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CIBOLA NWR GETTING FACELIFT -- jim matthews column -- 23may07

Cibola National Wildlife Refuge is getting facelift despite low funding

By JIM MATTHEWS Outdoor News Service

BLYTHE -- Doing more with less -- a lot less.

That could be the motto of Bill Seese, the relatively new refuge manager for the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge on the lower Colorado River just south of Blythe. In spite of losing three staff people to cutbacks, Seese has done more to improve Cibola in less than three years than everyone else who'd been in charge for the 30 years before him.

Seese would never say that, but for refuge veterans, those of us who've been coming here since the 1980s or before, Cibola is becoming an exciting place.

When Seese had his budget cut -- for the umpteenth time -- he shrugged and looked at alternative funding, enlisting Ducks Unlimited, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and specialized funds from his own agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He viewed a couple of wildfires as partners in his process to rid the refuge of salt cedar, and he's taken staff that were doing the same job over and over again and turned them loose on new projects.

It's like the refuge is three times the size it was in the past because of this work.

If you were to divide the refuge into four parts, there would be 1) the closed portion consisting of farm fields and ponds where geese, ducks and sandhill cranes rest and feed in the winter, 2) the island hunting unit where brush was thick, fields ill-kept and overgrown, and wildlife use minimal, 3) the farm hunting unit, where hunters could set out huge spreads of goose decoys in grass fields and occasionally kill a bird that had just arrived into the valley, and 4) everything else, mostly areas choked with salt cedar and tamarisk. There's also Cibola Lake, a heck of a bass, bluegill, catfish, and crappie fishery, which is closed in the fall, giving geese and ducks a protected nighttime roost spot.

The closed farm fields are under going a complete facelift, with more areas cleared, better crops planted, and resting ponds improved for both winter layover and -- something that never happened much before -- spring nesting. Huge invasive brush patches are now cleared and treated with herbicides (never done before) to do away with the non-native plants, and native plant restoration is ongoing with BuRec and DU money and two huge areas of the refuge.

Since Seese's staff didn't have to spend all their time cutting salt cedar each year in the farm area, they jumped over to the Island Unit, and the whole north half of the island, which was burned, is being cleared on non-natives. Those cleared areas are treated to keep non-native plants out. No one is sure why herbicide treatments were never used before to control the invasive plants, but Seese thinks he can clear and keep the refuge clear of salt cedar and tamarisk. What a concept. Already, the cleared portion of the island is alive with Gambel's quail, mourning and whitewing dove nesting in mesquite snags, and burro deer. But there's more, the island's farm fields and slough-pond system has been completely revamped and vast areas have been revegetated with native mesquite and cottonwood, thanks to DU. Mule deer numbers are skyrocketing, and duck, quail and dove hunters are going to have opportunities they've never had here before. It was in the 80s when I drove around this unit, but I had goose bumps the whole time.

The farm hunting unit is getting a revamped water system, and Seese has been planting alfalfa instead of rye grass so the geese might actually feed on these fields instead of flying over them. The soils are being leached of their salts to make them more productive, and prime goose hunting blind sites are likely to number more than three or four in the future.

The Hart Mine Marsh, part of No. 4 above in the past -- a huge thicket of unusable wetland, is going to become a duck hunter's paradise. With increase water flows of water through the marsh, thanks to DU, and restoration of the habitat, thanks to BuRec, is will be transformed in the coming years.

Seese even improved the access points to Cibola Lake for fishermen. Until this year, it was almost impossible to launch a float tube, never mind getting a small boat into the lake. Now it is completely fishable.

Sure, Seese is a pretty avid hunter and fishermen, but so were some of the previous refuge managers here. Seese has done something rare for people who work in government today: He's created a lot of work for himself to do the right thing for the resource, which ends up being the right thing for hunters and fishermen. He's even annoyed a few local fishermen by working to restore two local backwaters for endangered Colorado River native fish. He'll probably annoy other people in the future with other changes that might come at Cibola. But in the long run, there will be better habitat for wildlife and more opportunity for hunters and fishermen.

Cibola fans can only hope that Seese stays at Cibola for the rest of his career with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
 

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