Canjilon Lakes remains closed as restoration efforts continue
Forest officials work to combat disease, other stresses in Rio Arriba County recreation spot
TAOS — Drought, diseases and insects have taken a toll in recent years on trees surrounding the Canjilon Lakes Recreational Area, causing a die-off so dangerous the U.S. Forest Service has decided to close the popular camping and fishing area to the public while forest managers figure out how to restore it.
An estimated 80 percent of the mature spruce, fir and aspen trees have died in the remote Rio Arriba County recreation spot north of Abiquiú, according to a Forest Service news release, posing threats of falling trees. In 2010, a large aspen fell on a fisherman next to one of the lakes. An aspen fell on a large truck the following year, and yet another aspen fell on a tent that was unoccupied at the time, the news release says. Forest officials also were forced to close the area in 2015 because of the die-off.
“The priority of the safety and health of the public and my employees is of utmost importance,” said Canjilon District Ranger Alicia Gallegos.
According to forest officials, the tree die-off is from a combination of ecological offenders, but the problem is linked to more than half a century of human activity in the area.
The Canjilon Lakes Campground opened in 1948. At the time, the aspens and other trees were healthy. The robust forests and the lakes drew campers, anglers and other recreational users, said Lora Arciniega, a silviculturist with the El Rito Ranger District of the Carson National Forest. (Silviculturists are tasked with looking after trees.)
But the trees, aspens in particular, began to suffer from the human traffic.
“The main culprit is carving and damage to the aspen trees,” Arciniega said.
Arborglyphs — the official name for initials, names, dates and doodles carved into the soft bark of aspens — open up wounds in the trees. Trees also can be hurt by trucks scraping against the bark or an ax cut. And, as with a cut in human flesh, spores in the environment take advantage of the open wound in tree bark.
“That led to really prolific fungal diseases” in the 1980s, Arciniega said, such as sooty bark canker and Cytospora canker.
Sooty bark canker — the single biggest killer of aspens in the Rocky Mountains — begins as a sunken patch of dead bark on the aspen and can kill a tree within three to 10 years. Cytospora canker is a fungal disease that is similarly fatal, but shows up as an orange marking like paint.
While those two diseases are the major reasons for the tree die-off at Canjilon Lakes, Arciniega said, so are the sustained presence of the western tent caterpillar and western spruce budworm, which forest managers started to notice in large concentrations about 15 years ago.
Both bugs defoliate trees and leave dense webs in their branches. Their numbers can get so huge that as someone walks through an affected part of the forest, the caterpillars rain down to the point that they’re unavoidable.
But neither bug is invasive. In fact, Arciniega said, both are part of the natural cycle of forest regeneration. They create snags for wildlife and “are a way for these stands to self-regulate.”
The issue is when they return to the same area season after season. And that’s exactly what happened at Canjilon Lakes, likely because of the other stresses on the forest.
“You walk up there, and almost every one of those aspen trees have some sort of marking on them,” Arciniega said.
In a joint effort with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, the Forest Service began the hard work of removing all the dead trees from the recreation area.
A contractor worked between last spring and the first snowfall in autumn to cut all the dead and dying trees that were about to fall or would likely do so within five years. The treated patches of forest, where some healthy live trees remain standing, came out to 150 acres.
Once the snow melts, contractors will move all the dead trees into accessible areas, where wood gatherers will eventually have access to harvest them.
Aspens, bound by a common root system, love disturbance, so the forest is already showing some signs of recovery.
This story first appeared in The Taos News, a sister publication of The Santa Fe New Mexican.