The grass is the color of dry wheat and the cliffs are pink, but when the sun is at a certain angle, the whole scene turns to gold. At sunrise and sunset and in fall when the trees are yellow, the Scott M. Matheson Wetlands Preserve seems the brightest spot on the Colorado Plateau.
It is certainly a bright spot as far as the Nature Conservancy is concerned. In the campaign to preserve Utah's portion of the plateau, the Matheson Wetlands is a significant first step.Located about a half-mile from downtown Moab, this is the only wetlands on the Utah portion of the Colorado River. It's an oasis for thousands of migratory birds "who have to cross a lot of desert before they get here," says Susan Bellagamba, project manager of the reserve. "The wetlands is also a tremendously complex ecosystem."
Since the preserve was dedicated three years ago, the people who have been studying the Matheson Wetlands have grown steadily more impressed by the diversity to be found within the 875-acre plot.
The shoreline is huge and in a constant state of flux, and there are more different species in this little puddle of wetlands than in vast areas of the surrounding desert, says David Williams, a naturalist who leads walks through the wetlands.
Local birders spotted 20 new species this year. They had previously counted 150 species, including eagles, falcons and herons. This year the big surprise was a hummingbird never known to frequent this area. Or maybe it wasn't such a surprise, because "the Indian paintbrush was high this year, and the calliope hummingbird likes Indian paintbrush," Williams points out.
Williams used to be a park ranger in nearby Arches National Park and he knows something about local wildflowers - and also about crowd control. On a recent afternoon, as he and Bellagamba strolled through the cattails and cottonwoods of the wetlands, they talked about the delicate balance they hope to achieve: more visitors than last year. Never as many visitors as there are to Arches.
Bellagamba says there won't be a brochure about the Matheson Wetlands in every motel in Moab. To further set the tone of intimacy, they plan to keep the parking lot small.
On the other hand they are in the process of encouraging visitors by putting in a boardwalk. Several blocks of planks will make the southern portion accessible to school groups and wheelchairs and dressed-up grown-ups who don't want to get their feet muddy. But Bellagamba hopes always to be able to keep the north part of the preserve boardwalk-less and muddy, as a place where children can go to chase frogs and get as dirty as they wish.
Even though the wetlands are unusually dry this year, there is still some mud to be found. It seems there is always some wet land in the wetlands.
Historically the annual or biannual flooding of the Colorado River had a big impact on the water levels. However, explains Bellegamba, something changed along about 1959, perhaps because of all the dams built along the river. The Colorado ceased its yearly flooding and now only floods about once a decade. And still the wetlands are wet.
A recent groundwater study proved the La Sal Mountains, miles away, are actually watering the wetlands. The mountains, the wetlands and the desert - we are only beginning to understand the way the three ecosystems interrelate, says Williams.
And we are only beginning to realize how important the wetlands are to the entire community, says Bellagamba. Before she started working there she never understood to what degree "the wetlands act as a kidney, cleansing and revitalizing the entire aquifer."
October is one of the few months when construction workers can be about their business without disturbing birds nesting on the preserve. The boardwalk is being built quickly. A bird blind will be constructed at one end of the path where visitors can observe, across the way, a huge, half-dead tree, which is the largest heron rookery on the Colorado.
In keeping with the conservancy's mission of preservation, the boardwalk is being constructed from recycled materials, namely the redwood railroad trestles that used to stretch across the Great Salt Lake. And in keeping with the mission of mitigating the visual impact of man-made structures, the boardwalk is being built to be moveable. It can be raised or lowered so that if the water level is high, people can still come to the wetlands, and if the water level is low, "we will never be suspended over the environment, " says Bellagamba.
The Nature Conservancy is a non-profit environmental organization whose mission it is to promote biodiversity. "We buy land to preserve habitat," says Alyson Heyrend, director of development at the Great Basin Field Office. They bought the land for the Matheson preserve with a grant and a loan from the George S. and Delores Dore Eccles Foundation.
The land was known locally as the Moab Slough and was used for grazing cattle. Local people seem happy to have the slough preserved, says Bellagamba, though there are those who miss being able to take guns into the marshes where, for decades, they had enjoyed great duck hunting.
Educating Moab residents about the wetlands is a big part of the goal. The Nature Conservancy needs local support for an ongoing campaign to preserve even more of the Colorado Plateau.
With the Matheson Wetlands safe from development, the Nature Conservancy people can turn their attention to the larger project. They call their efforts to preserve the plateau the Bright Edge campaign. It is a term they borrowed from Willa Cather.
In "Death Comes to the Archbishop," Cather wrote of places much like the Scott M. Matheson Wetlands Preserve. She wrote of the unspoiled places. She wrote of "this particular quality in the air of new countries, vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests . . . the air had quite lost that lightness, that dry aromatic odour . . . one could breathe only on the bright edges of the world."