Activity Report Explorer

Aldos Silver City • Entered by Marcia Stout on October 9, 2025

Riparian – Grazing Monitoring

September 1, 2025 – September 30, 2025

Key Issue: Livestock Grazing Management
Activity Type: Stewardship (monitoring, sampling, planting, etc.)
Key Partners: Gila National Forest, Upper Gila Watershed Alliance
Landscape/area: Gila National Forest (2658321 acres)

Measurable Outcomes

Outcome 1: Trail/land monitored (1 surveys)
Outcome 2: Hiked (3 miles)

Short Description of Activity

On Sept. 7, six GOB team members met with the Upper Gila Watershed Alliance (UGWA) Executive Director and several others, particularly focusing on cattle incursion into the Gila River Birding Conservation Area exclosure. UGWA plans to submit a grant application for the NMED River Stewardship Program to improve the gates and fencing to keep out trespass cattle in the Bird Area. (See attached meeting notes.) GOB and UGWA have monitored this area for years and wanted to share information on what we have found. Some next steps include sharing ideas with local Center for Biological Diversity staff member, then meeting with the Forest Supervisor, and Silver City District Ranger. On Sept. 17, one team member monitored the San Francisco River via the hot springs trail. No recent cow sign was reported and general conditions along that stretch of river looked good. On Sept. 28, six team members met for a grazing team strategy discussion. We talked about adding several places to monitor in addition to our existing stream/ riparian monitoring areas. As discussed earlier this year, we also are interested in potentially monitoring several additional spring areas. We also talked about getting some training on adding water samples to our skill set when it works for our FS colleagues to train us – plus getting help with downloading the Survey 123 for wetlands. We also seek training on post-fire monitoring (BAER). We will continue to focus on monitoring riparian areas as this remains a highly effective strategy in the Southwest. In addition, the GNF Natural Resource Specialist that we often communicate with would like to report our substantial monitoring / stewardship hours to the Forest Superintendent and other key staff. We provided the totals for the year to date. Going forward our monthly grazing monitoring hours will be shared with the Natural Resource Specialist. (We will also include our GNF campground condition survey hours or other GNF stewardship hours.)

Reflection/Evaluation

Given we had our combined service projects and camp gathering this month, we could not spend as much time monitoring the far- flung grazing monitoring areas, but did mange to get one in. We did engage in two important and strategic meetings as outlined above. We are pleased to be able to liaison with UGWA regarding the problematic (regarding cattle incursion) Gila River Bird Conservation area. Based on all our monitoring in this area, it made sense that they would want to work with us for our input. We are also pleased to seek training in order to (hopefully) expand our collaborative monitoring to include springs and BAER stewardship, particularly during these rough times.

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