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SIERRA VISTA — Rattlesnakes, wet feet and searing heat were a few of the dangers, but they weren’t enough to keep volunteers from tracking surface water for the sake of the San Pedro River Saturday.
More than 100 people worked to measure surface water along the San Pedro River for the Bureau of Land Management and The Nature Conservancy’s annual wet/dry mapping of the river.
It was the 10th year of the survey, which gives researchers data on the health of this regions only perennial flowing river.
Every year the data is collected in June, when the river is usually at it’s driest.
 Teams of volunteers conducted an annual mapping of the San Pedro River on Saturday for The Nature Conservancy and the Bureau of Land Management. This group starting at the Charleston Bridge and continuing north is instructed by Ted Mouras, second from the left, to record information about the river. (Suzanne Cronn•Herald/Review) |
And some areas were certainly dry, said Ted Mouras, one of the volunteers.
Mouras and the other volunteers from “Team 7” including Doug Snow, Regina Rutledge and Alan Blixt, hiked about four miles of the San Pedro River from Charleston Bridge north to Boston Mill.
After recording their starting point on a handheld GPS, they measured the starting and stopping points of the river, where breaks between surface water reached more than 30 feet in length.
Early on their way downstream, the river appeared to stop, but Snow found the river had just shifted course and was behind a ridge.
“It’s just the natural way rivers meander and change their course,” Mouras said.
They quickly noticed signs of cattle, which aren’t supposed to be in the protected area but make their way there when fences are cut, Mouras said. It’s a problem the BLM has been working to solve because the cattle are destructive to the river ecosystem when they graze and trample the vegetation.
“I think we’re gonna find that it’s continuous,” Mouras said of the cattle signs. Eventually the group came across a cow and her calf.
But they saw much more than bovines. Gila monsters, Gray Hawks, a coatamundi and deer. Someone had also seen a mountain lion in the area they walked along just a few weeks ago, Mouras said.
“It’s a pretty wild stretch.”
They also found a beaver dam and lodge and a Gray Hawk nest, which volunteers were also asked to look for.
The two species rely on the river, as do many others, said Holly Richter, the Upper San Pedro program director for The Nature Conservancy.
Snakes, raccoons, turtles, owls, skunk and other wildlife were also seen on the walks. Richter spied both a Great Horned Owl and Gray Hawk eating their prey during her 10-mile river horseback ride from the Tombstone gauge to St. David.
The number of wildlife observations may have been higher as volunteers started shortly after dawn to beat the heat, but they were still striking, she said.
“I think what that really reminded me of is how important this water is for them,” Richter said. “From coatamundis to tadpoles, they’re all honing in to that water.”
Some wildlife were noticeably absent as Team 7 continued on its trek.
Last June they saw three beaver dens, but this year they saw just one, Mouras said.
The large cottonwood trees that shaded much of their hike were dropping their leaves in one area where the river was dry, indicating drought conditions.
“That kind of concerned me because I’ve never seen that in this stretch,” Mouras said. Almost the entire length of the group’s walk from Charleston Bridge to Boston Mill was wet last year, but this year it seemed like just half was, he said.
And other signs have indicated this is a drier year on the river, he said.
“Recently the Charleston gauge recorded no water. It was about the third time the river that has happened in the past five years,” Mouras said.
Before then the river had never ceased flowing there, since the gauge was put in place, about 70 years ago, he said.
He hopes the news will also be a “wake up call.”
“It’s time for a little more action,” he said.
Though the factors that affect the river are complex, each year they collect data like the wet/dry map.
“It helps us unravel those complex relationships,” Richter said. That’s also why the 10-year milestone for the annual mapping has been such an exciting one, she said.
Rutledge hopes their work mapping the river helps protect the river so future generations can enjoy it.
“Especially in the middle of the desert,” she said.
About 122 miles of the river, including about seven miles in northern Mexico, were mapped as far north as the Gila River, where the San Pedro River ends.
The surface water locations and other data collected are expected to be published later this summer.
Herald/Review reporter Laura Ory can be reached at 515-4683 or by e-mail at svhnews@transedge.com.
BAC wrote on Jun 24, 2008 5:54 PM: