Goal for these desert troops? Bag the buffelgrass.
Volunteers take pickaxes and crowbars to the invasive weed, which is threatening the ecology of Arizona's Sonoran Desert.
from the May 31, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Dr. Northam, the invasive-plants expert, recently visited a burned area about 20 miles north of Phoenix, where the 2005 Cave Creek Complex fire scorched nearly 248,000 acres.
"Hundreds of saguaros were lost," he reports. It's too early to tell if their seeds will eventually replenish the stock. But already buffelgrass is beginning to grow there at elevations below 2,500 feet, which seems to be as high as it can grow before succumbing to the cold.
Mr. Puente of the Desert Botanical Garden thinks back about 10 years, when he first hiked to the 2,600-foot summit of Piestewa Peak. "I saw some plants at the base, and I remember thinking, 'Wow, this is buffelgrass,' " says Puente, who earlier had been involved in efforts to fight buffelgrass in his native Mexico. Now it covers the mountain.
The Phoenix Weedwackers working on the mountain have succeeded in clearing buffelgrass from its base. Now the volunteer corps is working its way up the 50- to 60-degree slopes. On their last workday this month, the whackers packed out 150 30-pound plastic bags of the grass. Since December, when they first began work at Piestewa Peak, they've removed about 32,000 pounds, Bloom estimates.
Since 2000, the Sonoran Desert Weedwackers in Tucson have removed about 50 tons of the invasive grass from Tucson Mountain Park. The group has crafted a program to at least control the spread of buffelgrass there, says co-leader Marilyn Hanson,
"We take a spot thick with buffelgrass, pull it out, bag it, get it out," says the former high school science teacher. "We then go back next year, and the next year after that, and so on until we get all the seedlings. In five years, native flowering plants come back, and there is no buffelgrass in that area."
It's a task that requires the patience of Job, but Ms. Hanson notes the price of not doing it. "We're all alarmed at what buffelgrass could do to our Sonoran Desert," she says. "We've been working this for seven years very steadily, just knocking it out."
RSS feed
