Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area and Wilderness

Gunnison Gorge NCA/Wilderness Float Trip - August 27–28, 2001

• The scientists and managers on the Gunnison River voyage discussed recreational and aquatic water use, cultural resource, invasive weed, educational geology, stream ecology, and human waste issues.

Gunnison Gorge Mancos Shale Field Trip - August 28, 2001

• We reviewed past structural controls to divert or retain water, sediment, and salts. Such projects are very costly to maintain; maintaining them has been the highest priority next to well-plugging for reducing salts coming off BLM lands. Because the sites are being disturbed by OHVs, discussion centered on removing the structures. The Colorado Basin Salinity Control Forum should be made aware of BLM’s problems and future actions.

• The present emphasis is on assessing the conditions of these lands in reference to plant communities, cover, invasive species, the five land health standards, and using more "ecologically oriented" approaches under rangeland reform. The five land health standards are: ensure healthy soils; protect healthy and properly functioning riparian systems; maintain and protect healthy, productive plant and animal communities; maintain and enhance the habitat of threatened and endangered species; and ensure that water quality meets States’ standards.

• New measures are required in the land use plans. Where lands do not meet standards for renewing grazing permits, BLM must make adjustments within 1 year.

• Landscapes have become fragmented. How does such fragmentation affect wildlife and plant community habitat? Much of the vegetation is now composed of invasives (halogeton and cheatgrass). Can past native communities recover, given today’s land uses, human values, and warmer environments? Native forbs are lacking, further reducing deer numbers.

• All ongoing work by the USGS and others, including the use of satellite imagery, needs to be looked at to see if such procedures can be used to predict plant occurrences and to assess different restoration needs.

• The work by CSU graduate students Karen Isenhardt on the fire history of pinyon-juniper woodlands in the Montrose area and by Andrew Beaver on fire histories in the Grand Junction area will be shared with efforts being proposed for fire risk assessment at the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.

• There are also issues of road management. What effects do existing roads have on plants, habitats, sediment, salts, selenium, and watershed structures?

• Irrigation in the valley accelerates the weathering of Mancos shale, creating deeper soils and changing depths of soluble selenium. When Mancos undergoes mechanical disturbance, more selenium is made soluble and mobile, especially when water hits the land. Then more selenium gets into the plant, animal, and atmospheric chains.

• Problems exist with tamarisk control along the Gunnison River; we cut and treat again and again with chemicals. We need to look into biological controls (e.g., the black-and-yellow striped Chinese beetle that devours the leaves). A good contact is Debra Eberts, botanist for the Bureau of Reclamation. Most agree that the introduction of tamarisk for erosion control was one of the worst environmental disasters to befall stream ecosystems in the West. We need to allow rivers to periodically spread out over adjacent bottomlands. However, potential conflicts with the beetle and the southwestern willow flycatcher will need to be resolved first.

• A common theme was the need to understand soils, geology, water, vegetation, invasives, and the relationship to habitat, grazing, recreation, and cultural uses. The word sustainability means different things (and has different thresholds) to different people and resource programs; it is a slippery slope. We must address compatibility among the assorted resource uses.

• Science is more than research. It can include education, inventory taking, analysis or "mining" of existing data, transfer of technology, and communication, as well as investigation. Not a single program should dictate science needs, but an integration of natural and human sciences in relation to new uses and people’s values. Solutions must address adjoining lands, too, and not just BLM lands, national conservation areas, and national monuments.

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument Field Trip - August 29, 2001

• Much has been done comparing archeological discoveries with established collections for interpretations. Lots of work remains to catalog materials into a database for future access to research (60 percent complete). Raw clay, ceramics, charcoal, and remains of tools need to be studied. There are health issues because of the past use of arsenic for preserving specimens. BLM will be reconstructing the climate control system for the Anasazi Heritage Center.

• Lowry Ruins are open for recreation and public use. There are artifacts from the site existing in Chicago. Archaeological clearance is important in order for us to manage the land resources.

• Many issues must be addressed at the monument. Grazing is the biggest issue. How does grazing as a lifestyle relate to cultural values? Oil and gas issues are not a big problem. However, recreation uses are a challenge with regard to cultural values.

• The relationships of fire, vegetation, grazing, water quality, recreation, and cultural values are extremely important. There are many privately held water rights; monument designation did not give the BLM water rights.

McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area and Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness

McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area and Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness Field Trip - August 30, 2001

• A pitch was made to extrapolate geologic mapping from the Colorado National Monument to the adjacent McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area. Geology (along with climate, organisms, topography, and age) is one of the five factors of soil formation that influences vegetation, and hence the occurrence of fires, invasive species, and limitations to land uses such as grazing and recreation. Dating various deposits helps put dates on past cultures that occupied the area. BLM needs to include identification of the shrink and swell clays to predict where failures of homes and roads will occur. Rapid growth along the borders of the NCA and monument has shown the need for this.

• Water quality investigations are important to plan for measures to protect human and aquatic health. For BLM, descriptions of changes in loads of sediment, salinity, and selenium is needed. Most work has been tied to the BOR and improvements in irrigation. Both the Gunnison River and Colorado River have significant levels of selenium to warrant study and remediation. Very little data on surface waters from the BLM exists, despite findings that overall trends in salt and selenium are in downward trends at the Utah and Colorado State line.

• USGS can provide planning information on collaborative training, conflict management, stakeholder analysis, and a process to work out problems. The people of the Colorado Plateau are complex with many divergent and changing values. It is important to identify the people’s perception of the environment in which they live.

• In the field, we observed portions of the McInnis Canyons NCA that are in need of restoration—a very stark, dry, and hot environment where a couple seasons of reduced moisture and high temperatures led to failures in restoring native habitats. We saw 7-year-old fire rehabilitations where several native wheat grasses, four-wing saltbush, Indian rice grass, etc., had died. Cheatgrass predominates today, with a smattering of volunteer globemallow and gaetta grass trying to come in. Sagebrush communities killed by fire are now replaced by cheatgrass.

• Other issues are the use of mountain bikes in the wilderness study area (WSA), a road into Rattlesnake Canyon Arches, and the use of personal watercraft on the Colorado River. Generally, the wilderness area meets the land health standards.

• The distribution of rain and water (coming in fewer, higher amount events) has not helped restore the native plants. We are missing important data to help with the theory that storm events are becoming more local and more intense, leading to more droughts and localized devastating floods.

• The healthiest sites are the ones that are steep and rocky. Such pinyon-juniper sites respond well to restoration. But how does one keep a mosaic of open grass areas (not cheatgrass) for support of bighorn sheep? The flat and deeper soil deposit areas are often denuded of native grasses. They also receive only 8 inches of moisture and tend to be saline.

• Just like to the south, mule deer are absent. Elk and bighorn sheep preside. Fire management is important with regard to the structure of vegetative communities that are closely reflected according to specific soils and site changes.

• There is a need for a better understanding of recreation-based resource benefits from management. We cannot afford to lose cottonwood communities, which are susceptible to fire. Flooding events are important for cottonwoods to keep ahead of tamarisk spreading. Knapweed enters all too often.

• We still need a better knowledge of how much fire should occur in the wilderness. Fire often leaves a void that invasive species fill. We also need to know how and when to rehabilitate after fire events.

• Native fish are struggling, a result of habitat problems, competition, and predation. In recent years, we have lacked high-peak flows in spring.

• We must bring together research on a grand scale so that it can be applied at site-specific locations and vice versa.

• Bird populations of the grey vireo and Scott’s oriole are in decline.