Email this page  Print this page  del.icio.us  digg

River of life

Francisco Abarca hikes the Tres Rios wetlands near 91st Avenue and Broadway Road in west Phoenix.

Francisco Abarca hikes the Tres Rios wetlands near 91st Avenue and Broadway Road in west Phoenix. The wetlands are a six-acre seam of green fed daily by 2 million gallons of runoff from the nearby wastewater treatment plant. Tres Rios is not natural. It’s a man-made memorial to Arizona’s once thriving riparian regions.

The wetlands offer a cool haven this early in the morning. The trees and shrubs screen the nearby sprawl of farm fields, new housing tracts and country roads. The Estrella Mountains, bronze in the morning sun, are framed through clearings between cottonwoods, willows and paloverdes. Stick nurseries of great blue and grey herons crown the highest branches.

Abarca is international and borderlands projects manager for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. He’s a wetlands expert who lives in Phoenix but thinks continentally. Two recent international awards for his conservation work in the U.S., Canada and Mexico tell of his growing reputation.

Abarca also started a series of nature workshops for Latino students in Phoenix that enlisted 200 in the first year. Now schools compete in a drawing for the opportunity to participate. He hopes the program inspires some Latino students to follow their wonder to careers in biology and other sciences. Unfortunately, not many Latino students enroll in environmental sciences, he says. His work grew from his childhood fascination with all things wet. He recalls toting buckets filled with pond water, frogs, tadpoles, snails, and aquatic plants – mobile water worlds he’d dump into his home aquarium.

"It’s sad, because this great country needs to have great leadership in terms of its natural resources. We need more diverse professionals tackling the challenges for the next century."

Tres Rios was named for the three rivers in the area that used to flow free: the Gila, the Salt and the Agua Fria. The water has gone underground because dams and irrigation systems that nourished civilization have bled the rivers dry.

A little water makes the desert explode with living things. These wetlands are home to beavers, muskrats, raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. Birds flit in the treetops or circle overhead. Down below, water sparkles like bead strands beneath the leafy swells of pennywort and bulrush. Tiny fish dimple and flick the glassy surface.

Arizona is experiencing its worst drought since the 1940s, according to the United States Geological Survey. But while we are not going to run out of water anytime soon, desert-dwelling humans need to be educated on the role water plays in providing an environment that is not only livable, but enjoyable and healthy, Abarca says.

The reality is you can’t stop development. But you have to understand wetlands to prevent ecological catastrophes, like the hurricane in New Orleans. There has to be a balance."

The Army Corps of Engineers have plans for 6.5 miles of wetlands restoration in the area. The Corps eventually will restore marshes that will include a flood control levee to regulate a wetland strand between 91st and115thth avenues. It’s due to be completed in 2009. Locals will use the wetlands for recreation, water treatment, habitat restoration and as a laboratory for generations of students.

Meanwhile, the onslaught of the desert’s limited water supplies continues. Maricopa, Pima and Pinal county officials cannot seem to develop open landscape into houses and malls fast enough.

Beyond the pavement lie worlds in which everything is connected to everyone. In the Tres Rios ecosystem, sunlight makes the plants and algae grow. Wind aerates the water and cleanses it. Trees and other plants absorb the treated water for nutrients. Bulrush reeds filter bacteria out of the water. Minnows help control mosquitoes by preying on their larvae.

Pennywort provides hiding places for fish and frogs and reduces algae growth. Algae dissolve its oxygen into the water to provide life. And round and round.

If humans continue to refuse to consider themselves a link in this eternal chain, there may come a time in the distant future when pup coyotes ring an elder tree in the moonlight to listen to tales of a myth called Man.