Salt Creek

Salt Creek is a rare riparian and wetland area in the Mojave Desert, where water from small desert springs and winter drainage from neighboring Silurian Valley comes together at Salt Creek Hills to form a tributary of the Amargosa River. In a harsh arid region with less than 4 inches of average annual precipitation, this streamside habitat provides water, food, and shelter for a great variety of desert wildlife, including bighorn sheep, Gambels Quail, ring-tail, bobcat, badger, more than 150 bird species, and migratory wading birds such as great blue heron, least bittern, white-faced ibis, sandhill crane, and snowy egret. The surrounding Mojave Desert, shaped first by ancient seas and later by glaciation, lakes, receding waters, and wind erosion, supports diverse plant communities, with creosote bush, shadscale, desert holly, and honey mesquite in low areas like Salt Creek and Mojave yucca, Joshua tree, big sagebrush, blackbush, and pinyon pine at higher elevations. Because riparian and wetland areas make up less than 9 percent of the 270 million acres of public lands administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management yet are among the most productive resources on public lands, their conservation is critical, especially as the United States has lost more than half its wetlands over the last two centuries and continues to lose them at a rate of one half million acres annually. Salt Creek is virtually the only water-based habitat in more than fifteen square miles of surrounding desert, making continued water flow and healthy native plant communities essential to sustaining wildlife. Efforts by the Bureau of Land Management, the California Dept. of Fish and Game, and partner groups have focused on removing exotic weeds, restoring native plants, and protecting this scarce water resource. One major effort began in 1992 with the removal of invasive saltcedar, a Eurasian plant introduced into the United States in the early 1800's that had spread through Southwestern riparian systems, displaced native species, disrupted nutrient and fire cycles, altered plant succession, and consumed large amounts of water through deep roots and evapotranspiration. Salt Creek also preserves traces of human use, including blacksmith shops known to have operated near the turn of the Century to serve travelers along the Mormon Road, and a grove of non-native athel trees brought by settlers in the late 1800's that has provided shade, roosting, nesting, and shelter for owls and other desert wildlife.

California · United States