Sagebrush personal hiking blog
Six NMVFO volunteers and two USFS staff joined 30-odd Albuquerque Wildlife Federation volunteers at Limestone Canyon in the San Mateo Mountains south of the VLA, for a long-running water restoration project.
We built or improved one-rock dams, baffles, and beaver-analog dams to capture sediment and duff, add more turns to the channel, and slow the water in peak flow.
Thanks goes out to AWF for teaching us their evolving techniques for water restoration, based on the work of Bill Zeedyk.
NMVFO volunteers worked on a long-neglected 0.5 mile nature trail near the Water Canyon Picnic Shelter.
The trail was overgrown, with confusing user-trail alternates, and we had to do extensive flagging to show the correct route for our volunteers. We divided into teams: sawing, lopping-and-tread, and signage. My team was sawing, so those are the photos presented here.
Many local people do not even know this trail exists. The only sign for the trail was not visible from the road when approaching the trailhead from town, and the arrow was pointing in the wrong direction. We fixed these issues, and hopefully the trail will now be widely used.
The trailhead has a picnic table, and begins in a meadow, where a wedding was recently held. Afterwards the trail enters a forest of mixed-conifer, oak and ancient cottonwood, crossing seasonal drainage. Check it out.
The Friends of Bosque del Apache presided over an open house and grand opening of their Pollinator Habitat Enhancement Project, on the North Tour Loop at the Observation Blind Trail of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.
Hundreds of native pollinator-friendly shrubs, milkweed, and wildflowers were planted in this area, hand-watered, and more accessible trails were added.
This project is part of the River for Monarchs initiative, building pollinator-friendly sites along the Rio Grande Corridor to support the migration of the Monarch butterfly.
I asked one of the volunteers, “What single piece of knowledge would you like me to come away with from this event?”, and was gifted with explanations that completely reshaped my understanding of the Monarch. (I have to remember that question for future interactions!)
Monarch butterflies migrate up from Mexico, and when they arrive in this area during the spring, milkweed has not started to flower. But that doesn’t matter, because Monarchs lay their eggs on the leaves of this plant and the caterpillars eat the toxic leaves and then become toxic themselves to predators.
The toxicity of milkweed is why farmers who raise cattle and horses tend to eradicate the plant, so the food source for the Monarch is disappearing, unless we act.