Treating Invasive Tamarisk as an Intern at San Andres National Wildlife Refuge

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e Geographical Bulletin 62(2B): 101-103
ISSN 2163-5900 © e Author(s).
e Geographical Bulletin © 2021 Gamma eta Upsilon
Tamarisk (also known as salt cedar) is mentioned once
in the Quran, “There was for [the tribe of] Saba’ in their
dwelling place a sign: two [fields of] gardens on the right
and on the left. [They were told], “Eat from the provisions
of your Lord and be grateful to Him. A good land [have
you], and a forgiving Lord. “But they turned away [refus-
ing], so We sent upon them the flood of the dam, and We
replaced their two [fields of] gardens with gardens of bitter
fruit, tamarisks and something of sparse lote trees. (Surah
34, Āyah 15,16)” (The Quranic Arabic Corpus 2011). I was
introduced to this quote by a fellow intern when treating
tamarisk in the American Southwest, joking that we were
dealing with a curse right out of an Abrahamic religion.
Originally brought to North America from Asia as an
ornamental, tamarisk saw widespread use for erosion con-
trol in the American Southwest (Everitt 1998). Since then,
much like the passage in the Quran, many native plant
species have been replaced by these non-native tamarisk
trees (Bailey, Schweitzer, and Whitham 2001; Shafroth et al.
2005). Here, the trees form monocultures along drainages,
rivers, and canals. The trees are drought and fire-tolerant
and concentrate salt in their leaves, which, when dropped,
salts the soil to prevent competition (Di Tomaso 1998;
Bailey, Schweitzer, and Whitham 2001). Without modern
pesticides and power tools, the trees are tough to kill, and I
can only imagine how frustrating removal would have been
when the passage in the Quran was written. Their impact
on the environment in North America is controversial, but
many view them as a blight on the land. Here, I will discuss
my small part in helping to combat the spread of these trees
during my first experience with fieldwork.
After graduating from New Mexico State University with
a Bachelor of Science in Geography and suddenly shift-
ing from student to unemployed, I had a desire to gain
professional work experience. This led me to apply for an
internship through the American Conservation Experience
(ACE) at the San Andres National Wildlife Refuge, where
I ended up mapping and treating tamarisk with a team of
professionals from Fish and Wildlife and AmeriCorps. The
job posting listed several preferred degrees, and geography
was not included in the list. However, the position required
handheld GPS and ArcGIS, so I thought I might be a good
fit and applied. Within a few weeks, I was hired as an
Emerging Professional in Conservation (EPIC), starting
several weeks before the rest of the team arrived to get
relevant certificates and help map the area for treatment.
This served as an important lesso: if you feel you are suited
to a position, you should apply – even if the job adverise-
ment does not explicitly state they are looking for your
specific degree.
The San Andres Wildlife refuge is not accessible to the
general public, as it requires passing through either an area
controlled by NASA or the Army. As plant and animal
species do not follow these often-arbitrary land boundar-
ies, much of the work to treat the tamarisk needed to take
place off the refuge and on the neighboring sections of
land. Because of this, there was a significant amount of
paperwork required before I could get started. Once hired,
I spent weeks getting background checks through Fish and
Wildlife, White Sands Missile Range, and ACE. I also had
to be certified in driving government vehicles, all-terrain
vehicles, obtain a public pesticide application license, and
learn how to identify numerous potentially invasive species.
While I was waiting to complete all that, I tagged along
with researchers and refuge employees with tasks such as
spring surveys, checking radio repeaters on the top of San
Andres peak, and did odd jobs like help manage the fish
and wildlife booth at the New Mexico State Fair.
Every time we entered an area of interest on the refuge,
while I helped carry the equipment for the day’s task or just
kept the researcher’s company, I performed Early Detec-
tion and Rapid Response, or EDRR, surveys for invasive
plant species (Westbrooks 2004). The goal was to identify
potentially invasive non-native species before they became
established and caused problems. I recorded the coordi-
nates of any suspicious species, took pictures, and collected
samples to send to a botanist for identification. This was my
first experience with actual fieldwork. While I (fortunately)
did not identify any new invasive species, I was able to
create a geodatabase of tracks that we had surveyed to help
Treating Invasive Tamarisk as an Intern at San Andres
National Wildlife Refuge
Aaron Adams
Department of Geography, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA
email: aaron.adams@uconn.edu

102
others know places that we had visited and places we hadn’t.
Of course, tamarisk was present at many locations and the
ultimate objective was to help manage these trees.
Once all my background checks were passed, I began
looking at sites with tamarisk treated in previous years to
assess regrowth under the supervision of the refuge biolo-
gist. As tamarisk grows near water, these sites are generally
located in the desert’s muddiest, most mosquito-infested
parts. Rattlesnakes were a concern, and as we were on and
around an active missile range, we also had to watch for un-
exploded ordinance. While we found substantial regrowth,
many sites treated in previous years did not have new trees,
evidence that the efforts impacted. While I wish I could
provide photos of these sites, as words do not do them
justice, most of them were in and around military installa-
tions, so I was not permitted to take photos.
When the rest of the team arrived, we prioritized treating
sites that had regrowth from previous treatments. As one of
several pesticide applicators, my job was to spray stumps as
team members with chainsaws cut the trees down, meaning
I needed to wear the protective equipment for pesticides,
snakes, and chainsaws. This included long sleeves, a helmet,
goggles, gloves, snake chaps, and chainsaw chaps in the
desert heat while carrying water, pesticide, and other tools.
It was exhausting, and I could never seem to drink water
fast enough to replace how much was lost to sweat. While
removing some of the gear was tempting, I was sold on
not taking any chances after the first close encounter with
a rattlesnake. When we finished treating a site, I marked
them with a GPS, recorded the amount of pesticide sprayed,
and updated the geodatabase. It was hard, hot, and muddy
work, but also fun. Progress was immediately apparent
from tamarisk stumps tinted blue by pesticide indicator,
which was satisfying in itself. I imagine much of this is a
fairly standard experience for ACE interns, if any of the
experiences can be called “standard”. No two days were ever
identical, and each had its own set of challenges.
One particular day that stands out was when White Sands
Missile Range decided to conduct an unscheduled weapon
test. We were aware this could happen, but we were down-
range several hours from the gate where we entered the
missile range when it did. Of course, the military activity
took precedence over anything we were doing, and all field-
work came to an abrupt end as we scrambled to load up our
vehicles and get out through the closest possible gate. Un-
fortunately, this was not the gate we had entered through,
forcing us to drive through Holloman Air Force Base. Once
we were through the gate and off the missile range, a team
member spotted a drone aircraft flying near where we had
just been. We do not know if this was related to the test in
any way, as we saw drones daily, but it certainly justified our
urgent departure. We took the quickest route possible to get
off the Base as instructed by the military police, and ended
up on the far side of the missile range from where we needed
to be. With the roads crossing the missile range closed, we
pulled over at “McGinn’s PistachioLand” in Alamogordo,
NM, until they cleared. A day of manual labor ended with
free pistachio samples and selfies with the “World’s Largest
Pistachio” because of a military weapon test.
Working on land with such a long legacy of military activ-
ity certainly kept things interesting. We, of course, needed
to watch a “training video” on what to do if we encountered
an unexploded ordinance, with the general theme of “If it
is not natural, don’t touch it”. After needing to evacuate
a worksite for a weapons test, this was a lesson we took to
heart. While hiking to a treatment site, we spotted a small
tamarisk tree a short way off the trail. When we moved to
treat it, we found a shiny metal canister, shaped like a scuba
tank, next to it. Fresh out of seeing the training videos, we
were understandably very nervous, and we began discussing
notifying the base. A contractor working with us that day,
who had been in the area for years, came over to see what
was causing the delay and remarked: “That goes zoom, not
boom, don’t worry about it”. He explained he thought it was
a part of a rocket propulsion system and not an explosive.
One team member replied, “I saw the Challenger explosion.
Things that go zoom can go boom too”. We did not treat
that particular tamarisk tree. Just as when looking out for
rattlesnakes, this also taught me to watch where I step when
doing fieldwork.
Despite these and other challenges, at the end of the
internship, the team had treated approximately thirty
acres – roughly 23 American Football fields – of tamarisk-
impacted ecosystem. The effort required to do this made
me highly sympathetic to the people who needed to remove
them in the past without the benefit of modern technology.
While the data I collected will never be published in a
peer-reviewed journal, it was instrumental in this treatment
by helping to prevent the team from wasting time looking
for the trees. Hopefully, the geodatabase will be helpful in
future Early Detection Rapid Response surveys.
The scholarship associated with this internship paid for a
portion of my master’s degree, and in a (very) roundabout
way influenced my master’s thesis. The internship gave me
confidence in my ability to conduct field research under
stressful conditions and taught me how much work goes on
behind the scenes before boots can get dirty. The biggest
lesson I gained from this internship was the need to be
flexible and willing to learn new things. There is no possible
way to know everything you may be asked to do, so learning
on the job is essential. I gained a lot of experience from this
internship and recommended the ACE EPIC program to
new geography graduates at every opportunity.
REFERENCES
Bailey, J. K., J. A. Schweitzer, and T. G. Whitham. 2001.
Salt cedar negatively affects biodiversity of aquatic Mac-
roinvertebrates. Wetlands 21 (3):442–447.
Di Tomaso, J. M. 1998. Impact, Biology, and Ecology of
Saltcedar (Tamarix spp.) in the Southwestern United
States. Weed Technology 12 (2):326–336.
Everitt, B. L. 1998. Chronology of the spread of tamarisk
in the central Rio Grande. Wetlands 18 (4):658–668.
Shafroth, P. B., J. R. Cleverly, T. L. Dudley, J. P. Taylor, C.
VAN Riper, E. P. Weeks, and J. N. Stuart. 2005. Control
of Tamarix in the Western United States: Implications for
Water Salvage, Wildlife Use, and Riparian Restoration.
Environmental Management 35 (3):231–246.
The Quranic Arabic Corpus. 2011. http://corpus.quran.com.
Aaron Adams

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Westbrooks, R. G. 2004. New Approaches for Early Detec-
tion and Rapid Response to Invasive Plants in the United
States. Weed Technology 18 (sp1):1468–1471.
Aaron M. Adams is currently a Ph.D. student in the
Department of Geography, University of Connecticut,
USA. He earned a Master of Applied Geography from New
Mexico State University in 2019. His current research is
focused on GIScience, spatial visualization, and the impact
of COVID-19.
Treating Invasive Tamarisk as an Intern at San Andres National Wildlife Refuge