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The
Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge is
located just 8 miles northeast of Denver. It is over 16,000
acres, making Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR one of the largest
urban wildlife refuges in the United States. It contains a
number of open lakes, wetlands, prairie grasslands, and woodlands.
During
World War II, the U.S. Army acquired thirty square miles of
farmland to establish the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a chemical
weapons factory. After the war, the army both leased the land
to private companies that produced commercial pesticides and
also produced chemical weapons themselves.
While
investigating the contamination of soils and groundwater at
the site in the 1980s, biologists realized that the Arsenal
was home to a large population of wintering bald eagles. They
also took note of the extensive and healthy wildlife populations
throughout the large buffer zone of the Arsenal. While the
core of the site was contaminated, deer, prairie-dogs, coyotes,
and many species of hawks, owls and other birds thrived in
the abandoned fields, grasslands, and woodlands that had been
isolated from 40 years of Denver's growth.
In
1992, Congress passed the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National
Wildlife Refuge Act, designating the site as a refuge.
Soil
contaminants, spills, and the related extensive and expensive
cleanup are not the only problems confronting the refuge.
Invasive plants are a concern, also. The plants in question
include tamarisk, leafy spurge, houndstongue, St. John's wort,
Dalmatian toadflax, and diffuse knapweed. The last of these,
diffuse knapweed, has been particularly troublesome in the
region. Severe infestations occur along the Front Range in
multiple counties in Colorado, and the state's Department
of Agriculture found 145,148 acres infested in the state in
2002.
The
refuge staff needs to know how bad the problem is; they keep
spotting these plants in new locations. Through the Volunteer
Invasives Monitoring Program, volunteer patrols can pinpoint
outbreaks and infestations, and have even assisted in eradication.
Click
on any photo for a larger view.
The top two photos are by Suzanne O'Neil, Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Society.
The others are by Fred Krampetz/USFWS
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