Travel Stuff: November 2010

F or my latest project I was chainsawing mesquite at Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. The area used to be grazed by cattle and that allows unnaturally high levels of mesquite to invade the grasslands. The cattle are gone now but the the mesquite is still there, which makes it harder for pronghorn antelope, which were wiped out but then have been re-introduced. The antelope can outrun coyotes on an open grassland (they are the fastest animal in North America), but when there is lots of mesquite (which is like a big thorny shrub/tree) then the coyotes munch them. There is also an endangered species of masked bobwhite quail that was historically there and has been reintroduced that has similar problems. The refuge was created to try and save the bobwhite, but apparently there are so few that their gene pool is lousy and they aren't doing well. The refuge is right on the Mexican border which entailed tons of Border Patrol around all the time with regular helicopters at night trying to spotlight illegal migrants. There is even supposedly sensors in the ground, a full fence at the border, and super-fancy cameras that take pictures of anything that moves. It was a little weird. The big pointy thing in the picture above is a mountain called Baboquivaria that Native Americans had as a holy spot. The whole place was a grassland corridor between two mountain ranges, so it was quite scenic.