Has anyone visited the Galisteo Dam and basin recently?
We visited yesterday...
The bare, herbicided, dam face is still greatly bare though rabbit brush and saltbush are growing back up... the grasses are not...
Below the dam face the basin sits... the mowed tamarisk stands out stark against the lacking grass...
But what is this? on either side of the basin along the dam the tamarisk is brown and thin and looking dead...
Or dying as the case may be...
Few trees are blooming this year
Most of the tamarisk is as would be expected this year, a bit dry, but robust after a few years of mechanical pruning...
our view to the east is obstructed by happy tamarisk trees..
A number of trees were already dead when the mowing was initiated... those did not come back.
And the carbon continues to remain untouched and undigested on the surface, blocking the soil from the sunshine, and clogging the soil (without nitrogen emitting goats) with unusable waste.
We had been told of a friend whose bees were all gone after the tamarisk in the galisteo river were gobbled up by bugs. In this drought many many pollinators rely on this nutrition rich tree's blooms
But now these little buggers are decimating the bosque's tamarisk population.. Many of you may be cheering to hear these bugs are wiping out the state's tamarix, but I ask: What next? These voracious beetles will need another food source when all the salt cedar is eaten up...
The dam is full of these beetles. The ground is swarming with the larvae searching for new trees to destroy and hundreds of trees are feeding millions of these bugs.
The trees along the channel that were left to keep the banks intact and the river channelized...
are all but dead.
Just as with GoatScaping, it will likely take several years to really kill the trees. But unlike the Goats, these beetles will leave behind dry skeletons and nothing added to the ground
This invasion seems to be recent, few trees were swwarming with adults and only two large patches were in evidence, though the creek-bank trees and beyond are crisped-looking...
With very little life left... But enough, the battle is not over...
So, the dam face has been poisoned with glyphosate, and the basin is being decimated by "Biologic Control" in the form of exotic and invasive beetles...
What a beautiful land this was becoming with the goats' hard work. The transformation has been halted,
Will the Corps ever again have money for improving the environment?
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