Celebrating the Gila’s Web of Life
September 16 - 19, 2010
Silver City, NM
Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday
Wildlife of the Gila: Photography Workshop
6:00 am to 10:00 am Workshop/field trip with John Wachholz. Participant limit: 15 Fee: $15
Meet at the Silver City Visitors’ Center at 5:45 am, carpool to Meadow Creek, and return to Silver City by 10:00 am. Travel time: 45 minutes each way. Registration required, please click here for more info.
Join experienced wildlife photographer John Wachholz on an early morning field trip to lovely Meadow Creek in the Gila National Forest. Meadow Creek is a botanically diverse forest that is home to turkeys, bears, deer, and other abundant wildlife, as well as the threatened Nokomis Fritillary butterfly. Wachholz, a former hunter, now shoots wildlife with his camera instead of his rifle. He will divulge his secrets on attracting game and creating excellent photos. This workshop is for people who know how to use their cameras and need tips on attracting and photographing wildlife. Please bring: camera, hat, water, snacks, and hiking boots. Participants will carpool to Meadow Creek; please bring a 4WD vehicle if you have one. Difficulty level: moderate, with easy stream crossings and uneven terrain.
John Wachholz is a former hunter with 45 years of experience in photographing wildlife.
The Ribbon of Green: Linking River Hydrology to Riparian Biodiversity
7:45 am to 12:45 pm Field trip with Dr. Kathy Whiteman. Participant limit: 10 Fee: $15
Meet at the Silver City Visitors’ Center at 7:30 am, carpool to Mogollon Box Campground, and return to Silver City by 12:45 pm. Travel time: 45 minutes each way. Registration required, please click here for more info.
Participants will hike from the Mogollon Box Campground to the USGS gauging station, while Dr. Whiteman discusses river hydrology and the role that hydrology and disturbance play on shaping riparian communities. The discussion will also focus on key plant and animal interactions that are important in maintaining riparian biodiversity.
Participants should wear sturdy closed-toe shoes and appropriate field clothing. Plan to cross the river (flow permitting) and walk through brush. Hike difficulty: moderate, with some stream crossings. Bring water, hat, sunscreen, and snacks.
Kathy Whiteman recently finished her PhD at New Mexico State University with an emphasis on the eco-hydrology of woody plant encroachment in southwestern riparian ecosystems.
Backyard Habitat Restoration
9:00 am to noon Presentation and field trip with Charles Holmes and Tricia Hurley. Participant limit: 20 Fee: $15 Participants will meet at the Silco Theater, 311 N. Bullard St., for a presentation at 9:00 am, carpool to two native plant restoration sites, and return to the theater by noon. Registration required, please click here for more info.
Learn what backyard restoration is all about while Charles Holmes and Tricia Hurley walk you through before and after pictures of the Jose Barrios Butterfly Garden and the Silva Creek Botanical Gardens. Discover the benefits of native plants for pollinators, wildlife, habitat restoration and beauty. Through this workshop you will see that the land around us can be enriched by our presence. Personal choices about our land can enhance the diversity and overall health of the larger natural systems in which we live. Resource-efficient plants, combined with landscapes that harvest and retain water and nutrients, become the foundation for providing food and shelter for the creatures with which we share the land. Think of it: after centuries of land degradation and poor management choices, we can become functional citizens of our planet again! Join us as part of this movement to reclaim our relationship with the land!
Please bring a hat, water, and snacks. The field trip component of this event involves about 4 blocks of easy walking on trails and sidewalks.
Tricia Hurley moved to the Southwest 20 years ago to pursue a career in wildlife biology. She spent 10 years working in the field in CA, AZ, and NM before beginning a new career in parenthood. She is currently the Events Coordinator for the Gila Conservation Education Center and co-owns Lone Mountain Natives with her husband, Mark Cantrell.
Charles Holmes is a retired gardener with 15 years experience as a native plant botanical garden developer for conservation sites in Florida and Silver City. He currently manages the Silva Creek Botanical Gardens and oversees the Youth Conservation Corp students from Aldo Leopold High School who work on plantings and projects at the gardens.
Taking the Pulse of a River: Monitoring on the Gila
11:00 am to 3:45 pm Field trip with Matt Schultz. Participant limit: 25 Fee: $15 Meet at the Silver City Visitors’ Center at 10:45 am, carpool to Mogollon Box Campground, and return to Silver City by 3:45 pm. Travel time: 45 minutes each way. Registration required, please click here for more info.
During this session, we will demonstrate and discuss stream ecology monitoring methods employed by the New Mexico Environment Department to assess the water quality for aquatic organisms and other designated uses of the Gila River. Characteristics examined include physical habitat (substrate, composition, geomorphology, riparian health), biological (macroinvertebrate community, fish sampling, periphyton), and water chemistry. This will be a hands-on session with demonstration stations set up around the Mogollon Box Campground on the Gila River. A species list of the macroinvertebrates and fish collected during previous surveys will be provided.
Bring a hat, water, and snacks. Difficulty level: moderate. Be prepared to walk short distances along the riparian corridor. Stream wading can be part of the activities, but is not required.
Matt Schultz is an Environmental Scientist for the New Mexico Environment Department working on watershed monitoring, protection, and restoration issues in southwestern New Mexico.
Jaguars in the Gila A Discussion of Jaguar Habitat with a Comparison of Historic and
Present Jaguar Distribution
1:00 pm to 2:00 pm River Lecture Series presentation by Diana Hadley. Silco Theater, 311 N. Bullard St. Fee: River Lecture Series Pass: $15 or Daily Pass: $5 Available at door.
This illustrated talk will describe current understandings of jaguar habitat and will discuss the known prehistoric and historic distribution of jaguar populations. The talk will include a discussion of the present status of large mammal wildlife corridors between Mexico and the United States, and will be illustrated with trip-camera photos of jaguars in a variety of habitats.
Diana Hadley recently retired from the University of Arizona, where she served as Associate Curator of Ethnohistory and as director of the Office of Ethnohistorical Research at the Arizona State Museum. She has degrees in archaeology and history from Washington University and the University of Arizona, and specializes in the history of land use and ecological change in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. She is co-founder and president of the Northern Jaguar Project.
The Gila River Watershed as a Meeting Place for North American Biotic Communities
2:15 pm to 3:15 pm River Lecture Series presentation by Dr. David Brown. Silco Theater, 311 N. Bullard St. Fee: River Lecture Series Pass: $15 or Daily Pass: $5 Available at door.
The Southwest US and Gila River watershed have provided an attraction to natural history scientists since the time the area was acquired from Mexico. Great topographic relief, varied and converging weather patterns, and a unique evolutionary history have resulted in this region being “the meeting place of North American biotic communities.” Biotic Provinces represented include the Rocky Mountain, Plains, Madrean, Great Basin, Chihuahuan, Sonoran and Southwestern biotic regions—the latter being especially distinct in its aquatic components. This merging of entities takes place at every biotic level - including the formation level - that comprise forests and woodlands, scrublands, grasslands and desertlands. All four of North America’s deserts are represented in the American Southwest, as are all of the major grassland biomes, save California Valley Grassland.
David E. Brown is presently an Adjunct Research Professor at Arizona State University. He is the author and editor of several books on southwest natural history, including The Biotic Communities of the Southwest. He is presently studying relict grasslands and such animals as the antelope jack rabbit (Lepus alleni).
Creepy-Crawlies
2:30 pm to 6:00 pm Field trip with Trevor Hare. Participant limit: 15 Fee: $15 Meet at the Silver City Visitors’ Center at 2:15 pm, carpool to Mogollon Box Campground, and return to Silver City by 6:00 pm. Travel time: 45 minutes each way. Registration required, please click here for more info.
Ask someone to name an animal, and nine times out of ten they’ll pick a large mammal. But long before there were mammals, reptiles and amphibians ruled the earth. Many were so successful that they’re here with us today. Join biologist Trevor Hare at the Gila River, where he’ll demonstrate where to look for snakes, lizards, frogs, toads, and other interesting reptiles and amphibians. Trevor and these charismatic critters will persuade you that amphibians and reptiles still rule! Bring a hat, snacks, good walking shoes, and water. Hike is moderate with uneven terrain.
Trevor Hare, an ecologist and conservation biologist, works with Sky Island Alliance in Tucson. Although he has inventoried and monitored organisms as diverse as owls, goshawks, fish, and cacti, he truly loves the creepy-crawly reptiles and amphibians.
Connections: The Marvelous Complexity of Place
7:00 pm to 9:00 pm Keynote Address by Mary Sojourner. Silco Theater. 311 N. Bullard St.
Fee: $10 donation at the door
“Place saved my life when I was a little girl. I fled a chaotic and often terrifying home into my Upstate New York backyard. There I could lose myself in a microcosm of biodiversity in a square foot of grass, soil and bugs. Even then I marvelled at how bug, grass, soil and my animal heart were linked so perfectly. Thirty years later, I stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon with my eyes closed, high desert sun on my face, the whirr of a raven’s wings around me. I opened my eyes and knew I had finally come to a greater home, a home where sun, rock and raven were all connected. I decided to move West, write and fight for the web I witnessed. Three years later I found myself standing at the edge of a forest meadow 13 miles south of the Grand Canyon, a meadow the Havasupai people know as the Belly of the Mother. A Denver mining company had proposed drilling a breccia pipe uranium mine into the heart of the meadow. I pressed my hands to my own belly and vowed I’d organize so the mine would never happen. So far, the mine has not been sunk.
“As I speak - and invite the listeners to speak - I hope we will travel home, both to the connections with childhood Place and to this remarkable Gila bioregion that needs us so much. I’ll read from Bonelight: Ruin and Grace in the New Southwest and from essays written on the road and in the deserts of New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, those huge spaces in which newcomers think there is ‘nothing’, but in which we know there is everything.”
Mary Sojourner is a writer, teacher and long-time earth activist. Her favorite street saying is, “You can fool the fans, but you can’t fool a player.” She has found that to be valuable wisdom in opposing the development of the West. She writes from witness; some of her books are: Bonelight: Ruin and Grace in the New Southwest, the short story collection, "Delicate", her new novel, "Going Through Ghosts", and two memoirs, "Solace: Rituals of Loss and Desire" and "She Bets Her Life". She believes in both the limitations and possibilities of healing. Writing is one of the most powerful tools she has found for doing what is necessary to mend - especially for the earth.
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