Volunteers needed to remove buffelgrass from Silly Mountain in Apache Junction

By Richard Dyer
Mail | X: @RHDyer

Volunteers working on Silly Mountain in Apache Junction are removing buffelgrass section by section to stop the spread of the invasive plant that can fuel wildfires and choke out natural vegetation.

From 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. the first Saturday of the month from October to March, youths and adults meet at the base of the mountain at U.S. Highway 60 and Silly Mountain Road; gather up pickaxes, gloves and trash bags provided by the city of Apache Junction; and head up the mountain on rocky trails to a designated section.

On Saturday, Dec. 6, about a dozen community members carefully navigated steep terrain to dig up buffelgrass and place it into trash bags so the seeds would not fall and take root.

In desert areas where fire is not a common ecological process, invasive species including buffelgrass have invaded natural areas, threatened native species and provide the fuel that allows fires to spread through desert areas, according to the Arizona wildlife conservation strategy section of the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s website.

Volunteers have been pulling the buffelgrass off the mountain for about three years, said Elliott Anuta, Apache Junction natural resources and outdoor recreation coordinator.

“We are about halfway up the mountain now with just manual pulls. Manual pulls can be a really effective way of treating buffelgrass as long as we ensure we are getting the entire root system. It does less damage to the local ecosystem because that way we’re not using chemicals as well,” he said. “There are areas of the mountain that we know are not safe for participants to go to so those areas we will treat with chemicals. We try to minimize that as much as possible and do things like this.”

The all-volunteer effort started several years ago with a grant from the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management, Anuta said.

“In it we identify specific areas that have a higher fire potential because of the invasive plants and so those are the areas that we really target hard for fire mitigation and also for vegetation health. So these invasives can choke out a lot of the native vegetation so we try to remove them to create that natural Sonoran desert, which has the gaps that we are all used to and it definitely helps with the fire mitigation,” he said.

Micah Hudson, who pulled buffelgrass to gather National Junior Honor Society community service hours, volunteered on Dec. 6 with his mother, Amber. They both live in Gold Canyon, and 14-year-old Micah attends Legacy Traditional Schools in east Mesa.

It was the first time they volunteered to pull buffelgrass.

Micah said he has hiked on Silly Mountain in the past.

“Hiking and there was a campfire here once,” he said.

East Mesa resident Jan Favorite, also a volunteer, saw in the city of Apache Junction’s e-newsletter that volunteers were needed to pull buffelgrass, which she had never done before, she said.

Mesa resident Jill Bigelow’s two daughters, 13-year-old Ruby and 15-year-old Lena, volunteered pulling buffelgrass.

“I think it’s important to always take care of your community,” Jill Bigelow said. “October was rough — it was like 95 degrees outside.”

Volunteer numbers have been increasing in the past year, Anuta said.

“So last year when we did it we did get smaller groups, usually like between three and eight people. But October/November we had 15 each time. So this year has been a little bit more momentum,” Anuta said. “We do get a lot of people who come from the surrounding areas, especially like the east Mesa border. Gold Canyon has a pretty large investment in coming out here as well just because their community borders the east side of Silly Mountain. So definitely do get people that reside outside of Apache Junction.”

Parks and Recreation Director Liz Langenbach was at Silly Mountain the morning of Dec. 6 identifying areas where stinknet, another invasive plant, has taken root.

Having the monthly manual pulls of buffelgrass by volunteers helps community members better recognize the invasive plant and greatly helps the city, Langenbach said.

“It can be on their own property or other areas that they are hiking,” she said. “There’s just no way that we would be able to attack this all without volunteers. So the more that we can get folks engaged, the better we are going to be able to impact the work we’re doing here on Silly Mountain.”

Volunteers were used a couple years ago to pull stinknet from the mountain, Langenbach said.

“We’re unhappy seeing it popping up here. It wasn’t here last year,” she said. “It smells terrible, it has a terrible oil and then it will also become an invasive if we let it stay.”

For information on the volunteer effort to remove invasive plants, go to https://www.apachejunctionaz.gov/1168/Invasive-Species.

Correction: An earlier version misspelled the names of Nickolaus Lancaster-Eistle and Ivan Lancaster-Eistle in the photo caption.

Richard H. Dyer can be reached at rdyer@iniusa.org, or on X @rhdyer. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines, https://www.yourvalley.net/civility-checklist/.

Richard Dyer
Managing Editor | East Valley

rdyer@iniusa.org

Meet Richard
Richard Dyer has worked at Independent Newsmedia Inc. USA since 1987, starting his career in Apache Junction as a copy editor and being promoted over the years to work as the editor of the Mesa Independent, news services editor for the East Valley office in Apache Junction, managing editor for the East Valley office, news services editor for the East Valley office and eventually also for the newspapers at INI’s then-Chandler office, managing editor again and as a news editor covering Apache Junction/Gold Canyon and Queen Creek. He helped start the Florence Independent while the news editor covering Apache Junction and Mesa news. In January 2023, he became associate managing editor for the East Valley newspapers and in August 2023 became managing editor for the East Valley newspapers of Chandler/Tempe, Gilbert, Queen Creek, Florence, Mesa and Apache Junction/Gold Canyon, while also reporting on Mesa and Apache Junction/Gold Canyon.  

Community: Since 2009, he has worked as a volunteer to design The Blue Guitar Magazine, Blue Guitar Jr. magazine and Unstrung magazine, which are projects of The Arizona Consortium for the Arts; and since 2014, has been overseeing the art submissions. 

Education: University of Arizona with a master of arts in journalism and a bachelor of science in agricultural communication. Also continuing education at Mesa Community College in welding in a metal art sculpture class.

Random fact: Saw his first tornado on May 31, 2010, which was classified as an EF-2, as part of a stormchasing tour group.

Hobbies: He is an artist of welded-steel sculptures, selling his artwork at juried and non-juried art shows.