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Bosque to temporarily close for wildfire prevention efforts
A stump of a Russian olive treated with a herbicide earlier this year, with a 2-foot-tall resprout growing behind it.
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The city of Albuquerque will shut down portions of the bosque beginning Tuesday for around a week, officials announced Friday.
The city is closing trails in the popular cottonwood forest so that city and state forestry crews can “treat stumps” of invasive trees to prevent wildfires. There are 11 trails in the forest, according to the app AllTrails.
Treating tree stumps is a process by which the stumps are killed. There are many methods to do this, including grinding the stumps, drilling the stumps and filling them with Epsom salts, potassium nitrate or boiling water and covering the stumps to deprive them of sunlight and water.
In this case, the stumps will be treated by having herbicide directly applied to them in an attempt to kill them, said Emily Moore, the city’s Parks and Recreation spokesperson.
“Trail closures will be in place on both sides of the Rio Grande from just north of Central SW, to just south of Bridge SW,” a Parks and Recreation news release said.
According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, invasive species “can fuel wildfires, accelerate their spread and increase the likelihood of unusually severe wildfires”
The maintenance is funded by a $1 million Federal Emergency Management Agency grant the city received in 2019 to weed out non-native species in the region to prevent wildfires.
The news release states that signs will be posted to notify members of the public where the affected trails are closed.
The city’s Open Space Division is asking people to stay out of the closed sections of the trail and will “reestablish native vegetation in the project area over the next few years so that wildlife can thrive,” according to the release.
In May 2022, a 30-acre fire torched the bosque on both sides of the river.
