VFamily
Registered: March 2008
City/Town/Province: Albuquerque
Posts: 1
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Pole Planting in the Bosque
I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We have the biggest river forest in the world and it is called the Bosque. The river is called the Rio Grande.
The problem in the Bosque is that a long time ago, people who moved here planted non-native plants that they were used to in the places that they came from. People also straightened the river. It used to wind and bend and twist and flood every year. This was a problem because it destroyed farms and houses that were along the river bed. Now the river is straighter, but that is a problem for the cottonwood tree. Every year, it drops pieces of “cotton” with seeds that land on the ground. When the river flooded, it would wash mud over the seeds and they would grow into cottonwoods. The non-native plants choke out the cottonwoods, and there is no flooding now, so the cottonwoods have a hard time growing. Without the cottonwoods, the habitat of the Bosque would start to fall apart.
My Roots & Shoots group, Rio Grande Roots & Shoots, went into the Bosque and planted cottonwood branches. This is called pole planting. The reason we planted the cottonwood branches instead of trees is that when part of the tree is dead, but the branches are still alive, you can cut the branches off and plant them. They have to hit the water table, and if they do, it almost guarantees that they will grow. The hole must be eight to nine feet deep. Now that is a deep hole! We had help from Albuquerque Open Space who drilled the holes with a special machine. We dragged big branches down a hill and put them in the holes. We used the end of a shovel to pound down the dirt. I planted four trees with my friends, but the whole group planted 45 trees.
When were getting ready to start planting, we saw a hawk fly over us. We saw a porcupine sleeping in a cottonwood tree. It makes me feel great to know that I am helping animals to survive in their habitat.
I think that we need to protect the Bosque because if the cottonwoods die out, then the whole food chain will start to collapse. I am glad that there are programs like the Nicodemus Wilderness Project and the Apprentice Ecologist Initiative that help make the world a better place to live.
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