So, finally thinking about getting this blog going. Two starter posts to come. First, why I do what I do. Here goes...
I grew up on the Colorado River. Literally. The first time I came to the lower Colorado, I was in my mom's belly. I was doomed/destined. My childhood memories are comprised of a mix of baseball, school, and "the River." I spent my weekends and several weeks per year hunting, fishing, swimming, and getting in (relatively innocent) trouble between Lake Havasu and Imperial National Wildlife Refuge. Some of my earliest memories include pulling up to the mobile home my family bought during the floods of the mid-1980s. In a boat. There was a lot of hand-waving by the previous owners: "yep, under the water there is a deck...and a dock." Little did I know that this flood was a relatively minor occurrence compared to history, but I digress.
After that, I remember waking up in the winters to my dad asking me, "are you coming?" (this was for duck hunting, getting up at 4 am to go out into the middle of nowhere to freeze our toes off for several hours). In the summer, it was the tap, tap-tap, tap-tap followed by the screams of great-tailed grackles on the roof of the mobile home. These river roosters signaled that it was time to get up and go fishing. And sometimes the fishing was good, even if only for carp.
Midday was hanging out on the sandbars, and sneaking off into disconnected oxbows to search for frogs and that perfectly nasty black mud to have sliding contests in (that never impressed the moms). Not to mention more fishing.
Then, the long nights. Spotlighting, frogging, floating on the river and staring at the stars. Swimming in near total darkness. I didn't realize until just a few years ago that I was entirely spoiled as a child and teenager :) Anyway, this history left me with a deep connection to the river--respect, gratitude, and some fundamental level of understanding that only comes from spending innumerable days and nights just soaking it all in.
So, how did I go from there to here? One of my very clear memories is walking through a remnant Fremont cottonwood forest a few river miles south of the border between Cibola and Imperial National Wildlife Refuges. A few steps off the riverbank was a decadent (dried) cattail marsh, where the plant litter swallowed the bottom half of my twelve-year-old torso. Look up, and there are trees. Real trees! These are the trees through which God spoke to the Hopis, Fremont cottonwood, which along with willow trees, used to span the active floodplain of arid Southwest rivers. One of the VERY few things that stuck with me from my high school read of The Grapes of Wrath was a brief passage on the expanse of cottonwood forests in Needles, California. Why is this a big deal? Because there aren't any remaining forests of cottonwood-willow on the lower Colorado River that I know of (not including the Bill Williams River). I went back to look for the forest I remember from my childhood in 2006, and it was cleared out by a wildfire (Fremont cottonwood does not tolerate fire). What you see now are desertified, salinized, fire-prone, hydrologically-disconnected soils dominated by introduced species (primarily saltcedar and athel tamarisk). So, what's the big deal? Well, first, I like cottonwoods. A lot. The contrast of blue, rich greens (or orange in the winter), and brown (a desert after all), is incredible.
There are discussions of "cultural value" and assigning a monetary value to natural resources. I can't say what the cultural value is of these native ecosystems. I do believe that if people were aware of what "could be" along the Colorado and other Southwest rivers, they would buy into it also (note to self: future mission=public awareness).
Second, wildlife value. Yes, there are endangered species that rely on these forests. And lots of other little brown, yellow, gray, etc. birds. I grew up as a hunter. With hunters. These species are what are not-so-endearingly termed "shit birds." What is a shit bird? Something you can't shoot and eat; at least not legally. I won't get into the value of these other species, but suffice it to say that I think there just is value in preserving species diversity. How about something hunters can relate to? Deer. Deer love native riparian forests. One of the coolest things about visiting restoration sites on the Colorado is the abundance of deer.
Other "ecosystems services" of riparian plant communities include flood control, nutrient cycling, sediment retention, and contaminant reduction. Wetlands (lands that are wet, imagine that) are called the kidneys of the landscape because vegetation and microbes (little creatures that require a microscope to see) are incredibly good at doing the things engineers spend millions of dollars to design, build, maintain, replace, and back to step one.
So, how did I get into the restoration business? A combination of converging circumstances (aka fate?) really. I spent my undergrad unsuccessfully trying to become a wildlife biologist. So, I went for a degree dealing with water (people need water, right?). After dealing with biosolids and wastewater (that stuff everyone flushes and then forgets about), I had a job. I had the personal goal of becoming over-educated, so I looked fora PhD project. Some potential in mine reclamation/acid rock drainage, but I seriously hate chemistry. I was fortunate enough to have a boss that let me chase after and win serious funding for the Bureau of Reclamation to look at revegetation (putting plants back where they were before) methods for the lower Colorado River. Basically, I was meant for this project. Six years later (April 2006 started it all!), here I am. Planting trees, helping in the management of restoration sites, and hopefully, very soon, leading some public outreach to get people excited about what the Colorado River ecosystems could be. Because what there is now is simply not good enough.
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