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News & Events |
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From the Quail Unlimited Magazine
July - August 2006 Issue
High Apple Valley, California
Ambitious Guzzler Repair Plan for West Mojave
by Richard A. Bean
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High Desert Chapter #759 |
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California’s giant Mojave Desert is unique upland bird habitat. It has everything needed to support valley quail, Gambel’s quail and chukar, except water. A large number of artificial water sources, “guzzlers,” were built to provide water for wildlife, some as recently as the 1990s, but the vast majority not long after World War II. Now,most of them are over 50 years old and are deteriorating badly. They were mostly maintained by California Department of Fish and Game employees until the l ast decade or so, when budget problems eliminated ongoing maintenance of existing guzzlers and ended construction of new ones.
The High Desert Chapter, a new chapter less than a year old, has recently begun an ambitious program to locate, catalog and fix guzzlers across a large area of the western side of the Mojave Desert. With most of its membership residing around the Mojave Desert communities of Victorville, Apple Valley and Hesperia, members are desertwise and have all the skills and equipment needed for their task. |
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Guzzlers can be maintained even in a harsh desert. It takes hard work and hand tools to do the job. QU volunteers have taken on a
job that used to be done by the California Department of Fish & Game. |
A rain collection apron on a desert guzzler gets a fresh coating of a Merlex stucco product by QU members. |
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Beginning in the fall of 2005, chapter members began cleaning and repairing a number of guzzlers, starting with several located just northeast of the city of Apple Valley. They cleaned and patched rain collection aprons, cleaned and checked water storage tanks and recoated deteriorated aprons with Merlex, a waterproof stucco product that seals the concrete surface. (Go to www.merlex.com for more information.)
Just after the end of the hunting season in January 2006, chapter chairman, Richard Persohn, and habitat coordinators, Bill Dobbs and Carl West, launched a series of weekend work projects to repair and clean more guzzlers. Several on the west side of Interstate 15 west of Victorville were cleaned. Two guzzlers, A13 and A11, had portions of broken concrete tank roofs replaced, and two others were cleaned of brush and dirt on aprons and tanks. Guzzler A45, which had a leaky tank and would not hold water, was patched and its apron recoated with Merlex. |
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Biologist Archie Meyer checks the water level
in the tank of a Mojave Desert guzzler. Note the brush pile on top which offers birds a
quick place to hide when predators approach. |
Typical damage suffered by quail guzzlers in high OHV traffic areas in the Mojave Desert. This caved in guzzler’s top was replaced with the help of chapter members. |
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During the latest work weekend in March, chapter members returned to guzzlers they had cleaned and patched to install fencing to keep off-highway vehicle (OHV) traffic from running across the guzzler aprons and damaging them. In addition, the chapter has printed up new versions of a “WATER FOR WILDLIFE” sign that used to be posted on guzzlers to tell the public about laws pertaining to visiting guzzler sites. The new signs feature the QU logo along with that of the California Department of Fish and Game and the Bureau of Land Management.
The chapter will continue with monthly repair/construction projects each year from fall to early summer, then switch to water hauling to guzzlers that need a bit more than they get from rainfall. The long-range goal is to first fix every guzzler in the Western Mojave that needs fixing - and there are several hundred such guzzlers - then move on to the construction of new guzzlers to add additional habitat for upland bird species. QU members and the general public who would like to take part in the chapter’s guzzler projects can contact habitat coordinator, Bill Dobbs, at (760) 947-7827. |
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QU is reinstalling "Water for Wildlife" signs on the guzzler's it maintains in Southern
California Deserts. |
A gas-powered leaf blower is a handy tool for cleaning dirt off a guzzler. |
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