by Marlys Hersey
Editor

At the monthly meeting of the Big Bend Sierra Club on Thursday, May 15, guest speaker BBNP Superintendent Bill Wellman addressed a few dozen people in Lawrence Hall at Sul Ross State University, Sierra Club members and others. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to be at Big Bend.... This is by far the best position I’ve had,” said the 37-year veteran of NPS work.

Wellman began as a seasonal ranger on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and Virginia, and has been superintendent of Fort Union Trading Post NHS, Timpanogos Cave NM, Great Sand Dunes NM, Organ Pipe Cactus NM, Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP/ Curecanti NRA and, since 2007, Big Bend NP.

With a Southern lilt in his voice and frequently pausing thoughtfully between phrases and sentences, Wellman also noted that in the 1930’s, when Big Bend was designated, “desert parks were unheard of.” Those were the days before air conditioning was invented and before Americans enjoyed long retirements and the subsequent ability to take long winter vacations.

A distinguishing feature of the park,Wellman noted, is the Rio Grande, which forms the southern (and eastern) boundary of the park as well as the international boundary with Mexico – for 118 miles. “It’s the only ‘Wild and Scenic River’ [designation] that only covers one riverbank,” mused Wellman.

With a clear grasp of the riverine ecology, Wellman discussed one of the park’s core resource issues: the Rio Grande is currently at 1/16th of its historical flow. Wellman’s “slides” (photos in Powerpoint presentation) illustrated the dramatic difference between the Rio Grande pre-1960 – “gently sloping banks, bars, sandy with very little vegetation – and now – little movement of water, “sand and silt, lots of vegetation.”

How did this happen? asked Wellman – and went on to answer exactly that, in great detail, with the ecological theories on how. And, perhaps more importantly, “What can we do with what’s left?” The NPS hopes to, through a variety of strategies, return (our side of?) the riverbank to something more like it was 50+ years ago.

Yet almost all of the water into the Rio Grande below El Paso (the river starts in Colorado) comes from Mexico, and is therefore beyond the control of our federal government. Still, Wellman, suggested, “to help the river, we would need the releases [from dams upstream in Mexico] to coincide with the monsoons.”

The exotic species of tamarisk or saltcedar, and the giant cane, only worsen the problems for the Rio Grande system, said Wellman, and discussed at length the NPS’ plans to employ saltcedar beetle to eradicate the noxious, invasive trees.

A large portion of Wellman’s talk ended up being about, well, preventing Big Bend NP from becoming another Organ Pipe NM in Arizona, where Wellman was Superintendent when the tides turned, so to speak, and within just a few years, the park was ravaged by illegal immigration. Organ Pipe became, Wellman told the group, “a war zone between two drug lord factions.” The “hundreds of miles of illegal roads in the park” and some 200,000 migrants coming though a park half the size of Big Bend took a huge toll on the park’s natural and human resources and forced the closure of 90% of the park to public access.

“Organ Pipe was as calm or calmer than Big Bend ten years ago,” proclaimed Wellman. When in the 1990’s Border Patrol began to crack down on illegal immigration along the border of California/Mexico, the traffic moved east – and Organ Pipe was, it seems, the weakest point. “The Border Patrol believed the desert was self-patrolling.... It turned out not to be true. Not with this amount of money involved – no place is too remote.”

With the cooperation of USCBP, the NPS’ plans for ensuring that Big Bend becomes “the most protected of the least protected” include but are not limited to clearing the aforementioned riparian vegetation, installing a “virtual fence,” and getting a reliable radio system.

“Traffic will go where it’s easiest to pass. [Big Bend is] not the weakest point right now,” said Wellman. “We’re pretty determined not to be caught behind like we were in Arizona.”

When asked about the closure of the several historical river crossings, Wellman waxed philosophical and then concluded “There’s a lot of paranoia about the border. There’s still a feeling that we need to seal the border, not realizing that’s not possible. We need some sort of immigration legislation so it’s not a hot button issue and we can talk about crossings again.” And he’s hopeful that “before I leave here we can at least get Boquillas open.”

“It’s my fondest dream,” said Wellman, “that in ten years, people will say ‘That superintendent was an idiot: look at the time and energy he put into this stuff – and nothing happened.’”