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The quest to save El Paso’s diminished wetlands [1]

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Date: 2024-05-26  

At Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, a flock of white-faced ibises wade in the shallow water. They use their slim bills to preen their dark maroon feathers or poke the water, perhaps probing for a snack of snail or bug.

The ibises were seasonal visitors, one of more than 200 species of birds that have been recorded at the wetlands. On this recent May afternoon, they shared the water with longer-term residents, the shorter, plump-breasted killdeers and brown Mexican ducks.

In the late 1990s, various local and federal groups began undertaking the painstaking task of restoring the wetlands in Southeast El Paso, next to the town of Socorro. Treated wastewater from the adjacent Bustamante Wastewater Treatment Plant feeds two wetland cells at Rio Bosque.

But there was a time when the park’s 372 acres relied on the river as its source of water.

For tens of thousands of years, woodlands and wetlands hugged the Rio Grande, the lifeblood of the Chihuahuan Desert. But in the last century, a cumulation of human activities destroyed most of this ecosystem.

Today only two significant wetlands remain in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez region — Rio Bosque and Keystone Heritage Park in West El Paso. Both are city-owned properties, with the University of Texas at El Paso managing Rio Bosque.

Together, these slivers of a once flourishing oasis provide a glimpse of what the landscape was like before man took control of the Rio Grande.

Now a highway project threatens one of El Paso’s last wetlands.

In early May, the Texas Department of Transportation unveiled three proposals that would extend the César Chávez Border Highway from Southeast El Paso through the area between the Zaragoza and Tornillo international ports of entry, and along the boundary of Rio Bosque. One design shows an elevated highway hovering over the wetlands. Another depicts the highway’s legs planted on the southern edge of the wetlands.

Lauren Macias-Cervantes, a spokesperson for TxDOT, stressed that these are only ideas and the agency is still in the early planning phase of the Border Highway East project. TxDOT has not allocated funding toward any of the three concepts and it could take 40 years to complete the highway.

After collecting public comment, the agency will evaluate the next steps and hold a second round of public input at the end of 2024 or early 2025, Macias-Cervantes said.

El Paso County’s population has remained stagnant for more than a decade, but the city continues to sprawl outward. The highway project is intended to alleviate traffic from rapid development in Socorro, as well as bottlenecks from the Bridge of the Americas and Zaragoza ports of entry.

The federal government, environmental groups, city of El Paso and UTEP invested more than $2.5 million into the Rio Bosque wetlands by 2012, according to a summary by park manager John Sproul. After that, El Paso Water invested additional funds to construct a pipeline from its water plant to the park and make it possible for the park to receive irrigation water.

As a UTEP employee, the university advised him not to talk to the media to advocate for or against the highway proposals.

Sproul did offer a curt assessment of how highway construction could impact the park: “You’re taking out a lot of wetland habitat. The constant disturbance and contaminants and everything associated with all the traffic would degrade the remaining habitat in the area.”

A site for nature, research, recreation

Sproul trekked through a loamy soil trail on the Rio Bosque, plucking a red, edible wolfberry from a bush, pointing out the native plants that have taken root – scorpion weed with their lilac blooms poking through the twiggy underbrush, bitterweed with their yellow, ball-shaped flower heads that once blanketed the area after monsoon floods.

Screwbean mesquite trees, named for their screw-shaped pods, umbrella over parts of the trail, providing patches of shade.

John Sproul, manager of Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, stands over one of the original Rio Grande channels with the park on May 3, 2024. The channel is now fed by runoff from El Paso Water. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A ripening wolfberry provides food for both wildlife and human visitors at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

An invasive salt cedar plant, one of many in the Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, will eventually be removed and replaced with a native tree. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A painted stone left behind at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park urges visitors to protest a planned highway in the area. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

John Sproul, manager of Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, strides through grasses near a wetland cell on May 3, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A small wetland cell at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park supports bull rush, algae, duckweed, and numerous other species of plants and animals. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

The wetlands cells at Rio Bosque support wildlife, such as the raccoon that left behind at a print in the soft mud, May 3, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A roadrunner crosses a trail at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, May 13, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A small wetland cell at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park supports bull rush, algae, duckweed, and numerous other species of plants and animals. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A wetland cell at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park provides a habitat for fowl and plant life, May 13, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A partially-dry wetland cell at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park provides a habitat for fowl and plant life, May 13, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A wetland cell at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park provides a habitat for fowl and plant life, May 13, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Sproul eventually made his way to one of the wetland cells, accompanied by assistant park manager Sergio Samaniego and Rocio Ronquillo, social media manager for volunteer group Friends of the Rio Bosque.

Samaniego, wearing tall rubber boots, stepped gingerly on the edge of the water carpeted with a layer of lime green scum and spiders dancing across the surface. He didn’t discover the park until he was an undergrad student at UTEP. When he gives tours, he learns many people born and raised in El Paso don’t know about the history of wetlands in their backyard.

“I brought my parents down and they were in shock that something like this existed in the middle of the desert,” Samaniego said. “They weren’t expecting water, that’s for sure.”

Sergio Samaniego points to the wildlife and plant species, such as damselflies, spiders, snails and duckweed, that thrive in the wetland cells in Rio Bosque Park, May 3, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

The story of the wetlands in El Paso, like so much of life in the region, would not be possible without a river born 30 million or more years ago.

The Rio Grande – known as the Río Bravo in Mexico – begins in the Colorado Rockies and traverses through two countries before spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. Many tributaries and streams flow into the Rio Grande, creating a river system through the United States and Mexico that’s able to sustain life.

Every year in May and June, the river would receive high flows from snowmelt in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. This would make its way through the El Paso-Juárez region, where the water spread out into floodplains, scouring for open areas along the river bank.

This happened at the same time native cottonwood and willow trees were releasing their seeds, Sproul said. The wet, sandy areas provided the perfect germination ground for those seeds and the establishment of bosques, a type of riparian forest found along the Rio Grande’s floodplains.

As the river moved, making adjustments small and large, the region wound up with different plant communities and habitats throughout the valley. But the Rio Bosque area looked much different by the late 1990s when Sproul got involved.

The introduction of non-native salt cedar trees had choked out the cottonwood and willow trees.

A border wall cleaved what should have been a binational ecosystem.

The construction of dams and channels changed the river’s flow and diverted water to people and businesses, drying out the floodplains where seasonal floods once encouraged the growth of native habitat that attracted a diverse variety of animals, including birds, reptiles and amphibians.

A rabbit scurries alongside the border barrier at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, May 13, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

In the 1990s, the U.S. side of the International Boundary and Water Commission agreed to use federal funding to build a wetland where the Rio Bosque now sits – a mitigation measure against loss of habitat after the agency constructed a concrete canal running from Downtown El Paso to near the park’s location. The alteration of the Rio Grande makes it impossible for a wetland to naturally occur there again, so El Paso Water funnels water to the restoration project.

When the wetlands returned, the park offered a critical site for UTEP and El Paso Community College students to conduct field studies and scientific research.

Alonso Delgado, a master’s student in biology at UTEP, plans to research aquatic invertebrates at Rio Bosque in the fall semester. These creatures are a vital link in the food chain and most of them at Rio Bosque are only visible with a microscope, such as water fleas, a type of filter-feeding crustacean closely related to shrimp

In his undergraduate years, the park was also an ideal place for Delgado to research how increasing heat from climate change could affect pollinators. Some pollinators specialize in certain flowers, meaning if certain bees go away, their plants go away, then the organisms dependent on that plant also disappear, he explained.

“I think aquatic ecosystems are extremely important to study for many reasons,” Delgado said. “Wetlands are one of the most productive ecosystems in the world and water is a basic need for all life.”

Sergio Samaniego points to a snail that lives among the algae and duckweed of one of the wetland cells in Rio Bosque Park, May 3, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Then there’s the recreational aspect of the park. People in Socorro and the Lower Valley have fewer nearby options to wander through native desert habitat, Ronquillo said. In comparison, West El Pasoans have easier access to Keystone Heritage Park, the River Park Trail that runs up the Rio Grande away from the border, and Franklin Mountains State Park.

A highway has long-reaching consequences beyond getting people from Point A to Point B, Ronquillo said. Equitable access to green spaces gives people the chance to learn about the place they live in beyond the confines of their day-to-day bubble.

“I think we live in a working class community,” Ronquillo said. “I think the first thing for our parents or for our generations is to provide for your family. So I think having outdoor opportunities to explore, even starting within your community – it wasn’t even on my family’s radar.”

Gabe Padilla grew up near the Rio Bosque before it became a park. He descends from the Piro people, who followed El Camino Real from New Mexico to south of El Paso in the late 1600s, establishing pueblos along the Rio Grande where they built irrigation systems for their crops. He now owns Cafe Piro in Socorro with his wife, Mel.

A pair of black-necked stilts feed in a wetland cell at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, May 13, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

As a child, he and his grandmother used to ride their bicycles along the ditch from her adobe house to the bosque. He spent his summers at his grandmother’s house where he watched jackrabbits hop along the farm fields, fell asleep listening to bullfrogs and crickets, then woke up to birds chirping. Several decades later, he and Mel walk their dachshund at the park, where they like to catch the sunset.

“We don’t have hardly anything left,” Padilla said. “I really hope there’s something that can be preserved for our future generations so they can enjoy a sliver of what this land used to look like.”

Loss of wetlands contributes to climate change

The loss of bosques and wetlands also had a profound impact on the greater environment. The two act as lungs and kidneys, said Michael Gaglio, a biologist who manages El Paso’s other wetland at Keystone Heritage Park.

Bosques are full of trees that breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. The exchange of gasses supports climate stabilization. Wetlands also improve water quality by filtering out sediment and pollutants from stormwater runoff.

A dry wetland cell at Keystone Heritage Park, white with gypsum residue, awaits the water that summer monsoons over the Franklin Mountains will bring. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

“For me, walking through a little bit of forest left here in Keystone every day fills me with wonder,” Gaglio said. “It doesn’t feel like I’m in El Paso. The paradox is that we are in El Paso. That’s why people even settled here in the first place. This place was lush and beautiful and provided life.”

On a recent May morning, Gaglio gave a tour of the 58-acre Keystone Heritage Park, where the wetland dates back to the Archaic Period. Restoration in the area has had similar challenges to Rio Bosque.

Gaglio is working on the gradual removal of invasive species, such as salt cedars, which blanket the ground with fronds and block out light, making it difficult for native trees and vegetation to penetrate.

Unlike Rio Bosque, the Keystone wetlands depend on water flow from Resler Canyon and the arroyos. Gaglio bristled at the implication, however, that the Rio Bosque is artificial in comparison. The wetlands were here first and are a closer representation of the natural environment than other water systems in the region, he argued.

After coming to a narrow pinch near UTEP and Downtown El Paso, the Rio Grande used to widen and meander slowly through El Paso’s Lower Valley and Juárez. This would have created pockets of wetlands in those areas.

Michael Gaglio, wetlands and hydrology advisor at Keystone Heritage Park, identifies species of birds and plants near a wetland cell at the park. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A wetland cell at Keystone Heritage Park is naturally fed by runoff from the Franklin Mountains. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Salt grass is native to the El Paso region and can tolerate soils with high salt content, while withstanding both drought and flood. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Cottonwood trees grow at Keystone Heritage Park, where managers are trying to gradually replace invasive salt cedar shrubs with native trees and plants. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Michael Gaglio, wetlands and hydrology advisor at Keystone Heritage Park, points out the nest of verdin bird in the forest at the park. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A boardwalk surrounded by rushes leads across one of the channels that feed the wetlands at Keystone Heritage Park. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Michael Gaglio, wetlands and hydrology advisor at Keystone Heritage Park, shows the path of the thousands of ibis birds that temporarily reside in the park in the early spring during their migratory journey. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A sign cautions visitors to stay away from nesting birds at Keystone Heritage Park. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

When viewed at the right angle, the painted purple outline of the Franklin Mountains lines up with the real mountains in the distance, showing the watershed that reaches Keystone Heritage Park. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Michael Gaglio, wetlands and hydrology advisor at Keystone Heritage Park, points out an 1857 drawing by James Smillie that shows the Rio Grande near what is now Doniphan Drive as a wide river that fills the valley. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Michael Gaglio, wetlands and hydrology advisor at Keystone Heritage Park, grasps the branch of a coyote willow, one of the many numerous native plants that are growing at the park. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A Mexican Duck lands on the surface of a wetland cell at Keystone Heritage Park, May 14, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A clump of reeds and duckweed in a wetland cell at Keystone Heritage Park, May 14, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

But drought from a combination of decreased rainfall and shrinking snowpacks – driven by climate change – have diminished the Rio Grande’s water levels. Man-made interventions also siphoned off the river’s water for commercial agriculture and now mostly development, Gaglio said.

“The Rio Grande is no longer a river,” Gaglio said. “It’s a water delivery system to people who have purchased more water than exists in there.”

The border wall has posed another obstruction at Rio Bosque, fragmenting natural habitat and making it harder for animals to cross back and forth.

In 2019, a beaver was spotted at Rio Bosque for the first time in nine years, Sproul said. But that beaver remains alone without a mate, he noted.

Depending on its proximity, a highway could further isolate the wetlands that are already bracketed by a border wall, the water facility it depends on and the Jobe concrete plant that City Council recently approved to make permanent. This isolation could harm biodiversity by making it tougher for wildlife to travel in and out of the park for mating and breeding, Sproul said.

Organizations on both sides of the border have proposed creating a mirror of Rio Bosque in Juárez, said Ray Aguilar, who leads the Sierra de Juárez conservation group. But the properties on the Mexican side have a mix of private owners. There are also plans to build maquiladoras in the neighborhoods across from Rio Bosque because of their proximity to the border, he said.

His organization promotes the protection of wildlife and Aguilar recently led a guided walk along the border, in hopes that Juarenses can recognize the history of the river. But the challenge feels enormous because many residents lack knowledge in the subject of conservation, he said.

A bird flies over a wetland cell at Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, May 13, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

All these compounding factors have undone what the river has spent most of its lifetime as: an ecological corridor and gateway, encouraging the movement of flora and fauna and later humans through the Paso del Norte.

Technology made it possible for humans to survive in the desert. But it also made it possible for humans to forget.

What’s next for Texas border highway

More than 320 people and groups attended the May 1-2 public meetings in person, said Macias-Cervantes of TxDOT.

TxDOT held the meetings at Clint High School and Western Tech College, near Socorro, following a series of private stakeholder meetings. Stakeholders included the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization, city and county leaders and the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo whose Tribal land is part of the studied area. Sproul confirmed he and a group from UTEP met with the agency as representatives of Rio Bosque to offer their concerns.

El Paso Water announced its opposition to the highway concepts and voted in favor of placing a conservation easement on the park’s property. A conservation easement is a voluntary legal agreement to limit the use of land for conservation purposes.

The decision came after El Paso Water advocated in support of Jobe Materials making its concrete operations a permanent fixture outside Rio Bosque.

El Paso Water’s conservation easement includes an undeveloped open space by the park that the utility wants to devote to a carbon sequestration project. The project would promote native trees to store carbon, reducing CO2 emissions that drive climate change.

Macias-Cervantes said TxDOT would not be able to assess effects of the agreement on its project until the proposed highway is well into the preliminary engineering and design phase.

Citizens comment on a TxDOT proposal to build a highway in the Rio Bosque and Socorro area, May 2, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

The state is still evaluating feedback and expects to publish a summary of the first round of public comments this July, she said. Based on feedback, the agency might return with new alternatives for the transportation project and even scrap concepts altogether, she said.

But the traffic congestion in the area would still need to be addressed, Macias-Cervantes added. TxDOT anticipates increased commercial trade across the border.

Several Socorro residents who attended the meetings, from ranchers to commuting college students, told El Paso Matters this was their first time hearing about the highway project.

Rocio Ronquillo believes that Rio Bosque Wetlands Park is an important resource, not only for the wildlife it supports but also as a free recreational space for local residents to connect with nature. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Some attendees, including Gaglio and Padilla, questioned the lack of investment in a light rail system and improved public transportation. If TxDoT were to consider public transportation, it would need to work with El Paso city and county governments, which run separate transit systems.

The next round of public comments and meetings are expected to come at the end of year or early 2025. Macias-Cervantes urged people to participate in these public discussions while the project is still in the planning phase.

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[1] Url: https://elpasomatters.org/2024/05/26/rio-bosque-wetlands-el-paso-border-highway-expansion/

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