Lock - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

By Harry James
CAUTION SCIENTISTS AT WORK
A
HIGH, TOUGH-to-climb fence
challenges people in different
ways. Some of us react like
mountaineers to a high mountain—it
is there, so it must be climbed. Other
more law-abiding souls—and we assume
the reader is in this categoryfind
it a sort of dare to their insatiable
curiosity. What, they wonder,
goes on behind that fence?
Our own curiosity was aroused
when we first encountered the new
high woven-wire fence across the entrance
to Deep Canyon a few miles
south of Palm Desert. The imperative
"NO TRESPASSING" signs told
us that this is the property of the
Regents of the University of California,
but they gave no indication of
what that august institution might be
up to behind the fence, other than
noting that it was the Deep Canyon
Research Area. We wanted to know
more.
Having friends in the Life Sciences
Department at the Riverside campus
of the University, we made inquiry.
This led to an invitation to visit the
area under the guidance of Lloyd P.
Tevis, Jr., of Rancho Mirage, a member
of the research staff. We soon
ffi
DEEP CANTON
DESERT RESEARCH AREA
University of California
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learned why the chain link fence is
necessary and why admission to the
Area must be very strictly limited to
the scientists working there, for only
by such restriction can the Research
Area fulfill the function for which it
has been established.
In its Deep Canyon Desert Research
Area the University of California is
carrying on a variety of projects which
demand that a sizable acreage of natural
desert country remain undisturbed.
In fact, when the National
Science Foundation sent a team to
pass on an application for a grant
to aid in building permanent facilities,
it stated that before such a grant
could be considered an adequate
fence would have to be erected around
the property.
Contrary to what many people
think, a desert landscape, indeed the
entire ecology of the desert, is a
truly fragile thing. Dr. Rodolfo Ruibal,
Chairman of the Control Committee
for the Research Center and
Associate Professor of Zoology at
UCR, is quoted as saying that "when
a bulldozer or an earth-moving machine
rips out vegetation, as many
as fifteen human generations may
pass before the area can look the
same again."
Lloyd Tevis told us that before the
chain link fence went up around the
Research Area, nurserymen took out
truckloads of ocotillo and barrel cactus,
jeeps deliberately smashed down
smoke trees and other plants, droves
of people littered the place with beer
cans, broken bottles, and other discard
that has no place in a natural
area. Frequently scientific equipment
was stolen the moment the research
worker's back was turned. It was impossible
to make long-term studies
of plants and animals because of the
danger that thoughtless visitors would
destroy or carry off specimens before
the experiments were completed.
So the forbidding fence just had
to go up. Genial Robert Worley,
major-domo of the entire project,
often has to play St. Peter at the gate
and, like that celestial gate-keeper,
far too often has to say, "Sorry, NO!"
When Robert Worley says, "NO!"
many a trespasser has found out, to
his sorrow, that he means, "No!"
Contained within the Research
Area is a great variety of desert coun-
NO
TRESPASSING
March, 1964 / Desert Magazine / 25