(Cottonwood-February 27, 1999)--About 1,000 cottonwood trees were planted in the Verde River near the Dead Horse State Park Bridge the last Saturday in February by almost 50 volunteers mustered up by the Arizona Wildlife Federation. The volunteers came from Phoenix, Tucson and Prescott. Some arrived the night before and camped in the State Park's Group Area. AWF's Randy Bonney mounted a campaign to attract volunteers which received publicity in The Arizona Republic.

Verde NRCD Supervisors worked in advance to organize and coordinate the logistics to keep the volunteers busy. Bill Cook and J.R. Miskol manned chain saws to cut the trees. Volunteers hauled trees from the nursery and trimmed them of branches. Other voluntters helped load and transport the trees and still more volunteers helped place the trees in trenches dug into the streambed. Verde River Greenway Ranger Max Castillo worked a four-wheel-drive backhoe beginning the day before the planting exercise to get ahead of the volunteers' effort. Kaki Rowland and John Parsons help keep the logistics moving. The Verde River Days Steering Committee paid for the backhoe rental, a total of more than $300. Although the trees were not soaked for at least 10 days prior to their planting, they were placed into standing water and as of late June, appear to be doing quite well.

AWF provided a great lunch for the volunteers and several of them stayed over another night at Dead Horse. The activity received great reviews from the volunteers and many of them complimented District Supervisors on the well organized logistics. Mr. Bonney indicated he would like to repeat the activity in the coming year. After the planting day, values were assigned to all of the various in-kind contributions, trees, land, water, etc and the total came to a surprising $21,000. Brian Reinhart of Reinhart Productions videotaped some of the planting activities.

The backhoe method of cottonwood pole planting works very well. With the $18,000 Arizona Water Protection Fund grant to pay for backhoe rental costs, The District expects to be able to place thousands more trees along the streambanks of the Verde River and its tributaries. Already The District has begun preliminary negotiations with the City of Prescott to place a substantial number of trees along Granite Creek near Highway 89.