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Sunday February 27 12:03 PM ET
Group Works To Kill Salt Cedar
By MICHELLE KOIDIN Associated Press Writer
PECOS, Texas (AP) - Cottonwoods once lined the Pecos River near the West Texas town with the same name. The riverbank was home to snakes, toads and rabbits. Cotton, alfalfa, asparagus and pear trees grew on nearby fields.
Today that land is covered with desert scrub. It is used for grazing cattle, and not much else.
Along the river, there is a jungle made up of a sole species: a foreign tree called salt cedar, an invader that hogs water and adds large amounts of salt to the soil and river.
Now, a coalition of government agricultural agencies has launched a project to get rid of the culprit responsible for forcing out native plants and wildlife.
``If we make it work, you're going to see it expanded all over Texas and to other states,' said Barney G. Lee of the Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service. ``Everybody is interested in controlling the salt cedar.'
The salt cedar, or tamarix, was brought over from Eurasia and planted across the western United States by government agencies in the early 1900s for erosion control.
Over the years, it has spread to almost every river, creek, stream and wash in the Southwest, infesting more than 1 million acres. Today there are as many as 3,000 salt cedars per acre along some parts of the Pecos River, which runs from the Rio Grande up through West Texas and New Mexico.
One plant alone may use 200 gallons of water a day, more than the amount consumed by a small family.
The scaly leafed tree, which stands from 8 feet to 35 feet tall, exudes salt from its leaves, dropping salt crystals to the ground. Native plants won't germinate in soil so salty. And animals have no use for the salt cedar's seeds and leaves, which lack nutrients.
``I would say this is the No. 1 threat to riparian ecosystem health in the western United States,' said C. Jack DeLoach, a USDA entomologist in Temple, Texas, who has imported salt cedar-eating beetles from Asia for a separate project.
The Pecos project is one of the most extensive using a herbicide arsenal to kill salt cedars.
Working just north of the town of Pecos, which is 210 miles east of El Paso, project managers sprayed along 28 miles of the river from a helicopter.
It was done back in September, the optimum time because that is when the plants are storing food in their roots for winter. To know if the spraying was successful, they have to wait until spring to see if the leaves grow back.
If it worked, the group will spray different segments each September. The $127,000 needed for the first round was donated by local water districts; project managers have applied for a grant through the Army Corps of Engineers for future attacks.
Terry S. Holder, county extension agent for Reeves and Loving counties, said the project is crucial because much of the land near the river cannot be used for farming anymore. Both the salt cedars and a long-running drought are to blame.
``We have good soil here, good land,' said Holder. ``It's just the water shortage.'
If many of the salt cedars are killed, he said, ``the quantity of water is going to come up, plus the quality of water is going to come up.'
Mike Harrison, who runs the 60,000-acre Dixieland Ranch bordered by the river, said he has to bring in feed for his cattle because grass won't grow in some parts.
``I don't know a single good thing about the salt cedar,' said Harrison, whose family has ranched in the area since 1913.
Landowners are eagerly awaiting the results of the first spraying.
The Pecos coalition was following the lead of scientists at a New Mexico State University branch in Artesia. Using the same herbicide, they managed to kill up to 90 percent of the salt cedars on 5,000 acres along the Pecos River in 1995 and '96. The trees were then knocked down and burned.
``We will never get rid of them totally, but the goal is to get them down to a population we can manage,' said New Mexico State brush and weed specialist Keith Duncan.
Meanwhile, in the beetle project, insects have been placed on salt cedars in secure cages at 10 sites in Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. Also known as Diorhabda elongata, the salt cedar leaf beetle eats nothing else, DeLoach said.
Federal authorities have not yet given approval to use the beetles outside of cages because of concerns over how they may affect the breeding habitat of the southwestern willow flycatcher. The endangered species has been nesting in salt cedars in some areas for lack of native trees. The bird is not found along the Pecos River.
The Pecos group is hoping to improve the quality of the water to the point that it could be used not just for irrigation and livestock but as drinking water. That's at least 20 or 30 years down the road, but in water-starved West Texas, even the possibility is exciting.
``It's a tremendous potential that could be tapped in the future,' said Lee. ``This is the first step.'
Foremost, though, is bringing back the natural vegetation and wildlife.
Lee is confident.
``Mother Nature will heal anything,' he said. ``We're just giving her some help to repair what we did to her.'
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