Restoration of Rio Grande flood plain underway

Restoration of Rio Grande flood plain underway By Ollie Reed Jr. / Journal Staff Writer Sunday, November 22nd, 2015 at 12:02am BOSQUECITO – Bouncing along the dirt road into the Rhodes property in Socorro County, just east of San Antonio, is like driving back into a time when rivers were unfettered, running wild and flooding freely. And that’s just the point. “This property has flooded four times during the last 10 years,” said Doris Rhodes, whose late father, state Sen. Virgil Rhodes, bought the land in 1980. “This road was under 2 feet of water a few years ago.” She said that like it’s a good thing, because she believes it is. Rhodes, along with the government and private partners she enlisted in her cause, has been working for 10 years to restore the property to the flood plain nature intended it to be. Phase I of the project is about done. Now Rhodes is marshaling forces and resources to start Phase II. An epiphany of geese On a day earlier this month, when the weather could not seem to decide if it wanted to shine, shower or just blow, Rhodes, her sister, Carol Jameson, and ecologist Gina Dello Russo led a small convoy of state and federal agency officials onto the Rhodes property, which runs along the east bank of the Rio Grande. “Dad called this the ranch, because he grazed cattle on it,” Rhodes said as the vehicle she was in crossed a cattle guard. “He was not really an environmentalist, but he had a vision of what this property should look like. He used a backhoe to clear some salt cedar. He recognized that salt cedar was depleting the water.” When her father died in 2005, Rhodes was prepared to sell the property. But driving over it one day, she saw geese crowding a lake created by river water that had backed over the banks and spread over a field. “It was an epiphany,” she said. “It came on me that this was conservation land. It has an important part in the ecology of the middle Rio Grande.” The property consists of 629 acres of deeded land, 200 acres of land leased from the state and 4,400 acres of land leased from the Bureau of Land Management. Restoration efforts have been centered on 516 acres of the deeded land, which for the past few years have been protected from development and livestock grazing by a conservation easement from the Natural Resources Conservation Service. It floods here because there are no levees along this east-side stretch of the river. In the 1950s, when levees were being built on the river, nothing on this side of the river was considered worth saving from floodwaters. When the river runs high out of Cochiti Dam in the spring, or, as was the case a few years ago, ice clogs the river, water backs onto the property, creating a marshy wetland of cattails that is splendid habitat for birds and other wildlife, and is a flashback to the way most of the river behaved before it was subdued by dams and corralled by levees. Down along the river here, there’s a thick forest of mature cottonwoods, more youthful stands of coyote and black willow, wet marsh grasses and, despite persistent efforts to remove it, salt cedar that has battled its way back to flaunt its resilience in shades of yellow and orange. It has been nearly eight years since cattle have been on this land. But Rio Grande turkey live here. So do grassland birds, deer, mountain lion and bear. Water birds winter here and neotropical song birds pass through during their migrations. On this blustery day, however, the only wildlife apparent were a couple of roadrunners sprinting in the distance. The convoy was made up of representatives of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Audubon New Mexico. Rhodes and Dello Russo showed the visitors what has been accomplished during Phase I and explained what is planned for Phase II. A blooming success Phase I work included the planting of cottonwood, coyote willow and black willow; the creation of swales, land depressions designed to get newly planted trees closer to groundwater and to increase rainwater infiltration; the establishment of salt grass to combat weeds; and the planting of 65 acres of the endangered Pecos sunflower. The latter bloom brilliantly yellow in late summer and early fall but were just bare, brown stalks on this raw day. “The Pecos sunflower is certainly a success for us,” Dello Russo said. “Everyone that has seen them is impressed that we started with a sack of seeds that was smaller than a lunch bag.” Phase I efforts have been aided significantly by the Save Our Bosque Task Force, and funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ($433,000), state of New Mexico capital outlay funds ($150,000), the U.S. Department of Agriculture ($469,000), and a Partners for Fish and Wildlife Grant ($76,000). Now, Rhodes is seeking partners and funding for Phase II. Dello Russo said Phase II goals are two-fold. The first is to provide habitat for water birds, shore birds, the Southwestern willow flycatcher, the yellow-billed cuckoo and the Rio Grande silvery minnow. The second is to make better use of the water that floods the property. “We can provide additional, low-velocity water, backwater connected to the river, for the silvery minnow,” Dello Russo said. “This is still, open water that provides food and habitat for the minnow.” Secondly, Dello Russo said channels need to be created to get floodwater back to the river in a timely fashion. “Roads and berms artificially dam the property so that, when it floods, it stays flooded,” she said. When that happens, Dello Russo said, weeds and salt cedar flourish, and water that could be better used otherwise evaporates. “Channels would give the water a way to flow back into the river,” she said. “That’s a better use of the water for the habitat, and it gets water downstream to Texas.” Jennifer Faler, manager of the Albuquerque area office of the Bureau of Reclamation, was among those touring the Rhodes property. She said the bureau is enthusiastic about the Rhodes property restoration effort and the opportunity it presents to offset impacts on the environment, as required by federal law, caused by other bureau projects. “We are looking for flycatcher (habitat) opportunities and wetland opportunities,” Faler said. “Reclamation’s role would be to construct the (Rhodes) project. That’s right down our alley.” Benjamin Tuggle, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director for New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Arizona, was not part of the tour this month, but he knows the Rhodes property well and has championed the restoration from the start. “This is a wonderful way for us to re-establish a natural flood plain without spending millions of dollars,” he said. “This is an opportunity we might not see again on this river.”