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Show THE ZEPHYR/ AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2004 park’s history and its largest eradication project using herbicides; yet the NPS believed the project did not require public notification or input. In the months that followed, I tried to shine as much light as possible on the planned tamarisk burn. This was in the pre-Zephyr days, and so I resorted to writing letters to NPS officials and the Times-Independent. At first, the Park Service response was infuriating. The Southeast Utah Group Superintendent, Harvey Wickware, suggested that I limit future discussions of tamarisk removal to the park’s resource specialist. “I think this will be a much more effective method of communication,” he wrote in May 1987, “than us developing letter writing campaigns.” Arches National Park superintendent, Paul Guraedy, insisted that the original March 27 burn date would not have conflicted with nearby Cooper’s Hawk nest and mating season, despite the fact that I saw the hawks in the Cottonwoods on March 26 and he maintained that the fire would have no effect on adjacent native vegetation. Further, Guraedy continued to cite other NPS tamarisk control projects, including the alleged eradication of tamarisk in Horseshoe Canyon at Canyonlands National Park and at Eagle Borax Spring in Death Valley. In neither case did the facts support the presumption of success. At Death Valley, a prescribed burn had in fact eliminated the tamarisk, but at a high price. During the burn, unexpected high winds ignited adjacent juite (In Death Valley, all native vegetation is rare.). Acres of mesquite were destroyed and years later, NPS rangers still described the scene there as “charred devastation.” "While we received several supportive comments... there was also some strong negative, but constructive criticism that has led me to conclude that the proposed action should be postponed." Kate Kitchell NPS Resource Management Specialist. 1988 As for the Horseshoe Canyon project, at the same time the NPS was congratulating itself for “removing” all the tamarisk along several miles of the canyon bottom, a friend and I counted several thousand new seedlings. Since then, the park has been more vigilante in its yearly control of new growth, but the lesson is clear—if the Park Service ever walks away from its annual checks, the tamarisk will return with a vengeance. Other citizens added their voices of concern, including Dave May, the former chief naturalist at Canyonlands National Park. Dave’s letter to the NPS was especially effective. Among his observations: “Tamarisk is a typical ‘pioneer’ species, in that it becomes established in very dense stands on unoccupied habitat where it has no competition; by its growth habits it then modifies the habitat. The forgoing series of events can be seen to be occurring on numerous tamarisk-infected sites in this region, and in every case the tamarisk thickets appear eventually to be invaded by native plants. 1 know of no sites where the normal sequence of stages in plant succession has progressed to the point of eliminating tamarisk, but there are several at which tamarisk is old and deteriorating and not replacing itself” This is exactly what was happening at the Secret Spring. In fact, the case could be made that were it not for the tamarisk thickets stabilizing the banks of the wash, the cottonwoods Kitchell’s written comments, which she generously shared with me, were a refreshing break from the Park Service’s somewhat defensive and intractable past. Here was a trained park official, not only welcoming public scrutiny but actually proposing to modify park policy as a result. Her memo went on to identify seven areas of concern, all of them initially raised by the public, that she insisted must be resolved before any tamarisk eradication program moved forward at Arches National Park. We all breathed a sigh of relief—the Secret Spring was safe, at least for the time being. Almost two years passed. I'd started the Zephyr in early 1989 and devoted a lot of my time to Grand County issues, especially the proposed Book Cliffs Highway proposal. I'd received word that the tamarisk project was on indefinite hold. I'd also heard that Kitchell - had left the Park Service and joined the Bureau of Land Management which worried me some. But surely her recommendations would be observed and followed. Then one day, in early 1990, I bumped into a Park Service friend from Canyonlands National Park. We reminisced about “the good old days” in the NPS for a while; then he said, “Too bad you lost your tamarisk battle...I think it’s stupid too.” “What?” I asked. “What are you talking about?” ; He told me the entire ugly story. I fired off a note to Supt. Guraedy. A few weeks later, I received this reply: “| am writing to correct an oversight made in connection with the Environmental Assessment on the Salt Valley Wash Spring Tamarisk Control. This plan was abandoned when the Director prohibited prescribed fires of any type...We should have written, at that point, and advised you that the Environmental Assessment had been withdrawn...I regret that we simply overlooked the need to close out this Environmental Assessment. “Nothing more was done on exotic species until Spring 1989. We still wanted to control _tamarisk and wrote a Tamarisk Management Plan to accomplish this goal. The Plan was approved in May of 1989...We have been following this plan...at the Salt Valley Wash Spring (and) I am delighted to report that water is again coming from the Salt Valley Spring, in spite of the drought. : “We appreciate your interest in Arches National Park. We also regret that you were not informed about the fate of the Environmental Assessment...Hopefully, this will not discourage your participation in future projects.” I protested the park’s action (The Zephyr was up and running now and I had a good rant) but it was a waste of time now...the deed had been done. Former Canyonlands National Park Resource Management Specialist Jeff Connors wrote a long defense of NPS tamarisk control efforts in the July 1990 Zephyr. “Sorry the NPS did not inform you or the public,” he explained, “but glad to hear they are doing the work. That spring could be greatly _ improved by the removal of the tamarisk.” The Secret Spring was gone...1 wouldn't fully appreciate how gone for 14 years. 2004...A MISSING SPRING It took me four years to actually visit the Secret Spring after the tamarisk removal, but the shock was worse than expected---I couldn’t find the spring. The small perennial pool was gone. Not a trace of it survived. I was stunned. I tried to understand what had happened and this is the best explanation I could muster... The small pool was in the middle of Salt Valley Wash. Upstream from the tamarisk, the wash looked like any other desert drainage—-dry, wide, sandy in places and rocky in others. But when the wash met the tamarisk, the landscape changed. If nothing else tamarisk controls erosion and stabilizes watercourse banks and it had done its job here. Despite flash floods, the nature of the wash here didn’t change. It was woody, shady and well-defined. Year after year, the pool survived. But without the tamarisk, the next flood scoured the previously stabilized stretch of Salt Valley Wash and altered the stream bed so drastically that water now fails to reach the surface. My guess is the water is still down there, but buried under several feet of rock and silt. I left disheartened and angry; all I could do was hope that time and nature would would never have been able to take root in the first place. And indeed, most of the tamarisk was very old; little evidence of new tammie growth could be found anywhere. Dave also noted that, “The proposed burn would inevitably destroy nesting and cover sites (escape habitat) now being utilized by native animals.” His comments were substantiated by Moab veterinarian Paul Bingham, a raptor rehabilitator and Marilyn Bicking, a well-respected raptor specialist who lived in Moab in the late 1980s. Coopers Hawks are accipiters and are not soaring hunters; they prefer a thicket-type environment to hunt their prey, using the foliage of trees as cover. In effect, a non-native plant created a favorable habitat for a native bird. And a bulletin of the Audubon Society of Western Colorado described the observations "We appreciate your interest in Arches National Park. We also regret that you were not informed about the fate of the - environmental assessment. Hopefully, this will not discourage your of Steven Carothers, an Arizona environmental consultant and a long-time observer of tamarisk in the Grand Canyon. He noted that, “smaller stands of tamarisk will match in bird density, any other type with equal foliage volume. The Bell’s vireo even seems to prefer salt cedar and has recently extended its range upriver.” In fact, numerous nests could be observed at the Secret Spring site and I asked the NPS to identify them. Then Ed Abbey leapt into the fray. The debate gained some coverage in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. [took Abbey and a reporter to the site and the story, including Ed’s comments, appeared in the July 6, 1987 edition. “Abbey,” the reporter noted, “consistently skeptical about the park g tsystem, said he has observed that the Park Service has a difficult time admitting mistakes, and too often subscribes to the philosophy: ‘In order to save it, destroy it.’ “When in doubt, do nothing, Abbey advised in this case. “When there’s a doubt about it, leave it alone.’” A REPRIEVE? Finally, it appeared that the Park Service was listening. The burn was delayed again in October 1987 and the NPS agreed to complete an environmental assessment. In late 1987, the Park Service released the assessment and it received a great deal of public comment and Participation in future projects." Great Horned Ow! in the tamarisk at the Secret Spring. 198] Paul Guraedy Supt, Arches NP correct this and that water would flow again at the Secret Spring. Last week, I made another trip...nothing has changed. The pool never came back. The wash is almost completely bone dry. I could find no sign of the Cooper’s Hawk nest that On July 5, 1988, Kate Kitchell, Resource Management Specialist sent a memo to was once such a familiar sight in the cottonwood tree adjacent to the pool. Huge piles of .Wickware and Guraedy. Kitchell wrote: slash—cut tamarisk trees—still cover the ground near the wash and Russian Thistle, another exotic, flourishes in many locations near the burn area. The only encouraging sight was the “Although we thought when the EA for this project was released that we had thought ' _cottonwoods, which have survived, though they have certainly not multiplied and grown this proposal through completely, the criticism received from the public suggests otherwise. in numbers once predicted by the Park Service, once the project was completed. While we received several supportive comments...there was also some strong negative, but very constructive criticism that has led me to conclude that the proposed action should be And so, for all their hard work and all the thousands of dollars spent over the last 15 postponed until we have better defined project objectives....Prior to moving forward, we years to keep tamarisk out of the Secret Spring, Arches National Park has nothing to show must properly assess the impacts, actions necessary to mitigate impacts, and completely for its efforts except a dusty wash, a dry hole and the memory of a place that should have understand the manpower requirements for conducting the eradications and associated been left alone. monitoring. I also think that we should be committed to publishing the results of this activity to move forward the state of the knowledge of tamarisk control in the southwest....Let us work together to respond and revise the project over the next year.” PAGEI5 criticism. In fact, there were enough intelligent and well-conceived letters to the superintendent to impress one of the park’s resource specialists to call for an indefinite elay. |