NAF News

PINYON - JUNIPER, A PROBLEM

Wicked dark green branches whipping in the wind, the great mass moving relentlessly forward dominating all in its path, man and wildlife helpless to thwart it - it is the invasion of the terrifying pinyon and juniper. Sound like a poorly written Hollywood "scifi" script? Can this have even a remote basis in reality? Pinyon, juniper (PJ) encroachment on brush-grass ranges has been of considerable concern to various range scientists in Nevada now, for over 40 years. What PJ does is occupy ground that once was productive ranges of brush species such as bitterbrush, big sage and others as well as grass and forb plant cover. Such. plants feed various wildlife species, especially on winter ranges, as well as livestock.

The sun was just clearing mountains to the east as we bumped along the rather narrow, dirt, Milk Ranch road in Cave Valley, White Pine County. I had not been over the road for fifty years nor had my cousin Larry who had the great good fortune of drawing a Nevada elk tag. I guess I was a long to say, "ready, aim, fire" or something equally inane - more likely to keep him company and take pictures. "Larry," I said, "is there something about this country that bothers you, that is not like it was when we were kids?" He replied, "Yeh, I had the same feeling. It seems to me there is a lot more pinyon and juniper." We talked about it as we watched the thickly covered PJ ridges for elk. We agreed that Cave Valley, in our recollection, was always a PJ country but not nearly to the degree we now saw. "As I remember it." I said, "the crest of the ridges on either side of this road had scattered PJ but the ridge sides and down here in the swale had little if any." Larry agreed.

During that seven day hunt and from Horse and Cattle camp to the north over Bullwhack Summit clear south down the valley to Lewis Wells, we were continually confronted with the same observation as at Milk Ranch. Not only did we encounter increasing pinyon and juniper but in some cases continuous stands that covered a goodly number of square miles. High up on a ridge west of the Milk Ranch corrals I looked south toward Willow Springs. Back in the years 1944 to 1956, I had ridden on two or three fall rides with Clair (Punk) Whipple, owner of the Sunnyside Ranch in lower White River Valley. This was during deer hunts with Clair's nephew, Guy Robison, and we rode in exhange for a deer packing saddle horse. Among northern limits of Whipple summer range cattle drift was Willow Springs. From my 2002 vantage point, I thought that it would be much harder now to round-up cows there than it used to be. I commented to Larry, "Aside from spotting cows in the thick PJ, it wouldn't be easy herding them through that mass." During those earlier year drives, we'd push the cattle south to a gathering site in Long Canyon west of Haggerty Ranch.

Even at that I wondered if Larry and I were seeing things right. I talked to people I knew in Lund who had lived there all their lives and knew Cave Valley, They agreed about PJ encroachment. Later I called the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office in Ely. A spokesman told me they were well aware of the Cave Valley PJ problem. I'll comment more on the call in subsequent paragraphs.

What's the point about PJ spread? Nevada Department of Wildlife records show that the high in Nevada deer tag sales occurred in 1963 when 66,021 tags were purchased. This compares to 16,017 tags sold in 1993 and although more recent tag sales have been around 20,000 they are still a long ways from the high. Deer harvest numbers vary from an estimated 35,441 in l961 (made by the Department at that time) to 7,315 in 1994 again with some increase more recently. Nevertheless, these figures document the statewide decrease in mule deer over the past few years and this holds true in Cave Valley as well as elsewhere. There is a variety of possible reasons for the declining deer herds but habitat loss has to be among the most significant, if not the most. In a study titled, "Management Guidelines For Selected Deer Habitats In Nevada," conducted through the years 1964-'74, Dr. Paul Tueller, range scientist, at the University of Nevada, Reno found that year around deer diets averaged 76% shrubs ranging to 90% in the winter, 16% forbs ranging to 25% in the summer, and 8% grass ranging to 13% in the spring. This incidentally coincided with deer diet studies done by many range scientists and wildlife biologists in a number of western states.

One of Tueller's study sites was in the White Rock Mountains some 50 miles east and a bit south of Cave Valley. However, plant communities are similar in both areas. Among shrubs at the site important to deer, other wildlife and livestock are big sage, desert and antelope bitterbrush, cliff rose, desert peach, black sage, service berry, and joint fir. Forbs include phlox, penstemon and annual forms; with grass cover of blue bunch wheatgrass, bottlebrush squirreltail, and others. It is this kind of valuable forage that the PJ encroaches upon. In the Tueller study, it was found that communities made up of the above named plants and others where there was PJ cover were better utilized by deer than ranges without the trees. This is because the PJ provides escape cover as well as protection from nature's cold, wind, heat and so forth. The problem, however, with Cave Valley is, if you think of the PJ as being a wildlife hotel and, say, you need 4,000 rooms to house all the deer, elk, antelope, a mustang or two, livestock, and other animals, today there are probably 20,000 rooms there. That is way more than you need and it is cutting into the floor space of your kitchen where the food is produced. Neither pinyon or juniper has little value as forage though a little may be taken now and then. Under extreme conditions when preferred feed may be unavailable such as in very hard winters deer will eat juniper foliage. However, in the study, Tueller says, "closed pinyon/juniper communities produce no forage for deer and therefore, there is no deer utilization except for cover." A closed stand of PJ, and there are many in Cave Valley, is an extensive patch of closely massed trees where competition for soil moisture and shading from the sun has long ago eliminated all ground cover and only bare ground remains.

Declining sagegrouse numbers in Nevada, the past few year, have prompted worry about the species possibly being included on the "threatened wildlife" list. The worry has been important enough for the Governor to appoint a task force three years ago made up of wildlife, sportsman and land user interests to study the problem. Cave Valley PJ has invaded good sagegrouse habitat and likely has contributed to reduced sagegrouse populations in the valley. Larry and I saw in our seven day elk hunt just one herd of deer, five does and a buck, and only three sagehen that flushed from a grass, green rabbitbrush pasture on the floor of the valley where cattle were grazing. We both remembered lots of deer and sagehen in that country when we were kids. Some of the older Lund people and many who were kids then will remember the Milk Ranch deer hunt when herds of deer could be seen on almost every ridge. They'll recall, also, hunting sagehen in Sawmill Canyon, Chimney Rock, Basque and Silver Creeks and Long Canyon.

When I talked with the BLM spokesman in Ely he said they have a proposal for PJ control and thinning moving through the approval system. Means of control would likely be controlled burns so planned and executed as to wind up with a mosaic of PJ patches and open brush grass ranges. This would be ideal for wildlife in that it would provide treeless brush grass ranges of high quality animal forage interspersed with escape and protective cover. This meshes closely with the findings in Tueller's study. It is hoped the BLM plan can be realized but agendas, ideologies, and accompaning politics may delay implementation.

Nature may take care of the PJ problem but at a very high cost. The whole valley is ripe for a catastrophic fire. A lot of the PJ is old aged trees that are susceptible to disease, parasites and pest infestations thus increasing their potential for burning. If such a fire should occur, the burned over ground would eventually become high quality range but it would take time. Value to both wildlife and livestock would be low initially and remain low for sometime. Costs of the fire in terms of wildlife and livestock habitat loss, fire fighting, and range rehabilitiation after would be extremely high.

Relative to the BLM's plan and possible wildfire in Cave Valley or other Nevada areas, Dr, Elwood L. Miller, retired professor of forestry at UNR, authored an article titled "Nevada Could Be Next for Castastrophic Fire." It appeared in the "Your Turn" column, Reno Gazette-Journal, November 27, 2003. Said Dr, Miller, "Today, however, layers of legislation, red tape, litigation, appeals and endless reviews, have effectively paralyzed the ability of knowledgeable professionals (forestry, range and wildlife scientists) to apply scientific knowledge to the management of our forest in an effective and timely way."

Various Nevada range and wildlife scientists, along with Dr. Tueller, have written or commented about problems statwide posed by PJ encroachment. George Gruell, retired U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist, and author of the book titled "Fire In Sierra Nevada Forests" has spent time documenting PJ spread in some Nevada areas. In his book, which we reviewed on this web site, he researched many library archives in California seeking pictures of Sierra locations taken in the 1850's to late 1800's and showing vegetation conditions. In 1995, he duplicated each picture, some 90 of them, shooting the modern photos from the exact same point (except where there were buildings or other barriers) as the originals. In every case the modern photos showed more vegetation, trees and shrubs, than the earlier ones where the landscape tended to be of a savannah type that is a mosaic of trees and open areas. He has done some similar work in Nevada relative to PJ. Drs. Jim Young, USDA, and Wayne Burkhardt, former range scientist at UNR, have also called attention to PJ. invasion. While professionals in range and wildife management are probably aware of these and other scientist's concerns about PJ, environmentalists, politicians, and the media seem generally to have ignored them..

While, historically, PJ used to be routinely harvested for various purposes, there is very little cutting of the trees today. Mike Hess, former big game biologist for NDOW found that a great amount of PJ in the late 1800's was cut to make charcoal for use in the ore smelting process. More, ranchers in those days cut thousands of juniper (called cedar at the time) for stockade type corrals, for posts used in erecting hundreds of miles of barbed wire fence, and for various ranch buildings. Also ranchers and townfolks cut the trees for firewood since all in those days used wood and coal stoves. Essentially now PJ has no enemies, nothing to control it.

Various PJ control projects have been undertaken in the past such as chaining (done by NDOW for one) to knock down the trees so that shrub, grass and forbs for deer and other wildife feed could be restored. Recently, however, there has been few if any such projects though some have been proposed, especially by BLM. Politics have stopped them. A year or so ago, for example, the Sierra Club succesfully opposed removal of PJ in the general area of Cave Valley. The Sierra Club may have very defenseable reasons for so doing although this writer struggles to find one. The argument could be made that livestock overgrazing has contributed to the proliferation of PJ. Probably true, but that is no excuse for not trying to rectify the problem. It should be said in conclusion that PJ spread is not the only reason for wildlife habitat loss, but it certainly is one of them and, in some cases, like Cave Valley probably a major one.

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A herd of Nevada elk head for pinyon, juniper cover in the Horse and Cattle Camp area of Cave Valley

Looking east and south from above Milk Ranch toward Patterson Pass. Note PJ coverage or all dark green areas

What I saw looking toward Willow Springs from Milk Ranch vantage point.

Trough Springs near lower end of Cave Valley. Note spring surrounded by thick PJ. Back in 1945 it didn't look this way.