Hell's Canyon National "Recreation" Area

On a recent trip into the Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area I had a few thoughts. Not many, but a few.

Hell's Canyon in on the border of Oregon and Idaho, and the Snake River both divides the States, and provides a center for the NRA. On both sides of the river are steep, rocky, grassy canyon walls creating the deepest canyon in North America. Yes, deeper than the Grand Canyon.

On this three day trip I contemplated the management of the NRA. What is being done in the Area, and what should be done?

A National Recreation Area could be just about anything a person wants it to be. The fable of the seven wise, blind people who were told to go find an elephant and report back to the King. Each wise person touched a part of the elephant and reported back such things as an elephant is a rope (from the person who only touched the tail) to the one who reported the elephant is a page made of leather (from the person who touched the ear of the elephant).

So, this is only one blind person touching Hell's Canyon NRA. And one of the first things I touched was a sign-in box:

There are no forms, no paper, nothing, in the box. They don't want to know what your recreational needs are. And last year there were no forms. The five or six times I've checked this box there has been nothing in it. It's only to make a person think that the Forest Service is interested in your recreational needs. Nothing more.

Not too many more meters along the trail a person walks through a thicket of blackberry brambles:

Introduced from Eurasia, Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) is a non-native invasive. It doesn't belong in the area. And it is spreading, requiring trail users to hack back the canes annually to keep the trail clear.

Further along the trail a recreation user gets the official greeting of entering the Hell's Canyon Wilderness Area:

The sign is propped up against the rock pile. The Forest Service apparently can't even mount the sign properly on a pole. It's just sitting next to the trail as if the USFS personnel didn't have the time or energy to spend a little extra time to install the sign on an official post.

There are native plants in the area, and you can see them in the above image with the sign. Those clumps of grass are the native bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudoroegneria spicata). But many of the natives are being overrun, or outcompeted with the non-natives. Call them what you will: non-native, exotic, weedy, invasive, foreign, they don't belong in the area and take over from the naturally occurring native plants.

Here's a pretty image of the Spring Creek drainage with a foreground full of non-native thistles:

Non-native bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare) occupies a large area of this bench and might be considered the dominant species in the area. It is a biennial, meaning that it usually takes two years to flower, then it dies. So all the tall, skeletons of bull thistle are dead.

But looking closer to the ground a person sees:

Bull thistle! This plant was busy establishing itself last year, and this year it will be ready to take off,  send up a nearly two meter stalk which will flower, and send out hundreds of seeds.

Non-native thistles are not the only forbs that are dominating the area. There's teasel:

Like thistle, teasel (Dipsacus fullonum) is biennial and these are the remains of last year's seed heads.

Looking around a person can easily find the plants that will be making this year's flowers and seed heads:

Teasel was one of the plants in North America that was intentionally introduced. It was brought to this continent so settlers could use the seed head for carding wool. Now it seems to just be a problem.

The above images have been focused on specific plants and problems, but what happens if a person just takes a picture of the plants at his feet?

Where to start? The deep green plant on the left edge is teasel. The gray-green plant near the top of the image is known as beggar's lice, gypsyflower, or houndstongue (Cynoglossum officinale), another biennial non-native. It produces tick sized and shaped seeds that stick to people's clothing.

On the right side of the image is the skeletal remains of last years medusahead wildrye (Taeniatherum caput-medusae), a non-native annual grass.

The green grasses in the above image could be some of many non-native grasses that have their remains in the area. Besides the medusahead, there was cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), bulbous bluegrass (Poa bulbosa), Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis), and wiregrass, also known as North Africa grass (Ventenata dubia). Many of these species are considered winter annuals, meaning that the seeds germinate in the autumn, winter over as small plants, then when spring and warmer weather begins, they have a head start on growing. This allows the winter annuals to suck up the limited soil moisture and nutrients faster than the plants that don't germinate until the spring.

All of these non-natives in our National Recreation Area!

What could possibly be the source of so many alien species of plants?

Is there a finger a person could point to a likely vector of these weeds?

Let the first person who is free of sin cast the first cowpie!

Domestic cattle are allowed to graze much of the Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area, sometimes for up to six months. While there were no cattle in the area in March, 2016, their remains were everywhere. Maybe this allotment has cattle on it in the early summer, after the grasses have had an opportunity to grow a bit taller.

Do US Forest Service personnel ever get out in the field anymore? Or are budgets so tight that there are no personnel to do field work? Or has the mission of the Forest Service sifted so far that they have abandoned being land stewards and have all become suppressors of wildfires?

It perplexes some. The geography of Hell's Canyon has not changed. It is still, and will continue to be a big gorge. It will continue to be a place of big spaces. What is changing is the seeming neglect that the managers of this special place have. Neglect. And it is visible everywhere a person looks.

One final image that sums it all up:

This is along the Thirtytwo Point Trail (#1789), at the junction with the Buck Creek Trail (# 1788). It's the only indication that there is a trail junction here. If a person wasn't paying attention they might miss the junction. But, interestingly, the sign has not been replaced in the twenty to thirty years that the wildfire had occurred in the area.


Twenty years, and they haven't replaced the sign. It is only a sign, but it is a sign also of the mismanagement of your National Recreation Area.