Alternative Breaks 2012-2013

Thursday, March 23, 2011

It was a good night, I slept great despite the loud group fighting in the campsite next door. Today we worked at the garden center. Becca and Carrie had us put in fencing around their grass seed project to help keep out the gophers. It took us all morning into the afternoon but our group did an awesome job of working together and making it into several small tasks.

One of their projects at the garden center is re-establishing growth of native grasses in areas that have been disturbed by humans or erosion and they used to gather these around the park up until a few years ago when they began this little project. What they’ve done in ingenious, and they have several rows of natural mound tall grass growing on roughly 2 acres of land. Becca said over the last several years they have exponentially been able to increase the amount of seed they collect and they got so much last year it’s not all cleaned yet. I like that they are trying to re-introduce native species to solve these issues rather than the alternative. What we have traditionally done so much in this country is introduce things into an area, with the best intentions, and ended up destroying the native landscape.

I talked with Carrie a little bit more about some of the invasive species around the park and she told me a little bit about “Saltcedar” (Tamarix) which is a non-native bush to this continent and introduced to cut erosion. Problem is it spread like crazy and has ended up stealing water from native species and destroying their ability to survive. It’s kept under control in its native lands by the bugs there but those insects don’t exist in this country and it’s really a problem since they grow so fast and are such a water hog. Wonder how many other species we’ve infected this land with since our introduction to it.

After we finished today, we took a trip down toward the Narrows. Because the water was too high and going too fast we were not able to check this out and see the slot canyons up close but it was still a nice walk anyway. We had another great dinner, rice and vegetable stew, and some great campfire conversations. The week is winding down and tomorrow is our last day; we’re talking about heading out Friday night to avoid bad weather which sounds like a good idea. It’s been a great week and I’m surprised it’s gone by so fast…helps to have such a great group of people to work with I imagine. Great job coordinators!