BY MIKE POPEJOY
Imagine standing at the edge of a forest, looking out across an opening of sagebrush, wildflowers, and grasses. Suddenly a strange quavering caw cuts through the weighty silence and you see a blue-grey bird descending from the treetops to the ground. It begins poking around in the soil, seemingly in search of something. The sleek bird jumps to another spot, again investigating the soil. This time it comes up with a few seeds in its mouth, and alights on the wind back to the forest.
DAVID MENKE, U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
This is the pinyon jay, and the fruits of its labor the nuts of the pinyon pine tree. The jay had hidden the nuts underground for safekeeping, having harvested them from the pine when its branches were thick with pinecones. In a surprising way, by taking the pine’s nuts the jay also gives back. The jay finds the nuts it hid about 95 percent of the time, but the ones it misses now have the chance to grow into new trees. The pinyon jay depends on the pinyon pine for its survival, and the pine depends on the jay to plant its offspring.
The pinyon jay makes its home in forests of pinyon pine and juniper trees. Pinyon and juniper forests (“PJ” for short) blanket much of southern Utah, including Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments. Often called a “pygmy forest,” these stout trees are able to grow and survive lower in elevation than any other trees on the Colorado Plateau, in the absence of abundant water. This means that they must be hardy, able to withstand both hot, dry summers and cold, snowy winters. Pinyon and juniper trees have learned not only to survive, but to thrive in the harsh climate of the Colorado Plateau, living for upwards of 500 years.
In addition to being adept at scratching out a living amongst harsh conditions, pinyon and juniper form the backbone of a fascinating ecosystem. The pinyon pine is a pillar of biodiversity in these forests, supporting around 1,000 different species. In addition to the pinyon jay, the Clark’s nutcracker also helps to disperse the next generation of trees, and can carry up to 95 pinyon nuts in a special pouch beneath its tongue as far as 13 miles away. There is a bee that builds its nest out of pinyon pine sap, called pitch. And there is a wasp that places her eggs inside the eggs of an insect called the pinyon midge; the wasp grows within the midge egg as it develops, and then chews its way out of its dead host.
TIM PETERSON
These trees have also supported human life for thousands of years, long before the arrival of European colonizers. Pinyon pine nuts are famously one of the best sources of plant protein in the Southwest, and have served as a staple food source for Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Indigenous peoples used pinyon pine pitch in the waterproofing of vessels, and in a study of cultural uses of plants in Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument, juniper was found to have 113 different uses, more than any other genus of plants. These uses range from various forms of medicine to combat ailments to making sandals to using the seeds in musical rattles. Moreover, approximately 85 percent of archaeological sites in Utah are found in pinyon and juniper forests.
This web of life in pinyon and juniper forests is currently threatened with eradication across large swaths of the Utah landscape, including in your national monuments. Federal agencies are proposing the large-scale removal of these trees from public lands by means of mechanical obliteration, often in the service of private cattle-grazing operations. Once the trees are gone, exotic grass species are often planted, further degrading the delicate natural balance of these forests. The sensitive biological soil crusts that hold the desert soil together are pulverized, and the native vegetation that supports resident wildlife populations — from native bees to rabbits and coyotes to the seed-collecting birds — is replaced with plant species from across the globe whose primary purpose is to feed cattle. Replacing native vegetation with exotic species for exotic domestic animals (cows) is more akin to farming for private benefit than stewarding these spectacular public lands for the benefit of all Americans.
REUBEN JOLLEY
Pinyon and juniper trees have faced this threat before. Between 1950 and 2003, pinyon and juniper forests were razed across an area of public lands significantly larger than Capitol Reef, Zion, Arches, and Bryce Canyon national parks combined. And that was just on lands managed by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This generally involves the uprooting and toppling of the trees, or shredding them to bits with heavy machinery.
When federal agencies began eliminating significant stretches of pinyon and juniper after World War II, it was done unabashedly for cattle. After destroying the forest, they planted exotic species for cows to eat, with little to no public input or awareness. A favorite method of the federal agencies was chaining — dragging a ship anchor chain between two bulldozers, ripping out trees in its path. One might think that such a coarse and brutish approach would have been abandoned long ago for something more ecologically sensitive, but not so. Chaining is cheap and efficient, ecological costs be damned. To chaining has been added mastication: using heavy equipment to shred trees from the top down, reducing them to a pile of wood chips in a matter of seconds.
UTAH DIVISION OF WILDLIFE RESOURCES
Nowadays all kinds of reasons are given for pinyon and juniper removal, from reducing the threat of fire to improving wildlife habitat. It is often difficult to tell if a project is a front for cattle grazing or is being undertaken for more legitimate reasons. And we do think there are justifiable reasons for removing some trees, such as reducing fire risk in the vicinity of homes, or protecting areas historically occupied by the greater sage grouse, which is under threat across the West. And pinyon and juniper trees have increased in number over the last 150 years, in some areas becoming more dense, and in others expanding into areas where they were previously absent. But when a forest is leveled and then seeded with exotic species for cattle, as we have witnessed in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the intention behind the removal is clear: transform native vegetation on public lands into a feedlot for cows.
Such efforts to remove the natural plants from a landscape have far-reaching effects. Establishing a feedlot of exotic species has long-lasting implications, displacing native plants and animals. After tree removal, pinyon pines may not grow back, or may only do so in very small numbers. Pinyon is particularly vulnerable to increasing temperatures and decreasing moisture, both of which are likely to continue under a changing climate. Thus pinyon’s support of a diverse array of wildlife is also under threat. For instance, the pinyon jay population has dropped by an estimated 85 percent since 1970, possibly the largest and most sustained decline of any bird distributed through the intermountain West.
Furthermore, eradicating trees from thousands of acres is expensive, and it’s being financed by you, the taxpayer. Recent removal of pinyon and juniper across 1,600 acres near Cedar City, Utah purportedly cost almost $900,000. When you consider that, in some areas, trees are removed from hundreds of thousands of acres, the public has a right to demand accountability for how our tax dollars are being used. And when a project amounts to just another subsidy for a private cattle business, we have a right to demand better.
TIM PETERSON
Over the past two years, the Trust has worked to improve or stop a myriad of pinyon and juniper removal projects on Forest Service and BLM lands, in national monuments, and bordering national parks. Working with conservation partners, we’ve been out on the land looking at former and proposed tree-removal areas, and written comments and proposed alternatives to the land-management agencies. We challenged a proposal in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument before the Interior Department’s Board of Land Appeals, and, in September 2019, we won, at least temporarily halting pinyon and juniper removal on over 30,000 acres. Since then, the BLM has withdrawn two other proposals to remove pinyon and juniper across large stretches of the monument.
We believe that in select instances it is reasonable to remove pinyon and juniper trees to restore the overall health of the land, but that such removal must be undertaken judiciously, and for the right reasons. Some of the areas proposed for tree removal are in need of such restoration, and we seek to work with federal land managers, both in the BLM and in the Forest Service, in pursuit of that goal. We also advocate for tree-removal methods that are less damaging, such as thinning trees by hand rather than with heavy machinery, and utilizing prescribed fire, where appropriate. Regrettably, the Interior Department seems to be more interested in allowing a select few to profit off our public lands at the expense of native plants and animals and against the wishes of the vast majority of Americans.
The recently approved management plans for Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments permit the worst of the worst when it comes to pinyon and juniper: chaining forests into oblivion and planting exotic species for cattle.
The Trust and our partners filed lawsuits challenging President Trump’s unlawful decision to shrink these national monuments, which are moving through the courts. Because the new management plans for the monuments flow from President Trump’s unlawful decision, we are seeking court orders that would overturn not only the decision shrinking the monuments, but also the new management plans. We’ll continue to resist pinyon and juniper projects that sacrifice native plants and animals on the altar of the cow, both in our national monuments and elsewhere. There are federal land managers out there who care about conserving the diverse and fascinating array of native species on the landscape, rather than transforming our public lands into a factory for beef production. They need to hear from you, and we hope you’ll join us in our efforts to stand up for these magnificent trees.
Mike Popejoy is a research associate with the Grand Canyon Trust. He has experienced many fulfilling days amidst the pinyon and juniper trees of the Colorado Plateau, and some somber ones where the trees are now gone.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The views expressed by Advocate contributors are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Grand Canyon Trust.
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