Bird Monitoring and Habitat Renewal on the Cocopah Indian Reservation

The place Arizona, California and the Republic of Mexico meet, the decrease Colorado River transitions into its delta and dries up earlier than discovering its solution to the Gulf of California because it had performed a century in the past. It’s right here {that a} new habitat restoration effort is taking form on the Cocopah Indian Tribe’s Reservation— to deliver again the native vegetation and wildlife that when thrived alongside this important desert waterway.

This part of the Colorado River underwent profound modifications over the previous century as a result of dams and diversions that considerably altered the river’s circulation.  The river now not spills onto its pure floodplain, soaking the soil and replenishing the groundwater, which has made it simpler for invasive vegetation to colonize these areas that when supported a lush mosaic of cottonwood-willow forests, wetlands, mesquite and different native vegetation. Additional exacerbating this deterioration, local weather change is extending droughts and deepening reductions within the Colorado’s circulation. For the Cocopah folks with ancestral ties to the Colorado River since time immemorial, these modifications haven’t solely impacted the panorama, but in addition their tradition and talent to maintain their conventional methods of life.

Recognizing the necessity to heal each ecosystem and group, the Cocopah Tribe developed a imaginative and prescient to revive life to the part of the Colorado River that flows by their reservation in southwestern Arizona, and National Audubon was honored to support the Tribe in securing funding to implement this important work.  With the funding, the Tribe will take away invasive species like tamarisk (also referred to as saltcedar) at two distinct websites and replant native vegetation to create in depth wetlands, cottonwood-willow forests, and upland habitats, important for each migratory and resident birds such because the Bald Eagle, Marbled Godwit, and Yellow-billed Cuckoo.

In help of the mission, members of the Yuma Audubon Society accomplished pre-restoration chicken monitoring on the one of many websites slated for restoration on the Tribe’s reservation in September. Any such monitoring offers a baseline of chicken exercise and permits the Tribe to measure the influence of their restoration efforts over time. The surveyed web site is positioned upstream of the part of the Colorado River that has largely dried up, and nonetheless has some water flowing. This water helps a small quantity of native willow and quail bush, however the vegetation is usually dominated by invasive tamarisk and phragmites. Surveys did establish 19 chicken species, corresponding to Verdin, Abert’s Towhee and Gambel’s Quail—a testomony to the significance of the river’s presence even when the adjoining vegetation isn’t perfect—nonetheless as soon as restoration is full it’s anticipated that the upper high quality habitat will improve each the variety of species and the entire variety of total birds utilizing the realm.

“Plant the timber and birds will come,” says Yuma Audubon President Nancy Meister. “Our chapter was honored to help the Cocopah Tribe on this mission. This work is about bringing ecological steadiness again to the river, and, importantly, about making it a phenomenal place for Tribal members to take pleasure in.”

Building started on the location in October, and when the location is totally revegetated with native vegetation subsequent spring, it can turn into a part of a rising community of riparian restoration areas alongside the Decrease Colorado. The Tribe expects to interrupt floor on a second web site positioned downstream within the floodplain of the dry part of the river subsequent fall. Initiatives like this not solely profit birds and wildlife, but in addition enhance water high quality, cut back wildfire danger, and strengthen local weather resilience in an especially arid panorama.

Yuma Audubon has lengthy been a supporter of the Cocopah Indian Tribe, and this partnership continues to show how group help can drive lasting ecological and cultural influence. This mission will present important habitat for birds and wildlife and assist renew the dwelling connection between the Cocopah folks and the Colorado River that has sustained them for hundreds of years.