Written by Cathy, posted by Nick
Saturday, June 14th about a dozen of us got up early and headed north to meet up at the Corn Creek Field Station in the Desert National Wildlife Refuge off of Highway 95 north of Las Vegas. After climbing into high clearance vehicles, we headed a few more miles up the Joe May Road toward the Sheep Range. We weren’t there to hike. We were there to reclaim some wild land from illegal off-roaders. We stopped our vehicles next to a sign that clearly indicated “no off-road vehicles” and a rudimentary road that took off across the desert. When someone sees a place that looks like it would be fun to drive on and does, someone else comes along later and sees the tracks and thinks it’s ok to drive there…well, it looks like a road, they say. It doesn’t look like a road anymore! There were before and after photos taken by several folks. Mine are film so it will be a bit before they are developed.
We moved rocks and gravel to hide the edges of the road and moved dead plants to fill in the open space left by tire tracks. The dead plants will help catch seeds and live plants will eventually grow there. This is called vertical mulching.
Next it was off to the end of the road to reclaim where folks kept driving instead of turning around. We planted a new “no off-road vehicle” sign and added a “no fire” sign for the hot summer months. We left the fire pit, because fires would be ok in the cooler months. We did more rock moving. This time some very big rocks were wrangled by the strongest men in the bunch. More vertical mulching was accomplished. The ground was rockier here than the first location which made digging harder.
After taking a short break to sign giant postcards for our four favorite people, our senators and congresspeople to protect the Desert Refuge as wilderness, we set about collecting blackbrush seeds. Sometimes ten years go by before these plants bloom. The conditions have to be just right. Well, they’re blooming this year! The collected seeds will go to replant burned areas. The technique we used was tapping the bushes with a small tennis-type racket while holding a tub under the bush. To steal the comment by one of the volunteers, our job was to “protect and serve!” Or, as I called it, we were bush whacking! This technique dislodged the ripe seeds and, if we were lucky, some of them would land in our tubs. The seeds were all combined into a bag and labeled with the location and collection date to be sorted through later.
All in all, a very productive day!
