Editorial: Smoke trees point toward bigger issue

Thursday, July 1, 2004 | 10:14 a.m.

The millions of visitors to Lake Mead National Recreation Area cannot all be expected to have degrees in dendrology, the study of trees. So they can't be blamed for not knowing a smoke tree from a dead tree. The actions of many visitors, however, when they chop up smoke trees for firewood, can be faulted, even if they don't know any better. Smoke trees, not endangered in the Southwest but rare in Southern Nevada, grow naturally in parts of the recreation area. The trees have adapted to the desert by dropping all of their spring blossoms, and all of their leaves, at the onset of summer. To the untrained eye, they appear dead. This leaves them vulnerable to campers, who saw off their branches, or chop them down, or sometimes hook them to ropes attached to their pickups and tear them out of the ground.

A smoke-tree census in 2001 at the 10-acre Nevada Telephone Cove, a popular campground in the recreation area near Laughlin, found 146 smoke trees. A 2003 census found only 128 -- with more than 30 of them severely damaged. If the destruction remains at this pace, the trees will be gone in 10 or 15 years, and the springtime show of their magnificent blue blossoms will be a thing of the past.

The pending demise of the smoke tree is an example of a larger problem at Lake Mead and other national parks and recreation areas. With 8 million to 10 million visitors every year, the Lake Mead recreation area is one of the most popular destinations in the whole national park system. Yet while visitor volume is growing, the number of law-enforcement rangers is dwindling. In 2002, the park employed 45 permanent rangers. Today there are 39. This is a trend throughout the national park system. In March, the Associated Press reported on a disclosure by an association of retired National Park Service employees, which documented quiet but ongoing and damaging service cuts. The association concluded that the park service is being underfunded by as much as $600 million.

With only one permanent ranger for every 250,000 visitors at Lake Mead, it's little wonder why campers are getting away with destroying resources. It's illegal in national parks and recreation areas to cut down trees or their limbs, or even to collect fallen branches. But when the national parks are so severely underfunded, what are the chances of a ranger being around to catch anybody? Or of there being enough signs to inform people? Rangers at Lake Mead are doing what they can -- fencing off some of the smoke trees, for example (although fence posts too are being chopped down for firewood) -- but what's really needed is appropriate funding for appropriate supervision.