Saving Oak Creek Canyon ecosystem
Project to rehabilitate corridor hit by visitors
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Long lines of vehicles park up and down Highway 89A through Oak Creek Canyon near Sedona in north-central Arizona as hundreds flock to enjoy the water.
It’s a common site throughout the summer, and increasingly in the off-season as well, but it’s one that conservationists and state officials say has created some real ecological problems for the Oak Creek corridor.
A group of Arizona Conservation Corps members recently completed the second phase of a project that officials hope will rehabilitate many areas along the corridor that have been hit hard by visitors, improve water quality in the creek and protect habitat for the threatened narrow-headed garter snake, the Arizona Daily Sun reported.
A collaboration of the AZCC and numerous organizations and groups, including the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the National Forest Foundation and the Coconino National Forest’s Red Rock District, the project seeks to close hundreds of unofficial social trails that crisscross the area between the highway and the creek.
Sporting their hard hats and tan AZCC uniforms, half a dozen young people recently unloaded large rocks from the bed of a pickup truck.
As employees of nearby Slide Rock State Park waved traffic by, the crew stacked the rocks under the state park’s fence in places where visitors previously scrambled through to descend to the creek.
Over the last year, AZCC crews have addressed nearly 200 social trails along the creek corridor, said Ron Tiller, a Department of Environmental Quality scientist who has been working on Oak Creek for about three years.
The trails largely cut directly from the road to the creek, often down steep escarpments. In one area, Tiller said, they cataloged 47 individual trails that visitors had cut to the creek within just a quarter-mile stretch.
The trails and foot traffic increase erosion of sediment into the creek, and often contribute to outbreaks of E. coli in the creek as human waste left by visitors is swept into the water.
Last year, the Arizona Department of Transportation also sought to limit where visitors could park along 89A, installing new guardrails in several areas.
In response, AZCC teams have installed low fencing and placed thick blankets of cut juniper limbs along the edge of pull-offs.
At the same time, the crews are improving other trails with the intention of leaving those open so there are still some ways to get to the creek. So far, close to 40 of the 200 trails they have worked on will remain open.
All that doesn’t guarantee that use of the unofficial trails won’t continue in the area, said Sasha Stortz, Arizona program manager for the National Forest Foundation.
“People mostly want to do the right thing, so we can help people do that,” Stortz said. “Protecting this place that people adore.”