A panorama of Arnett Creek, where Wild Arizona has been working to remove invasive plants since 2016. Photo by Jonathan Patt.
Written by Dexter Kopas, Wild Stew Field Crew Leader.
Out in the field, Wild Arizona’s crews started just like any other hitch. We met up at our storage yard in Tucson, loaded the tools we needed into our trailers, and drove out to our two job sites, excited for a productive, fulfilling week. Chloe, Eric, Sam, Kile, Iman, and Max weren’t going far, targeting some improvements on a new loop of trail in Tucson’s backyard wilderness, the Pusch Ridge. Slightly further afield, Dexter, Sage, Foster, Charlotte, Viola, and Clay drove two hours to resume work on the popular Hackberry Spring Trail in the storied Superstition Wilderness.
Before and after building steps up to a high boulder to make the trail more accessible to hikers and horses. Photos by Sage Bradford.
Up there in the Pusch Ridge Wilderness, the crew was working to improve sections of the Pontatoc Trail ahead of the scheduled opening of the new connector trail that will form a loop between Pontatoc and the neighboring Finger Rock Trail. The main focus was improving safety in areas where large rocks caused difficult and dangerous step-ups, as well as removing smaller rocks that presented as tripping hazards, creating drainage where possible, and light brushing maintenance. Over at Hackberry, our trail aficionados touched up some steps from the last hitch, built a ramp to smooth out a scrambling section of rocky trail, constructed seven check steps, stacked five cairns to guide hikers across drainages, and dug in a drainage ditch.
Unfortunately, it was here on the third day of hitch that some developments outside the dusty world of fieldwork reached us. A memo had been released from the White House Office of Management and Budget directing a freeze on federal funding of all grants and agreements. This directly impacts us, since we are under agreement with the U.S. Forest Service (a federal government agency) for both of these projects, in addition to over 80% of the work we do. Even though this memo was later rescinded and the funding freeze temporarily blocked by a Federal judge, the overall confusion raised concerns as to whether we would be able to get paid for our work.
Dexter and two volunteers trim a cottonwood branch for planting. Photo by Nizhoni Baldwin.
Because of that concern, we decided to temporarily pull off federally funded projects mid-way through the hitch and shifted both crews to a State of Arizona-funded project nearby. The hardworking, dedicated, and adaptable crew we are so proud of packed up and drove to a familiar campsite outside Superior, AZ, to continue riparian restoration projects that we have been working on for nearly nine years in Arnett Creek and the past year in adjacent Queen Creek.
Dexter, Foster, and Sage make a narrow hole in the ground for a cottonwood sapling. Photo by Iman Chatila.
From Saturday until Wednesday, we removed seven large Canary Island Date Palm trees, countless Mexican palo verde shrubs, some small Tree of Heaven regrowth, and two Chinese pistache trees. We filled five large bags of trash and carried them out of the creek, along with four old car tires. In addition to disposing of undesirable things, we began the next phase of planting native willow and cottonwood trees, bringing habitat, food, and shade to the area (shade being important for lowering the temperature of the creek so it is a better habitat for fish and other aquatic wildlife). We continued our scientific monitoring of the diversity of invertebrates in the ecosystem, a key indicator of the success of our efforts to improve the health of this crucial aquatic ecoystem in the desert. Along the way, we were assisted by our volunteer coordinator, Nizhoni, who helped to involve four local volunteers with us on Sunday.
Lynne and Max search for invertebrates. Photo by Iman Chatila.
Yes, despite some setbacks, we managed to stay productive and pay our crew members for their valuable contributions. However, Wild Arizona is certainly not out of the woods yet. While the federal funding freeze has continued to be blocked by two Federal judges as the cases work through the court system, uncertainty remains regarding receiving payment from our Forest Service partners. For the time being, we are continuing to focus on projects that are privately or state-funded. Being a smaller non-profit, we do not have the pool of our own funds to justify taking the chance working on Federal projects that could end up unable to compensate us for our work.
Charlotte stomps in the mud to stir up invertebrates and catch them in a net. Photo by Dexter Kopas.Chloe bucks an invasive Canary Island Date Palm in Arnett Creek. Photo by Jonathan Patt.
As we are often reminded when hikers thank us over a hundred times a day out on the trail, the service we provide is enjoyed freely by a wide swath of the public. Though nobody ever got into conservation work ’cause they wanted to make the big bucks, the truth is we can’t do it without reliable funding. We would love to continue doing this professional work that we find so rewarding. If you would like to help us continue making that happen, here are some ways to get involved.
Become a monthly supporter — monthly gifts provide steady income and give us the nimbleness to respond to emerging threats and opportunities.
Join us at our volunteer events — make a difference directly out in the field. Volunteer time is an essential part of our agreements for project work and is used as match towards the overall grant, allowing our staff to get paid for their work and providing additional value to our partners with even more work completed per project. By volunteering with us, you are directly funding other Wild Arizona projects.
Sage and Foster show off their newly-planted cottonwood. Photo by Dexter Kopas.The Hackberry crew poses on the trail. Photo by Sage Bradford.
To close, and leave you as fired up as I am, here is a piece written by our Conservation and Wildlife Associate, Nico Lorenzen:
When we talk green, we’re not talking money. We instead speak of our forests and how to keep them resolute in the face of ever-worsening fires. When our Wilderness Stewardship crew talks bucks, they’re speaking about the antlered, woodland denizens. When we are making that scratch, we’re digging tread. We’re scratching in new trail with our crew and volunteers to ensure that there are safe and sustainable paths through our public lands.
If you ask about having a nest egg or stocks, you’re liable to get a litany of birds we have spotted or suppositions on which species of native fish occupy the nearby creek. And when we say freeze, we will tell you of winter’s frigid hitches in which headlamp light and the crunch of icy sleeping bags greet the crew each morning. This type of freeze we handle through a warmth encountered in smashing pick mattocks into trail, doublejack hammers into rock, or with wily smiles to our saw partner as we crosscut through a fallen tree.
A bird nest in a tree. Photo by Dexter Kopas.A hackberry tree in Arnett Creek showing its hexagonal branch structure. Photo by Jonathan Patt.
Our work has met a new freeze. One that skews any meteorology. When we take on jobs we do so in locations of conservation importance, as outlined by clear scientific principle. Yet this current funding freeze that neglects pre-agreed contracts and a federal judge’s explicit restraining order reeks of something far more mercurial.
We at Wild Arizona do not care about the color of the ticket you run on; we care about our wild lands and those who live and recreate on them. Whether it be in the silted sands of our desert arroyos or the sea of green sky island conifers, we ask that the funding freeze is lifted in name and in fact. Because, we have work to do and the will and calloused hands to do it.
The result after two Canary Island Date Palms were removed from Arnett Creek. Photo by Jonathan Patt.
