by Andrew Mount, Volunteer Associate
Pulling weeds doesn’t have to be a chore—when you’re surrounded by beautiful Utah scenery in the company of awesome people, weeding can be downright fun.
For the past two years, Trust volunteer Dorothy Lamm has made it her personal mission to remove invasive weeds from a little slice of southern Utah. She, along with about a dozen other dedicated volunteers, have travelled in wind, rain, and lightning to the Ten-Mile Allotment located in Utah’s third tallest mountain range, the Tushar Mountains. In both 2014 and 2015, Dorothy and volunteers removed thousands of wooly mullein and musk thistle from this remote location; just look at all those bags in the photo below—that’s just one load! We’ll be returning again this summer to do more work. Sign up for the trip today!
So why is the Trust doing this? What’s the point? The answer is more interesting and complex than you might think.
Since 2007, the Grand Canyon Trust has been working in the Tushar Mountains alongside the U.S. Forest Service, grazing permittees, scientists, and others to restore ecosystem health in the area. Part of the project involved fencing off a 47-acre area within the aforementioned Ten-Mile Allotment. Called the Price Spring Exclosure, this reference area remained free of cattle and allowed us to study the effects that grazing has on the land outside the fence. We completed the exclosure in 2009 and have been checking up on it ever since.
In October 2015, after six years without cattle in the Price Spring Exclosure, the Forest Service allowed them inside and the results were disastrous. Wildflowers, native grasses, and young aspen were mowed down, leaving bare dirt, trampled springs, erosion, and manure. The cows even trampled and ate plants they normally avoid: sagebrush, roses, rabbitbrush, and lupine (which is toxic to cattle). Six years of recovery, up in smoke. Or more accurately, up in a cloud of dust.
Now in our 10th year of working on the project, the Trust is not ready to throw up our hands. This is where YOU come in. You, the public, paid for this fence. Volunteers helped build it. Dorothy Lamm and others worked hard to improve the area inside it. The Forest Service can only understand the damage cattle grazing causes by knowing what ungrazed areas look like.
This is not a private ranch; it is public land, and you can help protect it through your voice and your direct actions.
This July, we will return to Price Spring and continue our efforts to protect and restore this special place. While we’re there, we will also document the damage from the 2015 grazing incident—likely an increase in invasive species because of the bare soil the cattle left behind.
It’s amazing to see the transformation that removing cattle from the land can make. This year, we will begin that process again, giving the land a chance to breathe and time to heal.
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