Buenos Aires Destruction

Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge is an arid grasslands on the Mexican border in south central Arizona.

My way out of the wash. 

I started my journey around 10:45. I waited until the temp was over 40.  I started heading due east. I watched my topo map and headed north-east to a spot I could easily descend into the deep and narrow wash east of our campsite. I put a small cairn by the place I entered and then followed the wash northward. The wash I had descended into starts well south of me and flows into the much larger and quite wide Arivaca Wash.


 I experienced all sorts of emotions. I knew this deep scar in the earth didn't exist until after 1900 and is the result of humans introducing invasive plants and overgrazing the land until it could not sustain itself when a bad drought hit.

While not as big as the Arivaca Wash, the little contributory I was exploring more dramatically showed the effects of errosion. The scarp would often be thirty to forty feet high. Because the overgrazing and the invasive plants killed the native grass when the drought hit there was nothing to hold the soil and store the moisture. Result, the water ran off more quickly, leaving the land dry, and started eroding the land creating these washes and causing the cycle to repeat.

Some of the eroded walls were over 30 ft. high. 

The wildlife was also devastated by what happened to the land. The hooded bobwhite and quail left. Nature was totally out of balance. As I walked along I found scat and prints; evidence of Coyote and a small undgulate suchas a Mule Deer. We saw a Mule Deer yesterday.

About noon I came upon a large grassy plain. By this time I was searching for signs of recovery. It was not to be. The grass was Johnson grass ( Sorghum halepense)  , an invasive species, with clumps of mesquite, also invasive here, and human trash under every tree. There were ATV tracks where ATVs are not supposed to be.


Actually the first sheep rancher who gave Buenos Aires its name, was the first to try to rectify what we had done. Now the US Fish and Wildlife Service are working hard to restore the land. It is a slow, thankless task. I salute their efforts and wish them success.

Human abuse is still a problem. 

ATV tracks in the Johnson Grass. Neither good.