Fire illustrates fragility of Spring Mountains

Friday, June 9, 2000 | 11:15 a.m.

Charred habitat

U.S. Forest Service officials say the Buck Springs fire burned habitat suitable for five plants, two butterflies and a chipmunk that live only in the Spring Mountains. They are:

The wildfire that charred 2,000 acres in the Spring Mountains this week also threatened some plants and animals that exist nowhere else on Earth.

Five plants, two types of butterflies and the Palmer chipmunk, found only in the Spring Mountains, live in the type of terrain that burned in the Buck Springs fire, said Debra Couche, U.S. Forest Service ecologist for the Las Vegas Ranger District.

They're among 24 species found only in the Spring Mountains -- 16 of which are endemic to the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area, Forest Service records show. "Endemic" means they are native to that area and found nowhere else.

These unique species include 14 plants, seven butterflies, the Palmer chipmunk, the Nevada unnamed ant and the "undescribed springsnail."

Couche said on Thursday she discovered reasons to hope for a rapid recovery of the burn area. Soil tests indicated there will be some erosion, but grasses and ground cover seeds will quickly sprout, she said.

While hiking among the scorched ponderosa and pinyon pine trees, Couche discovered elk, birds and a Palmer's chipmunk trying to reclaim their territory.

Couche spent most of this past week on the fire line or in an aircraft overhead surveying the damage to plants and animals in the burned areas. She said crews "worked very hard to be light on the land so as to not disturb the ground surface any more than necessary."

She said she had not confirmed whether any bristlecone pine trees had burned, adding that they are not predominant in the fire area.

Bristlecone pines are the world's oldest trees, capable of living as long as 4,000 years. A 1981 wildfire in Cold Creek canyon burned some of these ancient trees.

Betty Blodgett, spokeswoman for the Las Vegas Ranger District, emphasized that the area burned generally provides the correct type of habitat for some of the rare Spring Mountains species. But that doesn't mean any of them will be forever lost.

"It means they tend to be in this particular habitat. It doesn't mean it was prevalent," Blodgett said. "(The fire area) is not a key bio-diversity hot spot. Now if it had been up in the Charleston Peak area, that has a real bio-diversity hot spot."

Residents new to the Las Vegas Valley -- and maybe some old-timers too -- may not realize how rare many of the plants, animals and bugs that live in the Spring Mountains Range and its national recreation area actually are.

But the range with peaks rising upwards of 12,000 feet is an ecological island with a population of plants and animals found in few places across the West, said Monica Schwalbach, assistant director of wildlife and terrestrial ecology for the U.S. Forest Service in Washington, D.C.

"It's a lot for a small area. But it's typical for the Southwest and the Great Basin area where the environment has changed so much," Schwalbach said.

"Species have become isolated because the weather has become hotter and drier. Species became caught on mountaintops as the terrain became inhospitable for moving back and forth. That's how we ended up with endemics," she said.

These changes aren't the kind logged in terms of decades or centuries but in terms of millennia, Schwalbach said. As mountain ranges pushed apart, the plants and animals living there adapted to smaller, more isolated regions with harsher weather conditions.

Conservatively, the Spring Mountains have been an island in the desert for 15,000 years, said Peter Brussard, a biology professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.

"But it could be a lot longer," he says.

The Snake Range near Great Basin National Park near the Nevada-Utah border and the Sheep Range, which straddles the Clark-Lincoln county line north of Las Vegas, also have endemic species. And the Carson Range outside Carson City has some plants and animals native only to the Sierra Nevada, of which it is an extension.

But none has the quantity of endemic species found in the Spring Mountains, he said.

"I don't think anything compares to the Springs range. It's really geologically isolated. It really does stick out there by itself," Brussard said.

Blodgett said it could take several weeks to determine exactly what species and how many were burned in the blaze that gained attention when it became a 160-acre brush fire June 4.

Investigators today said lightning caused the Buck Springs fire. Wildfires are a natural occurrence that clear out plants that are competing for precious water, light and space.

And Wheeler Pass was ready for a burn.

"That area was real thick with heavy vegetation," Blodgett said.