¡Viva El Rio Gila – Wild and Free!
September 15 - 18, 2011
Silver City, NM
Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday
Fish Tales (CANCELED)
Field trip with David Propst. 7:30 am to noon Participant limit: 15 Fee: $15
Meet at the Silver City Visitors' Center at 7:15 am, carpool to the Gila Bird Area, and return to Silver City by noon. Travel time: 45 minutes each way. Registration required, please click here for more info.
Can’t tell a spikedace from a longfin dace? Join fish biologist Dr. David Propst for a morning field trip to the Gila River at the biologically diverse Gila Bird Area, where participants will learn to electrofish, seine, and identify fish. Expect to capture and release native species such as longfin dace, desert sucker, and Sonora sucker, as well as threatened spikedace and loach minnow. You’ll also collect several nonnative species. Propst will discuss the life histories, habitat preferences and New Mexico distribution of each species, current status, and ongoing conservation efforts. He’ll talk about threats to their survival, including the impact of a Gila River diversion on our native fish populations.
Dutch Salmon will be on hand to help with fishing tips and to relate the history of previous and current attempts to build a diversion on the Gila.
Please bring: hat, water, snacks, and water shoes. Participants will carpool to the Gila Bird Area. Difficulty level: moderate, with stream crossings and uneven terrain.
David Propst recently retired from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, where he worked as a fish biologist for 26 years. M. H. “Dutch” Salmon is the founder and chairman of the Gila Conservation Coalition, a writer, and an avid outdoorsman. Both David and Dutch began their respective careers as the Hooker and Conner Dams were under consideration, and once again there’s a threat of a Gila diversion. The more things change, the more they stay the same!
Save For a Rainy Day
Tour with Van Clothier. 8:30 am to 11:45 am Participant limit: 15 Fee: $15
Meet at the Silver City Visitors' Center at 8:15 am, carpool to water harvesting project sites in Silver City. Registration required, please click here for more info.
Learn how to capture rainwater to capitalize on our infrequent rain events. Local rainwater harvester Van Clothier will lead a tour of successful water harvesting projects in Silver City. See how water harvesting berms, curb cuts, and bore holes redirect street runoff to garden spaces. Tour projects where basins and other low-tech landscaping techniques cause roof runoff to soak into the ground. Learn how you can take advantage of rainfall to water your trees or garden, while conserving water and protecting the urban watershed from flooding and water quality problems. Everyone benefits from water harvesting!
Please bring water, hat, sunscreen, and lots of questions. Difficulty level: easy.
Van Clothier is the owner of Stream Dynamics, Inc., a water harvesting and stream restoration business. He’s the co-author of Let the Water Do the Work, a textbook on stream restoration.
Gila Highway: The Gila River’s Wildlife Corridor
Field trip with Sergio Avila and Jessica Lamberton, Sky Island Alliance. 1:15 pm to 5:30 pm Participant limit: 15 Fee: $15
Meet at the Silver City Visitors' Center at 1:00 pm, carpool to the Gila Bird Area, and return to Silver City by 5:30 pm. Travel time: 45 minutes each way. Registration required, click here for more info.
The Gila region is part of the 70,000 square mile area known as the Sky Islands, which cover southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, and northwest Mexico. These mountain “islands” are separated by desert and grassland valleys, which function as corridors through which wildlife travel to find mates, food, suitable habitat, and new territories. Increasingly, climate change is forcing plant and animal species to migrate to new areas in search of the climate conditions to which they’re adapted. Corridors are ever more difficult for wildlife to negotiate as wild lands become developed and fragmented. Rivers are natural wildlife corridors. The Gila, one of the Southwest’s only wild rivers, is an important wildlife corridor in the Sky Island region and is currently threatened by a diversion which would impair its vital ecological function.
Join Sky Island Alliance wildlife biologists Sergio Avila and Jessica Lamberton as they lead a field trip to the Gila River at the Gila Bird Area. They will discuss the importance of the Gila as plant and animal habitat and as a wildlife corridor. Participants will learn about the concept of ecosystem resilience and the importance of the Gila River to our native species, while exploring the banks of the Gila for tracks and other sign of wildlife.
Please bring a hat, water, and snacks. Difficulty level: moderate, with uneven terrain. Come prepared with appropriate clothing and shoes for getting wet!
Biologist Sergio Avila-Villegas does wildlife research and conservation work in northern Mexico and southern Arizona, and works on cross-border connectivity issues for species such as jaguars and other big cats.
Jessica Lamberton is a wildlife biologist and certified tracker who trains volunteer naturalists to track wildlife movement in Sky Island region corridors.
Green Is Beautiful: A Virtual Tour of Your Home’s “Watergy”
Presentation by Denise Smith, Joint Office of Sustainability. 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm FREE
Silco Theater, 311 N. Bullard St. No registration required.
Who says water and energy conservation aren’t related? Learn about the “water-energy nexus” and take a virtual home tour of how to incorporate water and energy savings in lovely and creative ways. Presenter Denise Smith will show how everyone can harvest the low-hanging fruit with low-cost, easy-to-install retrofits. Discover your home’s water footprint, in direct water consumption and also in hidden water usage embedded in common products. After Denise whets your appetite for water and energy savings, she’ll move on to inspire more beautiful dreams for green homes.
And to take you from virtual to actual reality, Ms. Smith and her assistant will demonstrate the installation of sink aerators and toilet tank bladders, and how to detect silent water leaks, at the Silco Theater.
As an extra bonus, she will raffle off “ a “Watergy Savings” kit: low flow shower head, sink aerator, toilet tank bladder, compact fluorescent light bulbs, outlet insulators, caulk, and weather stripping.
Denise Smith is the Neighborhood Program Manager for the Energy $ense Program of the Joint Office of Sustainability in Silver City, and an ex-bureaucrat with a background in wildlife habitat restoration who continues to hone her tree hugging skills.
Water: Will There Be Enough?
Keynote Address by Sandra Postel, National Geographic Society. 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm Silco Theater Suggested Donation: $10 at door No registration required.
For decades, Americans have been concerned about our uncertain energy future while ignoring a much more worrisome crisis: water. Cheap and seemingly abundant, water is so common that it’s hard to believe we could ever run out.
Since 1950, the number of large dams worldwide has climbed from 5,000 to more than 45,000 – an average of two large dams built per day for half a century. As we face the pressures of climate change and growing water demands, many officials are calling for even bigger versions of the strategies of the past. Is it wise to continue our policy of “more of the same,” or is there a better way to meet our water needs?
We are beginning to realize that conservation is the least expensive and most environmentally sound way to balance our water budgets. Many cities, towns and farms have reduced their water use through relatively simple measures such as repairing leaks in distribution systems, recycling and reuse, installing drip irrigation, and planting drought-tolerant landscaping.
All of these water-saving strategies, as well as rainwater harvesting and watershed restoration, have been proposed for southwest New Mexico, where a Gila River diversion is currently under consideration. Such a project would impair the Gila’s vibrant riparian habitat, imperil numerous threatened and endangered species, and diminish this area’s highly valued quality of life.
Join Sandra Postel for a captivating exploration of how we arrived at the current global water crisis, and how to change our habits to make water last.
Sandra Postel is director of the Global Water Policy Project and Freshwater Fellow of the National Geographic Society, where she serves as lead water expert for the Society's Freshwater Initiative. Sandra is the author of several acclaimed books, including Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity, the basis for a 1997 PBS documentary, and has been named one of the "Scientific American 50" for her efforts to preserve Earth's freshwater.
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