote, the FWS released a revised recovery plan in 2011 that suggests it will take another $159 million and another 25 years to recover and delist the tortoise.

With virtually no progress to report in the first 25 years, questioned Sisolak, why would anyone have confidence that after another quarter of a century and $159 million, the results would be any different? Sisolak said the FWS estimates there are 295,000 tortoises across the 26,000 mile area of the 12 counties, and based on that number, it would seem reasonable that FWS declare the desert tortoise recovered and remove it from the list of federally threatened and endangered species.

Johnson said Mohave County has been forced to make adjustments to accommodate the desert tortoise, although he wasn't sure of the financial impact of those changes over the years. Mohave County Administrator Michael Hendrix also couldn't put a price tag on how much the county has spent. Johnson said the cost for Mohave County has been much less than that of the counties in Utah, Nevada and California, which have more tortoises.

Johnson also is chairman of the Quadstate Local Government Authority, which is composed of counties from Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California. It provides a multi-county voice on federal natural resource management and public land issues primarily in the Mojave Desert region, including the desert tortoise.

Mohave County restrictions have included placing special fencing around various areas to keep the tortoises away. Also, cattle in the north end of the county were moved to keep them from stepping on the tortoises. That caused other problems, said Johnson, because the cattle ate invasive grasses there, and after their removal, those grasses overran the species eaten by the tortoises.

Also, the county is banned from doing road grading during tortoise mating and breeding season because it may endanger them. And Johnson said Mohave County has been forced to hire turtle herders from time to time to keep them off the roads.

Park battles desert invader

By Kurt Schauppner
Hi-Desert Star

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK — With the annual wildflower season just beginning to blossom, officials from Joshua Tree National Park and the Morongo Basin Conservation Association are taking up arms against a desert invader, the Sahara mustard.

Volunteers are being sought to remove the plant from the Pinto Basin inside the national park.

Work teams will gather at 8 a.m. today and the next two Saturdays in March at the Joshua Tree National Park Visitor Center at 74485 National Park Drive in Twentynine Palms.

Participants are asked to bring water, gloves, snacks, hats, sunscreen, pruners and clippers.

According to the National Park Service, invasive plants like the fast-growing Sahara mustard suppress native wildflowers by taking all the soil moisture needed for spring germination.

They create a continuous fuel source by connecting desert habitats, worsening the size and intensity of wildland fires.

Invasive plants are are considered a poor source of nutrition for native wildlife, including the desert tortoise.

“It’s become a pretty big problem for the last five years,” park science coordinator Victoria Chang said Monday of the Sahara mustard. “We’d like to contain it as much as possible.”

Chang said Sahara mustard tends to germinate before native species.

“They tend to get a head start, which is why we try to battle against it,” Chang said.

Sahara mustard is not the only invasive plant causing worry in the national park.

Chang said park officials also are worried about the tamarisk, a large desert tree that is an opportunistic non-native plant that establishes itself in riparian habitats and sucks up all the water.

“It comes out very easily and will crowd out native plants,” she said, noting that park officials use a cut stump method and federally approved herbicide to attack tamarisks.

“It is an ongoing battle,” she said.

Fountain grass is another invader being battled in the park, Chang said.

The grass is sold as an ornamental plant and spreads after being planted in people’s back yards.

Camels enlisted to battle an invasive species

They may be known for their surly dispositions, but camels are more than happy to eat tamarisk, one the West's most destructive and invasive plants.

CAMELSCAPING: It's estimated that 10 camels could destroy half an acre of tamarisk in two days. (Photo: Victoria Reay/Flickr)

By Bryan Nelson
Mother Nature Network

Tamarisk is one hard-to-kill invasive plant. Since it was first introduced from Eurasia to the United States in the 1800s, it has spread through the West like wildfire — actually, faster than wildfire. Efforts to eradicate it by burning it, cutting it, or dowsing it in herbicides have all failed. But tamarisk does have one formidable foe: hungry camels.

Known for their stubborn personalities, humpy postures and ability to survive for weeks without water, camels and dromedaries also have a keen appetite for salty fare — and tamarisk is as salty as they come. That's why ranchers in Colorado have enlisted the inglorious beasts to eat their way through this invasive species, eradicating it once and for all, according to High Country News.

"They will eat all day if given the opportunity," says Maggie Repp, a camel rancher in Loma, Colo. "My camels have killed every tamarisk on our place, so why not give it a whirl?"

A drooling dromedary may not strike you as a potential landscaper, but they do a good job. Repp says 10 camels can destroy half an acre of tamarisk in two days. That's not necessarily a solution for clearing the pesky shrub from the whole expanse of the Great Plains, but it's the perfect remedy for removing the odd tamarisk patch from your pasture.

One of the reasons tamarisk is so dangerous is its high salt content. Wherever tamarisk grows, the surrounding soil gets laced with a salty layer, making it tougher for native flora to grow. And that's not all. Discover Moab (via BigGreenBoulder) points out a litany of negative effects the invasive species has on local environments:

• narrowing and channelizing streams and rivers;
• displacing native vegetation such as cottonwoods, willows and adjacent dryland plant communities;
• providing poor habitat for livestock, wild animals and birds: the foliage and flowers of tamarisk provide little food value for native wildlife species that depend on nutrient-rich native plant resources;
• increasing wildfire hazards;
• limiting human and animal use of the waterways

But tamarisk is basically comfort food for salt-loving camelids. Currently the only other solution to tamarisk is another hungry species: leaf-eating beetles. Swarms of the creepy-crawlies have been released to battle the invasive species across the West.

For the bug-a-phobic smallscale farmer, though, renting a few camels may be more practical solution.

Icon in Jeopardy

Local scientists say buffelgrass may be on an unstoppable march—and the saguaro is in its way

by Leo W. Banks
Tucson Weekly



The continuing spread of buffelgrass could lead to the disappearance of our great saguaro. (Courtesy of Saguaro National Park)



Buffelgrass is forcing us to think the unthinkable: A Sonoran Desert in which the saguaro cactus is no longer the master of the landscape.

Is this really possible? Could Arizona's cherished icon vanish from a substantial portion of its range?

Actually, yes. The problem is fire.

The Nature Conservancy biologist Dale Turner says the density and distribution of buffelgrass is increasing dramatically, and in those places where it becomes the dominant plant, the number of fires will increase.

"That means every other plant that's both slow-growing and fire-sensitive will disappear," says Turner. "That's certainly the saguaro. I don't think it will go extinct, but we'll see saguaro populations either lost or seriously degraded."

Prior to buffelgrass, fire was never a major player in the Sonoran Desert. Old-fashioned fires—if we can use that term—didn't burn too hot or too long, because native grasses don't have the biomass to create big blazes.

Buffelgrass does, and it won't pause to catch its breath after a fire. It regenerates quickly and thicker than before, making subsequent blazes more intense, with plenty of fuel to run across entire valleys and up grassy slopes.

The result is greater destruction for small cacti, especially in lower desert areas, says scientist Bill Peachey, who manages saguaro study plots at Colossal Cave Mountain Park. "A buffelgrass fire kills baby saguaros and all the small cacti, and you're fooled, because you might still see large saguaros on rocky hillsides," says Peachey. "But the fire has chopped out a whole segment of the reproductive cycle."

After a blaze, saguaros might take 50 to 70 years to start reproducing again. If all the saguaros present at one time die, the area will almost certainly burn again before new plants can grow to replace the old ones.

Imagine looking at the desert floor west of Gates Pass, in the Tucson Mountains, and seeing the once-grand saguaro forest looking anemic and uninspiring. Imagine the tourism industry trying to sell Arizona as a destination without as many photos of the mighty saguaros standing tall against a blazing sunset.

But let's not move too fast. Over the decades, there have been several periods in which scientists have falsely predicted the saguaro's doom, and it hasn't happened. So not only has history taught us humility; it has proven the saguaro to be a master of survival in a harsh environment.

Still, Turner and Peachey aren't alone in sounding the alarm. The Weekly interviewed five scientists, and they all agree on one thing: The desert of the future will have much more buffelgrass and fewer saguaros.

The spread of this African perennial grass, which was introduced to the region in the 1930s and 1940s as forage for cattle, is happening with alarming speed.

At Saguaro National Park, the acreage containing buffelgrass is expanding 35 percent per year, says Meg Weesner, the park's director of science. It existed on 175 acres in 2002. Today, it grows on 2,000 acres, and one prediction has it infesting 10,000 acres in a decade. That's a significant portion of the park land on which saguaros grow.

If uncontrolled, buffelgrass could completely alter the park's habitat and eliminate saguaros from certain areas. "Our future might be a grassland of African grass instead of what we now know of as the plants and animals of the Sonora Desert," says Weesner.

Buffelgrass has gained such a foothold in Southern Arizona that stopping its spread is now impossible. Ranchers across the border in Sonora, Mexico, actually have been planting the grass for about three decades, and that has made it inevitable that buffelgrass seeds would cross the line, too—on the clothes of illegal aliens, on the tires of smuggler vehicles that cross our protected deserts, and even on the feathers of birds and on the wind.

Tucson botanist Matt Johnson, who has been studying desert environments for 30 years, says eradication efforts, such as the county's new aerial-spraying program in Tucson Mountain Park, offer some encouragement. And he's heartened by volunteers who go into the desert to remove buffelgrass stands.

"But it'd require half the population of Tucson turning out on a semi-regular basis to get rid of it all," says Johnson.

The most realistic hopes rest on keeping buffelgrass out of certain areas. This requires workers going into these areas multiple times to pull the plants, then returning after heavy rains to treat buffelgrass seedlings that continue to sprout.

Weesner says these efforts have worked in parts of Saguaro National Park, but it requires a lot of work, done quickly, to stay ahead of the spread.

But the spread is inevitable. And it might mean the saguaro is entering a period of significant decline that can't be altered. The hardest-hit areas will likely be in the wettest portions of the saguaro's range, in the northern and eastern Sonoran Desert. In Arizona, that means around Tucson, San Manuel and Florence, and up to Wickenburg in the north.

All of this leaves Johnson, a reluctant pessimist, thinking out loud about some yet unknown feat of bioengineering that could put buffelgrass in its place. By that, he means the creation of some pathogen or insect that could attack buffelgrass and eliminate it.

But he says that's more in the realm of science fiction, and he worries that such a creation could become uncontrollable and go after native range grasses, or perhaps migrate to the Midwest and destroy corn and wheat crops.

"Remember Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park and his line, 'Nature will find a way'?" says Johnson. "We've never had much success with that kind of bioengineering, and my concern is we're not yet able to engineer something to keep a disaster like that from happening."

Sleeping Beauty Valley: Heart of the Mojave Desert

Sleeping Beauty Valley (David Myers)

By James M. André and Ileene Anderson
Route 66 Pulse

In the heart of California’s Mojave Desert, at a place where the western Mojave transitions into the eastern Mojave, lies the Sleeping Beauty Valley. Encircled by the Kelso Dunes Wilderness and the Bristol Mountains Wilderness on the east, and the Cady Mountains Wilderness Study Area on the west, the Sleeping Beauty Valley is one of the last remaining examples of pristine central Mojave Desert ecosystem. A place where one can still experience the scenic vista of an undeveloped valley surrounded by waves of rugged desert mountain ranges. Granted, the old Tonopah to Tidewater railroad grade is still visible as a reminder of the historic importance of this area in Mojave history – but very little else has changed in this valley for the last ten thousand years.

At the center of Sleeping Beauty Valley lies Broadwell Lake, a dry playa that is a remnant of the former extensive lake system that covered the Mojave during the Pleistocene. During the post-Pleistocene warming and drying, the valley became home to such iconic desert species as the desert tortoise which still calls the valley home. Due to recent rapid declines in desert tortoise population, these animals are considered threatened by both the state of California and the federal government. The Sleeping Beauty valley is a key linkage between the northern and southern populations of this increasingly rare animal and keeps both populations from becoming inbred.

Desert bighorn sheep traverse the valley from the rugged reaches of the Cady Mountains to the northern Bristol Mountains and beyond. Bighorn sheep depend on unimpeded access across the valley in order maintain viable herds in the adjacent mountain ranges.

The Sleeping Beauty Valley is home to more than 350 plant species, including several rare plants. Recently a post-Pleistocene relict plant species was “discovered” within the Sleeping Beauty Valley – the crucifixion thorn. This large and impressively spiny shrub is primarily leafless, as the leaves have been reduced to mere scales. It was much more common in the area that we now call the Mojave Desert during the wetter Pleistocene epoch, where its nutty berries provided food for such species and giant ground sloths and native camels. While those animal species died out or moved on with the warming and drying of the landscape, the crucifixion thorn persists along dry washes and edges of dry lake beds. The actual age of these plants is unknown because they have no “true wood” that can be cored and the rings counted. And though scientists have not studied this plant extensively, some believe it may well live up to 10,000 years.

In Spring of 2009, botanists discovered what is potentially a new species of lupine – those showy purple spring wildflowers that put up flowering stalks covered w/pea-like flowers. Specimens collected from the Sleeping Beauty Valley are different from the surrounding species, so additional scientific studies are being done to determine if it is a new species to science.

Why are all of these unique species found in the Sleeping Beauty Valley? In part, the lupine discovery underscores the fact that this region remains a biological frontier that is poorly documented. Botanists expect that additional inventory here will unearth considerable new discoveries to science. In addition, the valley lies within a fairly sharp transition zone between the western Mojave Desert, which enjoys more winter rains, but very few summer thundershowers and the eastern Mojave Desert, which counts on bimodal rainfall that includes some winter rains but consistent summer thunderstorms. Because of the differences in the rain regimes, the eastern and western Mojave deserts have some differences in the species that inhabit them. Because the Sleeping Beauty Valley lies at the crossroads of these two Mojave Desert regions, it supports plants and animals unique to the set of conditions found only at this transition zone..

In addition to its tremendous biological diversity, Sleeping Beauty Valley remains relatively unmarred by contemporary or historic human use. The T&T railroad grade is present, as is an existing powerline at the north end of the valley. The Old Dominion Mine is located on the western edge of the valley. Crucero Road, a washboard dirt road, originates in Ludlow and bisects the valley. Because the Sleeping Beauty Valley is relatively undisturbed by human activities, it is one of the few valleys in the Mojave Desert not yet colonized by invasive non-native plants that are so problematic ecologically in other areas of the Mojave Desert. Non-native plants are typically introduced with disturbance to the land caused by humans. From there, they often invade the landscape where they displace native plant species, decrease food and shelter available to animals, and have catastrophic effects on long-term natural ecological processes. For instance, weed invasions make the desert much more susceptible to large-scale fires that decimate those plant species unable to re-sprout after fire. Fortunately, the Sleeping Beauty Valley has very few non-native plants and has not been burned in recent decades. Indeed, it remains a rare example of a healthy and viable ecosystem.

The Sleeping Beauty Valley has immediate threats to its integrity. Applications for industrial scale solar and wind energy installations are rapidly moving forward, and will destroy tens of thousands of acres of rich desert habitat there. While the switch to renewable energy needs to happen to minimize global climate change, better places for industrial solar installations exist on disturbed lands close to the source of consumption, on roof-tops and over parking lots. Pristine desert lands at the heart of the Mojave Desert, like the Sleeping Beauty Valley need to be recognized for all their unique values and preserved.

James M. André is the Director of the Granite Mountains Desert Research Center, UC Riverside

Ileene Anderson is a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity

Joshuas in peril

Are Joshua trees facing extinction?

STORY AND PHOTOS BY CHRIS CLARKE
Special to the Victor Valley Daily Press

SUNSET: The setting sun shines on the Joshua tree forest on Cima Dome in the Mojave National Preserve. (CHRIS CLARKE Special to the Daily Press)

The emblematic tree of the Mojave Desert is in big trouble. At a February 2009 climate-change symposium in Joshua Tree sponsored by the National Parks Conservation Association, scientists spoke with gallows humor about the eventual need for Joshua Tree National Park to change its name. The way things are going, it looks as if there will be no Joshua trees left in the park before too many more decades go by.

In a recent study, U.S. Geological Survey scientists Kenneth Cole and his colleagues used climate change models to predict the effects of global warming on the Joshua tree. Cole’s team calculated the likelihood of tree survival and the rate at which the trees reproduce and spread, and mapped the species’ likely range late in this century. The resulting map was empty. Only when the team tweaked their models to assume that the trees disperse their seeds 10 times as efficiently as they actually do, did the model predict Joshua trees would still exist in the wild in the late 21st century.

Even in Cole’s optimistic scenario, the Joshua tree would become extinct in Arizona and Utah. No Joshua trees would survive in JTNP, nor in the Mojave National Preserve. The species would be forced into the northernmost part of its range in eastern California and central Nevada. And all the web of life that depends on the trees elsewhere would unravel.

Take the yucca moth, for instance. The welfare of the Joshua tree depends utterly on the welfare of this inconspicuous insect. The moths and the Joshuas have evolved a remarkable partnership without which neither could reproduce. The moths visit male yucca flowers and gather pollen. They then pollinate and lay eggs in the female blossoms. The eggs hatch and the moth larvae eat some of the developing seeds. Adult moths emerge from the ground when the trees bloom, the timing due to unknown triggers. If changes in spring temperatures prompt moths to emerge when Joshua trees have no open blooms, then both species could suffer catastrophic reproductive failure.

Other desert animals play a role in the Joshua trees’ fate as well. In 2001, rangers observed large missing patches of the bark-like layer on trees throughout JTNP. The next year less than an inch of rain fell in the park. Researcher Todd Esque and his colleagues found that jackrabbits, ground squirrels and pocket gophers, struggling to obtain food in a year when many desert plants failed to germinate or put out new growth, were stripping bark off the trees. Of those trees that had been stripped of even a little bark, very few survived. By 2003 there were no areas of JTNP in which Joshua trees did not exhibit damage. Thousands of the park’s trees died.

Drought interferes with the production of new trees as well. In order to bloom, Joshua trees require significant precipitation in mid-winter, preferably in February. Drought inhibits bloom. Fewer flowers mean fewer seeds and thus fewer baby Joshua trees.

The recent increase in desert wildfires is another climate-related change. Torrential storms have prompted flushes of plant growth throughout the desert, which then provide fuel for dry-season fires. Invasive plants such as red brome grass and Sahara mustard have spread throughout the deserts, increasing fuel loads and filling in bare soil between shrubs that had been a natural firebreak. Before the invasives, lightning could strike a Joshua tree and that tree could burn without the fire spreading. Now fires threaten whole forests of Joshua trees, especially in JTNP.

Joshua trees are damaged directly by fire, with even minor damage often resulting in mortality. They remain standing for years afterward, hellish forests of white-trunked trees with black leaves, like a photonegative of their live counterparts. But if the direct damage done to Joshua trees by fire is devastating, the indirect damage fires do is even worse. Wildfires destroy slow-growing shrubs and facilitate their replacement with grasses. Blackbrush, an important understory plant in most Joshua tree forests, seems not to re-establish at all after wildfires. This is a serious long-term problem for Joshua trees. Joshua seeds that germinate under blackbrush are more likely to escape being eaten by rabbits until they are older and less palatable. Wiping out the blackbrush understory of a Joshua tree forest nearly guarantees that no new trees grow there. And invasive plants fill in where the blackbrush doesn’t, ensuring more frequent future fires.

Migrating trees

Many other trees face threats from climate change, but for most of them the outlook is not nearly as dire. Though individual trees may succumb, if their seeds get dispersed to more habitable locations — as a Clark’s nutcracker might do with whitebark pine seeds, for instance — the species has a chance to survive. But Joshua trees aren’t very good at seed dispersal. Pack rats will carry seeds up to 50 feet from the parent tree, and a few other birds and rodents play a role in moving Joshua tree seeds around. Unless the tree is on a long, steep hill, its seeds don’t move more than a few meters from the parent tree. The seeds have none of the adaptations found in other desert plants to enable wind or animals to carry them long distances: no sticky burrs, no sweet pulp surrounding a gut-proof seed coat, nothing but a delicate little black flake. Usually when something eats a Joshua tree fruit, it kills the seed. It’s very likely that the trees evolved to be dispersed by the Shasta giant ground sloth, which lived throughout the region until about 12,000 years ago, wandering long distances after gorging itself on Joshua tree fruit. Now that the ground sloth is extinct, Joshua trees disperse their seed much less effectively.

There are mature Joshua trees a hundred miles north of their current range. But little is known of what conditions Joshua tree moths can withstand. Some researchers suggest planting Joshua trees in habitats more likely to be hospitable to the trees’ survival. But until we learn more about the needs of the moths, we have no way to know whether those new forests would be able to sustain themselves.

Chris Clarke is a California environmental journalist and natural history writer, whose work can be seen at http://faultline.org. He has been studying Joshua trees since the mid-1990. This piece was adapted from an Educational Bulletin of the Desert Protective Council in San Diego. The full report is available at http://dpcinc.org.

Invasive quagga mussels a growing threat

Soaring population clogging West's waterways; cleanup costs rising, too


The Associated Press



Since quagga mussels invaded Lake Mead in 2007, the population has soaring into the trillions. The mussels raise operation and maintenance costs by untold millions. (Felicia Fonseca / AP)

LAKE MEAD NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, Nev. - Two years after an invasive mussel was first discovered at Lake Mead, the population has firmly established itself and gone on a breeding binge, with numbers soaring into the trillions.

Despite efforts to stop their spread, scientists say it's only a matter of time before quagga mussels appear throughout the West's vast system of reservoirs and aqueducts, raising operation and maintenance costs by untold millions.

Water agencies and wildlife managers in California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah have put in place aggressive measures to try to prevent their spread, including mandatory decontamination or quarantine of boats traveling from infested areas or chlorinating some water inlets to try to kill off the mussels.

But as their counterparts in the northeast and Great Lakes region have found, eradicating the mussels is virtually impossible. The thumb-size mollusks attach to almost anything and can clog drains and pipes, freeze up cooling systems, kill off native species and render power boats inoperable.

"Over time, maybe not this decade or the next, I would think eventually they'll be almost around the country," said Amy Benson, fishery biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Florida.

Arriving in ship ballast

Quagga mussels, and their close cousin, zebra mussels, were introduced to the Great Lakes in the ballast of ships from eastern Europe and the Ukraine in the 1980s. Since their arrival at Lake Mead in 2007, their numbers have multiplied exponentially.

Populations of the mussels still are expanding in the East into the quadrillions, and there's no sign the growth is slowing, said Tom Nalepa, a research biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Michigan. But he said the population can't expand forever.

"The populations are going to stabilize at some point, and they're going to become adjusted to the system or the system is adjusted to them, but we're not at that point yet," Nalepa said. "We're still trying to figure out what the ultimate consequences are going to be."

In the West, the mussels have colonized the lower Colorado River, which 27 million people rely on to irrigate crops, produce drinking water and operate businesses.

Lake Mead is just one of a string of huge reservoirs on the Colorado that store and divert water into aqueducts and pipelines feeding parts of California, Arizona and Nevada. Sharp shells litter the lake's beaches, and boats docked in marinas can't leave without being decontaminated for fear a mussel might hitch a ride to another waterway.

West's warmth helps species

The warmer weather in the West has allowed the quagga mussels to reproduce much more quickly than in the East. One adult female quagga can release up to a million eggs in a single year, and their microscopic larvae float freely downstream.

Water managers say the best way to prevent their spread is making sure boats traveling from one waterway to another are mussel-free. Lake Powell requires mandatory boat inspections, and California has trained dogs to sniff out the mussels at inspection points. Boats also can be quarantined at the California border if a single mussel is spotted on them.

"They can be prevented, and this is what people have to get into their heads," said Wen Baldwin, a National Park Service volunteer who confirmed the quagga mussels at Lake Mead. "Unfortunately there are some people who say, 'they are going to get here no matter what.' Maybe they will, but every year you hold them off, you're dollars ahead."

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California expects to spend between $10 million and $15 million a year to address quagga mussel infestations in its 242-mile Colorado River aqueduct and reservoirs. The agency delivers water to 19 million people in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.

Ric DeLeon, the district's quagga mussel control coordinator, told U.S. lawmakers last year that the price tag for controlling the invasive species and their impact on business, the power industry, water companies and communities in the East is in the billions, and likely will soar in the West.

The increased costs are likely to drive up utility rates for consumers as systems are upgraded, divers spend more hours scraping mussels and researchers try to figure out just how the mussels behave and the impact they're making.

"Who is going to pay for that?" Baldwin said. "It ain't going to be Santa Claus; it's going to be the consumer."

At Hoover Dam, mussels first colonized intake towers and other structures. What started off as one or two mussels every square foot has increased to 55,000 mussels in the same space, said Leonard Willett, the lower Colorado River mussel coordinator for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The mussels also are in pipes that cool generators, compressors and transformers, which could disrupt operations.

One of the infestation's side effects has been that the mussels can affect water quality and clarity. That's a major concern at Lake Tahoe on the border of California and Nevada.

From May 1 to July 8, some 6,300 boats were inspected at the lake, known for its pristine waters. Of those, 470 were decontaminated, and 10 found to have mussels never were launched. Jeff Cowen, a spokesman for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, said an infestation of mussels at the lake would mean an economic loss of $22 million a year.

Recreation areas are focusing on educating boaters, using slogans such as "Don't move a mussel," "Stop aquatic hitchhikers," and "Drain, clean and dry." Bryan Moore, a biologist at Lake Mead, said most boaters are cooperative.

"They definitely don't want to be the person who spread it to another lake," he said.

Air pollution linked to increased fire threat

Fire-fueling plants thrive on nitrogen-enriched soil

Air pollution may indirectly contribute to the increase of wildfires in the desert. Fire-stoking weeds now thrive in the desert soil, enhanced by the nitrogen in the soil deposited by air pollution. (Jay Calderon, Desert Sun file photo)

Keith Matheny
The Desert Sun

Air pollution from engine exhaust — largely carried here from Los Angeles by the wind — isn't just harming people's health. It's also pushing native plant species toward extinction in and around the Coachella Valley, and indirectly contributing to increased wildfires in the desert.

Edith Allen, a University of California, Riverside botany professor, has spent years working with a team studying the impacts of engine exhaust pollution on native and invasive plant species in parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, including the Coachella Valley.

The research has found that car exhaust is inadvertently making plant fertilizer — nitrates, a form of the naturally occurring nitrogen that plants can readily use for food, Allen said.

The nitrates drop out of the atmosphere and onto the soil, where rain allows plants to absorb it through their roots, Allen said.

“Up to a point it's a good thing,” she said. “But we also know that weeds take up nitrogen. They're better at taking it up than crop plants or wildland plants.”

The nitrogen is naturally flushed away over time in areas where it rains frequently, Allen said. But in the desert, with only a handful of rainy days in a year, the nitrogen is able to accumulate, she said.

Invasive weeds were accidentally introduced to the region through movement of people, crop seeds and livestock over centuries, Allen said.

“In the desert, they are from the dry regions of Europe and North Africa,” Allen said.

Exhaust-related air pollution is helping the invasive weeds to flourish.

“Because they take up nitrogen more rapidly and grow more rapidly, they produce more seeds,” Allen said. “They are more competitive than the native plants and they replace the native plants.

“Areas that once were covered with native vegetation — including areas of the Coachella Valley — are covered with with invasive plants from the Mediterranean.”

Change in fire cycle

In the western valley and areas in and around Joshua Tree National Park, the plants thriving on the exhaust-provided nitrates are often invasive grasses.

“Those exotic grasses are the ones that are effecting the fire ecology in the park,” said Joe Zarki, a longtime ranger at Joshua Tree.

“They create carpets out in the desert where previously we had a lot of open, bare ground. When they die every year, they create fuel.”

It's leading to wildfires that are more intense and happen more often, experts said.

The desert burned “very infrequently” over hundreds of thousands of years, Allen said. But the cycle changed around the mid-1980s, she said, as air pollution worsened in the Los Angeles area and moved into the region.

“Now what we see is some areas of the desert burning whenever there is a wet year,” she said.

“There are areas that have burned three times since the 1980s. That's not part of our natural fire cycle. There's something different going on.”

The most severe of the more frequent desert fires was the Sawtooth-Millard fire in July 2006.

The lightning-started fires combined to burn more than 85,000 acres in the Morongo Basin near Yucca Valley and in the San Gorgonio Wilderness north of Cabazon. They led to a man's death, cost more than $21 million to fight and nearly $12 million in property damage.

In July 2005, the Mojave National Preserve, near the old mining town of Kelso north of Twentynine Palms, had its largest wildfire in modern history, a lightning-started blaze that burned more than 70,000 acres.

Cameron Barrows, a research ecologist at the UC Riverside Center for Conservation Biology, sees a clear connection between engine exhaust pollution and the more intense, more frequent wildfires.

“You end up with very high concentrations of nitrogen from the Banning Pass to Snow Creek and the Desert Hot Springs area, and more towards Joshua Tree” National Park, he said.

“Not surprisingly, that's where most of our wildfires have been.”

A vicious cycle

The pollution-created nitrogen in soils, the invasive grasses and wildfires all create a vicious cycle that works against native desert species — Joshua trees, junipers, pinyon pines, chaparral, creosote bush and more.

“Once the fires go through, the desert vegetation is not adapted to fire,” Allen said.

“It takes a long time to recover, and in fact it does not recover. What it turns into is a greater abundance of invasive grasses.”

Zarki notices the trend at Joshua Tree National Park.

“We're seeing a type conversion from older, more mature type plants to exotic grasses and annual wildflowers,” he said.

“There are unknown ecological consequences to that. If you're a plant or animal that's best adapted to junipers and pinyon pines, and they're getting burned up and not getting a chance to re-establish themselves, there is a significant impact.”

The phenomenon isn't isolated to the Coachella Valley and high desert.

“It's an international problem,” said Andrzej Bytnerowicz a senior scientist studying air pollution with the U.S. Forest Service's Southwest Research Station in Riverside.

“We have huge problems in China, for instance, related to air pollution acting as plant fertilizer.

“I think we have to be much better in publicizing what we know. Ozone has been discussed for three, four, five decades. But nitrogen deposition, it's been maybe talked about for 10 years.”

Though the long-term ramifications of the pollution's effect on desert plant life look dire, Allen said she remains hopeful that the situation will turn around.

“Now that we have a federal administration in Washington that is willing to allow California to take the lead, I think air pollution issues are going to get better,” she said. “I think the air is going to get cleaner and some of these issues about invasive grasses and fire are going to get better.”

Could green kill the desert?

OPINION

If we're not careful, our rush to produce green energy could do irrevocable damage to some fragile California ecosystems

By Bruce M. Pavlik
Los Angeles Times

California's desert lands are in some ways a perfect fit with the renewable energy industries necessary to combat climate change. There's sun. There's wind. There's space.

But without careful planning and regulation, these "climate solutions" could irrevocably damage the planet they are intended to protect.

The biologically rich but arid desert ecosystems are remarkably fragile. Once topsoil and plant life have been disrupted for the placement of solar arrays, wind farms, power plants, transmission lines and CO2 scrubbers, restoration would be cost-prohibitive, if not technically impossible. And widespread desert construction -- even of projects aimed at environmental mitigation -- would devastate the very organisms and ecosystems best able to adjust to a warming world.

Nevertheless, there is a public land rush underway. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is processing more than 180 permit applications from private companies to build solar and wind projects in the California deserts.

One such venture, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, will begin construction this year in a beautiful valley near the California-Nevada border in San Bernardino County. It will occupy 3,400 acres, and that doesn't include the land needed for transmission lines.

Most projects are even larger, averaging 8,000 acres, with a few exceeding 20,000 acres. The total public land under consideration for alternative energy production exceeds 1.45 million acres in this state alone.

The scale of some proposals borders on fantasy. One Columbia University scientist, Wallace Broecker, has proposed installing 60 million CO2 scrubbers, each a 50-foot-tall tower, throughout the world's deserts -- 17 million of them in the United States -- for the purpose of capturing greenhouse gases.

One appeal of locating projects in remote regions is that there isn't as much NIMBYism in those areas, so approvals can be easier to get. But there is another way. Why not install scrubbers in parking garages, skyscrapers, transit tunnels and other existing structures? Existing commercial and residential rooftops, landfills, marginal agricultural lands and mine sites could readily accommodate these green technologies, and we would be creating energy closer to where it is needed.

At this point in the evolution of our ecological psychology, we need to acknowledge the true costs of any energy development. When a dam is built, a river is lost. But people who turn on their tap and draw that water rarely think about the river that was destroyed to produce it. Similarly, if we choose to place our "ugly" industrial technologies in the wilderness, there will be less awareness of the damage, less incentive to conserve.

The out-of-sight-out-of-mind approach to solving such problems exacerbates parochial thinking and reduces the obligation of each citizen to contribute by consuming less, or by allowing solar panels to be installed on rooftops.

Besides, haven't we learned these lessons from the destruction of other valuable ecosystems? We now spend billions of dollars every year to repair levees and restore wetlands that never should have been "reclaimed" in the name of land development.

Although the government should be encouraging alternative energy, the cumulative effects of projects need to be analyzed across the entire desert landscape. Many are within or adjacent to designated wilderness, desert tortoise habitats, archaeological sites and the BLM's areas of critical environmental concern. Roads, rails and aqueducts already harm desert bighorn sheep and other sensitive species while spreading weeds, increasing fire frequency and degrading the life-giving qualities of the native vegetation.

Such large-scale effects cannot be addressed on a project-by-project basis, as is done through the existing environmental review process. We need effective, desert-wide planning that engages the major public and private stakeholders that determine the fate of California desert land.

The costs of industrializing the biologically rich California deserts will be measured in terms of species extinction, ecosystem degradation and the perpetuation of human self-deception.

We know better than to rush. A cautious, informed and integrated approach will secure sustainable, clean energy without sacrificing the future of these precious lands.

Bruce M. Pavlik is a professor of biology at Mills College, Oakland, and the author of "The California Deserts: An Ecological Rediscovery."

Interview With Dennis Schramm

Superintendent of Mojave National Preserve

BY DAVID LAMFROM
The Desert Report

A Brief Introduction to Mojave National Preserve:
To millions of drivers en route to or returning from Sin City, the Mojave National Preserve is a large green or brown area on a map, a desolate, rugged, barren landscape to be traversed. To those who have come to know “the Preserve” it is a 1.6 million acre desert mountain wonderland, teeming with wildlife, wildflowers, and wilderness; a place containing singing sand dunes, sweeping vistas, and arguably the finest night sky viewing in Southern California. The Mojave Preserve is a significant reservoir of cultural history dating back 8,000 years or more and is a haven of wilderness within a developing world, allowing current and future generations the opportunity to experience the vastness and diversity of the Eastern Mojave Desert.

Introducing Mr. Dennis Schramm

Dennis Schramm has been the superintendent of Mojave National Preserve for almost three years. He is a professional botanist who grew up in the Mojave Desert and has witnessed firsthand the population boom that impacts desert wildlands. Dennis has worked for the NPS for 31 years and has worked in Alaska as well as Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. I have posed questionsto Dennis in order to share the work being done at Mojave National Preserve. The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) would like to thank Dennis Schramm for taking the time to discuss the Mojave National Preserve with us.

David: Speaking to those who are unfamiliar with the Preserve, what is significant about Mojave Nnational Preserve?
Dennis: Well, from the perspective of the enabling legislation, it is the natural and scenic resources including transitional desert elements that all come together here; it is the human history and the resources associated with Native Americans and westward expansion; and it is the opportunity for compatible outdoor recreation and to promote understanding of the Mojave Desert. From my personal perspective I think the most significant thing is the preservation of 1.6 million acres of prime Mojave Desert ecosystem and the vast landscapes that are encompassed within the Preserve. Considering the developments being proposed today in the Mojave, it is so important that a large expanse of the Mojave Desert is permanently protected for future generations.

Your favorite destination in the Preserve?
Wow, that’s kind of hard. There are so many different landscapes and vegetation types to explore. But I would have to say that the hike into the Castle Peaks is definitely one of the tops on my list.

In your lifetime, how has the Mojave Desert changed?
Population growth and the way people use the desert have changed a lot. Of course Las Vegas has grown substantially since I went to school and college there in the 60’s and 70’s. This surge of people has caused unprecedented development in the Vegas valley and the Victor Valley/Lancaster areas.

Have attitudes towards the Mojave changed?
I’m not sure if attitudes overall have changed, but a lot more people seem to be interested in motorized recreation, whether it is jet skis on Lake Mead and the Colorado River, or four wheel drive vehicles in OHV areas. There is still a core population of folks who prefer a more intimate experience with the desert, but their voices don’t seem as loud as in the 60’s.

In your tenure, what do you consider to be the greatest victories or achievements attained?
Well, I have to include in my tenure my first seven years here as the planner and management assistant. Of course, my first major accomplishment was completion of the General Management Plan in 2001. During those first years we also removed 4,000 feral burros and around 8,000 cattle (all with donated funds!). Restoration of the Kelso Depot and opening it as our main visitor center has been a significant achievement and remains a tremendous opportunity for visitor contact. Mojave achieved a 99% visitor satisfaction rate last year and a lot has to do with the Kelso Depot and staff that work there. I’m also proud of the work we are doing to reduce our impact on the environment. We now have eleven solar systems operating around the Preserve and this year will eliminate the last diesel generator from the Preserve. This year we also converted all our maintenance equipment to bio-based fluids and greatly expanded our recycling program. Finally I would have to say that the staff we have hired are among the best around and we accomplish a great many things each year due to their hard work and dedication.

What do you consider to be the greatest threats to Mojave Preserve?
I think most of our threats today are originating outside the Preserve, some from sources that you wouldn’t have suspected. Obviously, the proposed Southern Nevada Supplement Airport just north of Primm poses major threats to the natural quiet of the Preserve if it is built. Then there are the hundreds of solar and wind energy applications filed all over the desert. Mojave has nine proposals surrounding it in California. The Ivanpah Solar is moving rapidly through the permitting process. It lies on the bajada just east of Clark Mountain. They propose to clear nearly 9,000 acres for solar energy development, the majority of which is wet solar. They would heat water to produce steam by pointing mirrors at several 450 foot tall towers. Then they would burn natural gas at night to keep the water warm. We’ve learned recently that some of the projects are proposing new utility rights of way through the Preserve to connect with grid.

Why? How can these challenges be best addressed?
The public needs to speak up at the hearings for these projects. As a federal agency we can only do so much. We raise our concerns at every opportunity, but we are also thinking ahead to mitigation if the projects do get built. It is important for the public to learn the details about these proposals and know how these projects will affect the future of the Mojave Desert.

Looking forward, what are your goals and priorities for improving Mojave Preserve?
This could go on for a while! There are several areas that we have identified for the future. One obvious opportunity is the National Park Service Centennial Celebration in 2016. A major initiative is already underway to get the parks ready for this milestone event. 1Mojave has identified a number of proposals, and we will continue to refine our thinking in conversations with the public. One major initiative that needs to be supported is the relevancy of parks to future generations. This means connecting kids with parks and with the outdoors in general. We are working on this initiative with several of our sister parks. Restoration of disturbed lands and ensuring safe visits for the public at all of our abandoned mine lands is a priority for us, and for all the desert parks. Reducing our carbon footprint is a major priority for all of us. We will be looking for opportunities to implement meaningful actions that contribute to this goal. This is just one aspect of dealing with climate change. Protecting Mojave from invasive species rates high as well. Surprisingly, given the long grazing history, Mojave has few issues with the major weed species. After the Hackberry Fire I would have expected lots of exotics to invade the area, and that has not happened. It is important to guard against these invasives making inroads into the Preserve. I also think it is important that we get some wayside exhibits with short accessible trails at four or five key areas along the main paved roads through the Preserve. Providing opportunities for the public to experience areas like the lava beds and cinder cones, the diverse Mojave scrub vegetation in Granite Pass, and the Joshua Tree community on Cima Dome are important to helping people connect first hand with the resources and not just have a drive through experience. Finally, we are anxious to move forward with a tortoise headstart facility in Ivanpah Valley. This facility will help us and other land managers learn more about juvenile tortoise survival and to jumpstart the population recovery with reproductive age tortoises that have been protected from predation. Getting more juveniles to reproductive age in the population is critical to tortoise recovery.

What opportunities exist for the conservation community and the local community to support the efforts of Mojave Nnational Preserve?
Opportunities are almost endless. Obviously volunteers and donations are very important to our operation, and these tend to come from the local communities and members of conservation groups. Being an active voice for National Parks and being a participant in the public review of development proposals that are threatening to further fragment the desert. Teach the children to love the outdoors!

I would like to offer you the last word, is there anything you would like to impart to those reading this article?
Mojave National Preserve is a very special part of the Mojave Desert. Many people worked very hard to create the Preserve and it is up to all of us to ensure that future generations can enjoy this place as we do. Most of all, get out and enjoy the quiet, enjoy the dark night skies, enjoy the smells after a desert rain, and enjoy the vast open spaces and spectacular landscapes. This is your national park!

David Lamfrom is the Cal Desert Field Rep for NPCA’s Cal Desert Field Office. David is a relative newcomer to the Cal Desert and pursues his passions of conservation, wildlife photography, hiking, and herpetology throughout the Mojave.

Translocating tortoises preserves the threatened species

Story and photos by Brian Passey
Desert Valley Times


Riale Jo Worthen helps place a tortoise in a bucket.


St. George, UT - There is something magical about seeing wild animals in their natural habitat. It’s even more captivating to see rare animals, such as those listed as threatened or endangered species. In Washington County we have the presence of a few rare species, including the famous Mojave Desert tortoise, the largest reptile found in its namesake region.

The tortoise was first listed as threatened in 1990. When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identified 129,000 acres in Washington County as critical habitat for the tortoise in 1994, it created many restrictions and regulations for developers in the rapidly growing county. However, 1996 saw the inception of an incidental take permit, allowing development of known tortoise habitat as long as certain criteria are met. The incidental take permit created the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve as protected habitat managed by a habitat conservation plan.

The HCP manages the moving, or translocation, of tortoises from populated areas outside of the reserve into the reserve’s boundaries. A couple of years ago I went along with reserve officials on a translocation project where we transported a dozen or so tortoises from populated areas into the reserve. It was a fascinating and educational experience, which also offered a rare opportunity: the chance to hold a desert tortoise.

Because the threatened species is susceptible to disease and other trauma caused by interaction with humans, reserve officials ask the public to never touch the reptiles unless the tortoises are in immediate danger. For example, if you see a tortoise in the middle of the road it’s OK to move them to the side of the road, taking care to move the animal slowly and without startling it. A startled tortoise may evacuate its bladder in defense, losing valuable liquids necessary for survival in the harsh desert environment. If you do move a tortoise from the road you should always move it to the side of the road in the same direction it was traveling. If there is a fence nearby with low mesh designed to keep tortoises in the reserve and away from the road, place the tortoise inside the fence.

Reserve officials perform translocation projects a few times each year, giving new homes to tortoises found in populated areas. Tom Webster, outreach coordinator for the reserve, asks that residents not transport the tortoises to the reserve themselves because of the possibility of spreading diseases. Instead he asks residents to report tortoise sightings so reserve officials can carefully capture the tortoises. They then take the animals back to a temporary care facility to check for diseases before releasing them into the wild.

Bill Mader, HCP administrator, says the most common problem found in tortoises is respiratory track disease. When they arrive at the temporary care facility they are placed in separate pens so they don’t infect each other. If they are found to be healthy, biologists inject chips into the tortoises to track them before translocating them into the reserve. Once they are in the reserve, however, the danger is not over. Mader says fires are an increasing threat to the tortoise population because the Mojave Desert environment is not supposed to burn, as opposed to forests where occasional burns can promote a healthy forest. “Fires are a monster at the door here and across the whole West,” Mader says. Wildfires in the desert and other areas have increased in recent years because of the presence of invasive plant species that easily burn.

In late August, a group of people associated with the reserve and a few family members gathered to release seven tortoises into the wild and they invited me to come along again. “All seven of these guys are healthy,” Webster told me as we drove toward the translocation spot near Leeds. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be releasing them.” Bob Sandberg, the HCP biologist, says the captured tortoises came from a variety of areas near St. George. Some were found near the Green Springs area in Washington City while others came from the West Black Ridge — where the airport is located — and the East Black Ridge — also called Middleton Ridge or Foremaster Ridge. Once we reach the reserve they’ll join more than 350 other tortoises previously translocated and roughly 2,000 others already living there.

However, the tortoises are not always released in the same location. Mader says they spread them out to preserve the gene pool and to make sure there are viable populations behind different firebreaks in case of a catastrophic blaze.

Arriving in Leeds, Mader, Sandberg, Webster and I met up with the rest of the group, which included Ann McLuckie, a wildlife biologist for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources; McLuckie’s 3-year-old daughter, Robin Bock; Justin Neighbor, a field technician for the reserve; and his 3-year-old granddaughter, Riale Jo Worthen. Despite their young age, it’s not the first time the little girls have seen desert tortoises. “She gets to see them a lot with Grandpa,” Neighbor says of his granddaughter. Because of past experiences, Riale Jo and Robin both know they have to wear protective gloves before handling the tortoises. They also know they can only move the reptiles when it’s time to take them to their new homes.

From Leeds we travel east through private property for better access to the new habitat. It’s possible to reach the area within the reserve by following the Historic Babylon Trail but since we’re lugging the heavy reptiles it’s much easier to make our way through the private property — with permission, of course. We drive as far as the road takes us, which is only up to the reserve boundary, marked as it is throughout the county with the characteristic meshing at the bottom of the fence.

We walk out along the trail, Robin and her mom leading the way. Once we are a quarter-mile or more into the reserve we spit into smaller groups to spread the tortoises out. I go with the girls, McLuckie and Neighbor as we veer off the trail and into a sparse creosote forests. “They like this creosote,” McLuckie says. “Oh, they love it,” Neighbor responds.

The creosote offers shade, but not food for the reptiles. McLuckie says they generally eat grasses and flowers. “They’re really exploratory eaters,” she says. “They’ll eat anything and if they don’t like it they’ll spit it out.” They have excellent memories when it comes to food, she adds.

While shade is an important element when looking for a place to leave the tortoises, McLuckie says they don’t necessarily look for established burrows because the tortoises will usually leave anyway. “This is kind of a new area for them so the first thing they want to do is explore,” she says.

Finally we located a couple of potentially good homes for the reptiles and prepare to set them free. Robin releases her tortoise first, carefully pulling it from the bucket with her gloved hands and gently setting it down in the shade of a creosote bush. We then move about 50 feet away and Riale Jo does the same with her tortoise. Both animals amble off slowly, exploring their new environment and preparing for what will hopefully be a long and disease-free life.

As we walk along the trail back to the vehicles, McLuckie tells me that they have seen little evidence of disease in the wild tortoises they monitor. They especially like the area east of Leeds, known as Zone 4, for translocating tortoises because they believe it is disease-free. They track the tortoises every 10 to 14 days through telemetry, or the method of gathering data electronically, thanks to the chips they injected into the recently released reptiles.

Because Zone 4 is a favorite translocation area, it’s also a good spot to look for tortoises in the wild, and it boasts some of the reserve’s best trails, like the nearby Arch Trail. So if you’ve never seen a Mojave Desert tortoise in the wild, head out to the Babylon area and try out one of the trails. Just remember: Look but don’t touch.

Experts sow seeds of hope for regrowth

Sawtooth Complex Wildfire Recovery

By Mark Wheeler
Hi-Desert Star


PIONEERTOWN - “Don't give up on the plants.”

This was an oft-repeated and important message delivered Wednesday night at a fire recovery workshop staged in Pioneertown by the SummerTree Institute and Unique Garden Center, with the California Chaparral Field Institute.

Representatives from these three groups stood before approximately 175 to 200 victims of the Sawtooth fire who essentially had one burning question.

“Is all the natural beauty we once had here gone forever?”

Three experts on desert plants and plant ecology answered this question with an only slightly qualified “no.”

The pines and junipers which gave the Sawtooth and Pipes Canyon areas much of their botanical character, the speakers were sorry to say, would not regenerate to their prefire status in any near- or even mid-term future.

Many of the other icon species though, they were happier to report, would make reasonably good progress toward restoration; that is, if their prospects weren't interfered with by poor land management activities in the meantime or competition from invasive species.

Native desert plants are strongest underground, listeners were assured. What this means, they were informed, is that many of the plants here will regenerate from the roots.

Of course, this maxim will apply variably throughout the plant diversity in the area, and some species will demonstrate greater vigor than others in their recovery efforts. However, the primary message from the experts was to give nature a chance.

It's been taking care of itself for a long time, quite nicely enough without our help, they observed.

Not that neighbors can't take some action to help facilitate restoration, and most of the meeting's content was a steady stream of practical suggestions for everything from local sources for seedlings and transplants to growing tips to landscape design against future fire threat.

Central to all the individual suggestions was a single concept all the speakers elaborated on at length and urged with the greatest emphasis. Preserving the integrity of the soil crust, they insisted, would not only be vital to promoting restoration of the beloved native landscape, but would also be the first line of defense against exposing homes and properties to future fire threat.

Specifically, listeners were warned not to scrape, blade, drag or in any way break the soil crust, not even in their sensible efforts to disperse or dig-in the ash and soot on their properties.

They were advised to thin the residue with a leaf rake, and each speaker took pains to explain that the advisory against disturbing the soil crust was based on the vital need to discourage rampant invasion of non-native grasses.

These are powerful rivals of native plants for water, sun and space. In many places in the West, they are displacing natives and weakening ecological diversity.

Moreover, the spreading and dense nature of their growth patterns establishes a fuel highway over the landscape that carries fire easily and quickly from place to place, and their habitat of choice is disturbed soil.

Overheard in the audience were comments on the workshop that expressed everything from awe at how integrated the desert ecology is to vows that, “I'll certainly pay more attention to my landscaping in the future.”

For the most part, people were grateful for the hope they heard in the professional testimony. They were given good reason to believe the Hi-Desert around them would once again flourish with beauty and that they could, in all reality, expect to see it.

In their different ways, the three speakers did, indeed, apply their expertise to the germination of hope. This was the starting place SummerTree's Robin Kobaly said in her opening remarks was the purpose of the workshop.

Continuing with her own part of the presentation, she gave the audience solid botanical reasons to expect that many of the native plants would, in fact, regenerate.

Nursery owner Mike Branning advised listeners how best not to interfere with nature's recovery processes on their property and how to cultivate natives and arid land plants they could obtain from nurseries.

For his part, fire ecologist Richard Halsey explained how landscapes are quite capable of recovering from fire's effects and that we can apply ourselves most appropriately to restoration by not making land-use errors which only increases wildfire fuel loads.

“This is an opportunity,” Halsey encouraged. He and the others defined that opportunity throughout the evening as one for learning from nature's own processes.

Nature will heal itself, the speakers urged, and the abundant instruction in their presentation that evening was to inform people how they might best participate in that process and also, somewhat, help nurture beauty, finally, from their own grief.

Experts blame grasses, pollution, temperatures for helping fires

By Andrew Silva, Writer
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin [Ontario, CA]

It's not supposed to happen.

Mojave National Preserve: 71,000 acres in flames a year ago.

Joshua Tree National Park: 14,000 acres burned in 1999.

And in the past week, more than 80,000 acres have gone up in smoke as two large fires merged in the Mojave Desert.

In a pine forest, fire is an integral part of the life cycle and is necessary for a healthy, thriving forest.

But in the desert, flames are an unnatural, unwelcome and destructive force when they roar through Joshua trees, cactuses, juniper and pinyon trees.

"In our lifetime, we won't see it back the way it was," said Larry Whalon, chief of resources management for the Mojave National Preserve.

Desert plants may be the hardiest on earth, able to thrive in blistering temperatures and long stretches without water. The harsh conditions also mean it takes a long time for the plants to grow and establish themselves, usually with wide spaces between them.

Sprawling infernos in the desert are a phenomenon not seen until recent decades.

The obvious culprits are grasses that weren't here 200 years ago. Air pollution and average temperatures that have been creeping higher may also be accomplices.

The arrival of settlers in the 19th century also meant the arrival of non-native grasses that have blanketed the desert floor.

In the past, "a lightning strike had a good chance of hitting bare ground," said Joe Zarki, chief naturalist for Joshua Tree National Park.

Some grasses spread across the landscape once seeds carried by non-native settlers and livestock hit the ground. Others were planted deliberately for cattle grazing.

Native grasses and flowers in the desert tend to dry up and blow away when they die, or they remain isolated in bunches.

The exotic grasses, though, remain standing, even after they die.

"In a good wet year like last year, it'll create a carpet" across the desert floor, Zarki said. "Nowadays, lightning is going to hit these fine fuels that ignite easily."

Before, even if lighting struck a tree or patch of shrubs, that small area would burn but there was no way for the flames to move between plants.

The Sawtooth Complex Fire, which destroyed several dozen homes in Pioneertown, is an example. Drive through the burn area and there's mostly a fine layer of ash on the otherwise bare ground where grasses had carried fire to the widely spaced Joshua trees and other native plants.

"Oaks, juniper, Joshua trees don't appear to do well in response to fire," Zarki said.

The ecosystem that exists in the desert now took hundreds of years to get established. A pine forest will look pretty normal a few decades after a fire.

However, desert trees can take hundreds of years to grow.

If the grasses lead to fires every five, 10 or 15 years, the landscape could be altered permanently in a phenomenon called "type conversion," Zarki said. With frequent fires, the native trees won't be able to re-establish themselves, turning the desert into a scrubby grassland.

"Talking about the natural ecosystem in California is like talking about the dodo bird," said William Patzert, a climatologist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena.

That appears to go for climate as well.

Temperatures have been rising in the West since the 1970s, and many temperature records have been set in recent years.

Southern California, despite near-record rains in the winter of 2004-05, is effectively in its eighth year of drought, Patzert said.

Part of the increase in temperatures is because of sprawling development. Heat is trapped by the hundreds of square miles of concrete and asphalt, creating what have been dubbed "urban heat islands."

Patzert called it Southern California's "extreme makeover."

The Inland Empire has seen a 5-degree jump in average temperature in just 50 years, he said.

Kelly Redmond, a regional climatologist with the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, Nev., said he was skeptical that the temperature increase since 1970 was real.

But after looking more carefully at the data and other climate indicators, such as snow melt and when flowers bloom, he now believes the increase is broad and genuine.

His research indicates temperatures across 11 western states have increased an average of 2 degrees since 1970. June was the warmest in 25 years and July appears to be headed for a record also, he said.

At least part of that increase could be attributable to global climate change, the experts said.

To make matters worse, take blistering temperatures, combine them with non-native grasses and mix in some fertilizer. And air pollution could actually be feeding the grasses and helping them spread.

Air pollution is loaded with nitrogen compounds, providing a readily available fertilizer, some researchers have said.

"Without nitrogen, the grasses aren't doing that well," said Philip Rundel, a biology professor at UCLA. "We're doing a massive fertilization experiment and don't know it."

Healing Desert's Wounds

College-age activists camp in the Mojave for months as they work to restore land that has been trashed by garbage, off-roaders and graffiti vandals.

CAMOUFLAGE: Paul Miles, 24, rigs a fake bush to hide an illegal trail.

By Eric Bailey, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

BARSTOW — Twenty miles from town, in a brutally lovely land where the road and sky collide, a ragamuffin tribe of college-age kids is hard at work in the middle of nowhere.

They're healing the desert.

Dan Prell whacks the sun-scorched earth with a sodbuster pick, his dreadlocks shimmying under a blue bandanna. He grins habitually, happy to miss another cold winter in his native Neenah, Wis.

"It's a blast," the 21-year-old said between swings, no trace of irony hedging his words. "It lets me get out of a small city and go camping for eight months. What could be better?"

In Southern California's vast outback, a century of mankind's heedless incursions — from George Patton's tanks in training for World War II to survivalists taking target practice — have left lasting wounds on a fragile landscape slow to mend.

Those infirmities bring young men and women such as Prell and crew leader Mizuki Seita, a 4-foot, 11-inch whirlwind called Miz by her six-person team.

Theirs is a boot camp existence in the middle of the Mojave. For little pay, three square vegetarian meals and a tent overhead, these twentysomethings camp out in California's badlands of biodiversity for months at a time, rising early to wield shovels and rakes in a ritual of surgical repair.

The goal is to make assaulted swaths of desert look as if humankind had never set foot or knobby tire there.

Such repair parties started combing Southern California's arid backyard after Congress passed the Desert Protection Act in 1994.

They come in all persuasions. Suburban sagebrush-huggers spend volunteer weekends pulling up invasive saltcedar, prison crews troll for trash among the yucca, teen groups try their hand at rehabilitation.

But in recent years the most devoted restorative presence has been the Student Conservation Assn., the nonprofit organization that dispatched Seita and her crew to the East Mojave for an eight-month hitch.

Founded nearly 50 years ago and headquartered in New Hampshire, the group sends small teams of college-age adults to ecological sanctuaries all around the country. They first came to the Southland desert in 2001 and have returned every year since. This season 40 workers have toiled in places that include Dead Mountains Wilderness, Stepladder Mountains and the Kingston Range.

They find plenty of scars.

This day, Seita and company pull up into rolling folds of rock hugging the south slope of the Ord Mountains, a craggy range southeast of Barstow. Their main mission: to make a couple of motorcycle trail heads disappear.

Fresh from the usual bagel breakfast and a warmup game of Hacky Sack, the workers bounce up in a bulky bronze Suburban. Clouds embrace distant mountains shouldering snow.

Summer Farmer, 23, of Springfield, Ill., spots the day's first indignity: a boulder painted with graffiti. She grabs a steel-wire brush.

Some guy named Rudy just had to let the jack rabbits and coyotes know he loves the L.A. Dodgers. In doing so, he spoiled the antique sheen, known as desert varnish, running in stratified ribbons across the rock. It could take nature a thousand years to replace it.

Scrubbing under the sun, Farmer talks about snow.

Back on Presidents Day, they awakened to find the desert covered with white. They weren't "Illinois-sized" flakes, Farmer said, "but they were getting there."

Prell, a self-confessed sissy about the cold despite his Wisconsin roots, fled to a car in the sub-zero sleeping bag he had his mom send out. He awoke to find "Good Morning" scrawled on the snow-covered windshield.

It was the work of Paul Miles, 24, late of the University of Georgia. At 6 feet 4, with wire-rim glasses and the dreadlocks he's been cultivating without a haircut for the last five years, Miles would stick out even without a crowd.

He's one of the veterans, on his third gig with the conservation group. The California desert astounds him. So does the abuse it has endured.

"It's spectacular out here," Miles said. "But it's a mess, a real mess." Trampled plants. Scattered shell casings. Abandoned cars. You don't see it, Miles noted, zooming by at 75 mph on the interstate.

Mary Verrilli, 25, scrabbles along, raking out the well-worn trail edge. Puny roadside berms can loom like a brick wall to a desert tortoise, the Mojave's famously imperiled critter.

Besides marring the landscape, the pathways the team is trying to obliterate can have other unfortunate effects on the desert landscape. Errant food scraps draw ravens to prey on vulnerable young tortoises. A traveler can unwittingly carry invasive seeds on tires or shock absorbers for miles, introducing rapacious plants that overtake native flora.

Prell and 21-year-old Aaron Drake of Boone, N.C., are whacking holes in the trail. They're preparing a bit of camouflage, a sort of re-imagineering in a desert Disneyland.

Miles delivers an armload of dead creosote branches. Twisted and blackened, they go into the shallow holes, small rocks anchoring the base.

Seita calls it her desert restoration flower arrangement.

These faux bouquets of creosote and burro weed and other flora are planted a few dozen yards up to where the path disappears over a knoll. Beach ball-size boulders are rolled into the way to complete the effect.

Seita holds her hands up like a cinematographer framing a movie scene. The goal is to make this trail portal vanish, giving nature time to reclaim the land.

"I've done trail building in Tennessee," Verrilli said. "This is the reverse."

The dead branches will stand several years, acting as a little oasis to catch water, deflect breezes and provide shade so young plants take root.

Rangers used to post signs on closed trails, but that proved "0% effective," said Steve Borchard, the federal Bureau of Land Management's Desert District manager in California. Scofflaws riddled the placards with bullets and ran them down with all-terrain vehicles. Hay bales blocking the trails fared a bit better, Borchard said, but the students' pick-and-shovel subterfuge works best.

In the last three years, the Student Conservation Assn. has closed more than 1,700 unauthorized desert trails.

Heather Bosserman, 26, spreads a topographical map on the sport utility vehicle's hood. The pages are laced by a spider web of red lines marking "illegal incursions" — off-road routes that shouldn't exist.

Peering through wire-rim glasses, auburn hair tucked under a Yellowstone baseball hat, Bosserman seems the no-nonsense one. She loves the work but can't help being realistic.

Plenty of days they clean up trash or close a trail only to come back the next day and find everything undone. After cleaning up a campsite one morning, they returned in the afternoon to find an abandoned Porsche.

"You do what you can," Bosserman lamented.

Seita, the shortest and oldest at 28, refuses to go down without a fight. If a cyclist zips by on an illegal trail, she scampers in pursuit, waving her arms until the offender stops.

"Most people are nice about it," she said. "They don't understand that once you've done damage to the desert, it's hard to get it back. They don't think of these plants as unique, like a redwood or sequoia."

After a lunch of pasta salad and hummus on homemade bread, they spread out among the boulders looking for trash.

Farmer comes back with an old VCR. Miles, a merry prankster, trudges to the truck with his head poking out of a latrine lid.

They are, Miles said with pride, "a motley crew."

This sort of job — hard work, a token $160-a-week paycheck, a hardy embrace of solitary wilds — tends to attract nature-lovers looking to break into the environmental field. After half a year working and living together, Drake said, they're all "pretty much family by now."

Seita is the lone Californian. She grew up in Japan, came to the U.S. at 13 when her dad was transferred to Southern California. Seita stayed when her family returned to Japan and has worked three years now in the desert.

"It's hard to explain to them what I'm doing," she said. "They think I'm cleaning up trash in a national park."

As the sun edges toward the mountaintops, the team begins a slow ride back to camp. "The car is pretty stinky on the ride home," Prell said, chortling. "Lets you know you're alive."

Camp is on the far side of the Ords in a canyon that cleaves the ridge. The fading light casts a rosy glow on a mosaic of rock sculpted by time. Dinner in the big, olive-green, Army tent that serves as a mess hall is a hash of potato, cabbage, carrots, onions, yogurt, dill and sunflower that Bosserman and Seita prepare in a Dutch oven over an open fire.

After dinner, Farmer flips through a paperback. Verrilli and Bosserman talk of playing cribbage. Miles mends a sock.

The mice are out; a brave scavenger skitters among chair legs. Coyotes are gearing up to howl as some of the crew members begin heading to bed at 8 p.m.

A new desert dawn, and a new desert workday, will soon be upon them.