Kelly Donahue
Beacon staff writer

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A marsh hawk patrolled the edges of Cebolla Spring, searching the bulrushes and cattails for a midday meal. The restored wetlands at the headwaters of Cebolla Canyon offer a renewed food source for the area's wildlife.

    A project began nearly a decade ago has turned the spring, once little more than a soggy patch of soil, into acres of lush plant and animal life.

    Nearly 40 volunteers of the Albuquerque Wildlife Federation spent the weekend of Oct. 16-18 helping restore the watercourse in the lower reaches of Cibola County, south of the Acoma Indian Reservation. The group first began the project eight years ago, said Mike “Sel” Scialdone of the federation. “It's a good excuse to come out camping for a couple of days. We've been doing this so long now that it (the canyon) feels part of the family.”

    The canyon is now administered by the Bureau of Land Management as a wilderness area within the agency's El Malpais National Conservation Area. The project is funded by grants from the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state's River Ecosystem Restoration Initiative.

    Homesteaders of the late 19th and early 20th century had build irrigation ditches and catchment ponds to ensure a supply of enough water for crops. At one time there were enough families living in the area to support a school. Remains of rocks walls and a few timbers of what were once homes are scattered across the canyon, overlooked by a panel of petroglyphs.

    In time, as agriculture increased, deep chasms developed. The weekend's project was to place rocks in the watercourse to divert and impede the waterflow.

    The major goal is to reestablish 40 to 80 acres of wetland, primarily around the spring.

Gene Tatum, now retired from the BLM, is the federation's project committee chairman, “We're building deflectors. Those will help slow the water and build up the level of the watercourse.”

    Many of the volunteers were at the bottom of the arroyo, about 40 feet below the surface of the canyon. The workers, joined by about dozen members of the National Indian Youth Leadership program from Gallup, used hand tools and muscles to move rocks from the hillsides into the stream bed. Several miles upstream, near the spring, another group was transplanting bulrushes from a stock tank to the stream banks to expand the wetlands.

    “This is great,” said Park Ranger Jenn Schramm, the BLM project coordinator. “Perfect weather for working outside.” Saturday afternoon's temperature was in the mid 70s, enough breeze to make moving rocks an enjoyable experience as the crew worked in an easy camadarie. “These folks,” Schramm motioned to the volunteers, “ know what they're doing. I'm new here and don't know what the place looked like, but they've made a great difference in bringing back the wetlands.”

    Tatum described that through the project's life the volunteers have discovered how to best use the natural terrain for restoration purposes. The group has used wicker weirs, one-rock dams and induced meanders to raise the channel's level and reestablish the banks of the watercourse.

Glenda Muirhead, president of the federation, said Tatum “can see things we can't. He has a vision and knows how to make it work.”

    The efforts are paying off. Evidence abounds of mule deer, elk, bobcat and turkey. The volunteers reported seeing cinnamon teal and mallard ducks and a rare Sora rail at the spring.

    “It's glorious,” Muirhead said of the project. “Maybe we're getting it back to pristine.”

Schramm said the project is “a way we can maybe undo some of the things that we didn't think through.”

    The homesteads erode back to where they came from, the wetlands recover. The marsh hawk watches.

    The group visits the site twice each year, in spring and autumn. Cibola County residents are invited to participate in the project. For more information call Schramm at 287-6602.