Tuesday, June 29, 2004 | 11:09 a.m.
A unique species of tree that is native to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area is being mistaken for firewood and chopped down by visitors who don't know any better, botanists at the park said.
Spiny and brownish-gray, the smoke trees in the Southwest have tremendous survival instincts. Exploding with delicate blue blossoms in late spring, they drop all their flowers and leaves by summer to conserve water. Using chlorophyll in their bark instead of their leaves, the trees convert sunlight into energy through photosynthesis.
It is that unique survival tactic that is contributing to the tree's demise near the park's arid Nevada Telephone Cove, on Lake Mohave near Laughlin. Visitors apparently think the trees are dead and use them for firewood, botanists said.
At last count in 2003, botanists at the park determined 128 smoke trees grew in the 10 acres of Nevada Telephone Cove, named for the telephone wires that run nearby. The cove is a popular campground for tourists. On Friday dozens of sport utility vehicles with boats and personal watercraft in tow lined the edge of the shore.
Two years earlier in 2001, as many as 146 trees grew in the cove, an alluvial wash just beyond Grapevine Canyon nearly 5 miles east of Highway 163.
According to Dianne Bangle, one of the park's botanists, about one-quarter of the remaining trees have been severely damaged. Branches have been sawed off, hacked and splintered.
Although it is illegal to cut down trees or tree limbs, collect fallen branches or otherwise harm living things on Park Service land, visitors have committed these acts of vandalism to use the wood to barbecue. Doing so is punishable with a fine of up to $500.
"It's only gotten worse," said Elizabeth Powell, also a botanist with the park. Powell has seen evidence suggesting some visitors have tied ropes around trees, hitched the ropes to the backs of their vehicles and dragged the trees out by their roots.
Park rangers in 2003 issued 134 citations to visitors for damaging the natural resources of the park, said Roxanne Dey, a spokeswoman for the recreation area. Dey said 10 of those citations were related specifically to plants.
Cracking down on visitors who disregard the law has proven difficult, said Margaret Goodro, a law enforcement ranger at Lake Mead.
Mirroring a national trend, the amount of land park rangers at Lake Mead must cover has increased as federal funds for hiring new rangers has decreased, she said. Lake Mead employs 39 permanent law enforcement rangers, Dey said, down from 45 such rangers in 2002.
The smoke tree -- also known by its scientific name, psorothamnus spinosus -- is not an endangered species, botanists said. A member of the pea family, the tree flourishes across the Sonoran Desert, which sweeps through southeastern California, western Arizona and portions of Mexico.
But the trees are rare in the Mojave Desert of Southern Nevada. And the cluster found at the cove near Lake Mojave represents the northernmost reaches of the species' natural range.
"The species itself is not in trouble," said Ann Pinzl, president of the Nevada Native Plant Society. "Rarity is not always endangerment."
Pinzl said she knows of one other cluster in the state, also near Laughlin. Powell and Bangle said they had never seen this other population, but they suspected those trees likely were not being harmed. Those trees grow in a sparsely populated area where few visitors go.
Meanwhile, Lake Mead welcomes 8 million to 10 million visitors every year, according to Dey. The park is the fifth most popular in the nation, Dey said.
And the number of summer visitors to Nevada Telephone Cove has more than doubled in recent years, from 3,833 in 1999 to 7,840 in 2002, Powell said.
At the same time, the ratio of rangers to visitors has widened, worrying the botanists.
"To cut down something that is very unique in Nevada for firewood is just terrible," Powell said. "We have something to show visitors that is unique, and they're being cut down by other visitors."
At Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park, where smoke trees also grow, officials there said they do not face the same problem, mostly because both parks receive far fewer visitors.
To fight the trend in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, the smoke tree has been placed on the list of "marginal" species in the Nevada Natural Heritage Program, part of the state's conservation department.
But because the tree is widespread and its population outside Nevada is secure, its protection is not as high a priority for the state as it is for the park.
"For us, it is still a protected plant within the park," Bangle said.
To ensure the population survives and the trees continue to reproduce, the botanists and park officials have taken steps to prevent visitors from harming the trees, which the botanists said grow slowly.
At a cost of about $25,000, rangers erected one mile of fence to block cars from driving through the wash where the trees grow. But even the posts in the fence have proved no match for hatchets; several of them have been cut down for firewood, too.
Bangle and Powell said educating visitors was an important element in protecting the trees. Both would like to see park officials build an information kiosk, put up signs informing visitors of the fines and hire a campground host to teach visitors how to protect the park.
All of these additional measures at the camping site will take several months to accomplish.
"We just want people to stop chopping down our trees," Bangle said.
Visitors who witness someone harming a smoke tree can call the park's non-emergency number at (702) 293-8998.
archive
