Here are some new pictures of the Joshua Tree massacre on Pierce Ferry and Greggs Hideout (Antares on the other side of Pierce Ferry.) They’re done drilling the new well and I’ve been told they’ll keep on clearing going up Patterson Grade, but I have no first hand knowledge. I will do more research and I’m thrilled that Jan Emming is looking into this now as the people of Meadview and Jean Bishop are so indifferent.
The issues are not only the protection of Joshua Trees, desert tortoises and our precious eco system, but the farmers are using up our water and polluting our water and air with pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, etc. I would not object to SUSTAINABLE agriculture producing organic food for LOCALS, but growing almonds in monoculture right there is just not right. We have so much land all over the county (such as along 93) with not a whole lot of vegetation to begin with.
WHY HERE?
They cleared a LOT MORE and while I was told they would go north along Pierce Ferry, they also cleared west on Greggs Hideout.
Looking north from Greggs Hideout road
Joshua Trees don’t burn well — they’re not trees.
The bulldozed trees look to me like fallen soldiers — trying to protect the next section to be cleared. They’re no match for a dozer.
Looking north from Greggs Hideout
The new well
Pierce Ferry
They left about a 100 ft or so of vegetation along Pierce Ferry during their latest clearing, I’m guessing to make it less obvious.
The Joshua Trees that are still standing are looking a lot better after all the rain we had the last 6 weeks.
They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal: this they falsely name Empire, and where they make a wasteland, they call it peace.
— Tacitus, 56-117 CE
Had to look up Tacitus, it’s been a while since my 4 years of Latin. Looks like we’re going to get a lot of “peace” here.
Thank you!
expect more of this with the Trump administration. 🙁
A Massacre involves The killing Of People. This is by no means a Massacre I understand that if you can put a spin on the words you use you can draw in more people but Come on really a Massacre?
Lorie, do you realize that some of these Joshua Trees are hundreds of years old?
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/massacre:
Definition of massacre
1
: the act or an instance of killing a number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty
2
: a cruel or wanton (see 1wanton 3a) murder
3
: a wholesale slaughter of animals
4
: an act of complete destruction [the author’s massacre of traditional federalist presuppositions — R. G. McCloskey] [the Puritan massacre of statues and pictures — Robert Hughes]
——————————————————————–
Did I miss the part that specifies that everything but Joshua Trees can be massacred?
^^^ That!
In the long run this WILL involve the killing of people. Wonder why so many still don’t get it.
How is growing food……”killing people”. We know some bad stuff is going to happen in time when the Almighty wants to “clear off the land” but that isn’t yet. Just like I want to eat some of what they grow here. If they try to mine the aquifer, I believe we should use peaceful means to oppose it. We need legislation to only allow aquifers to be drawn down at a prescribed rate. The water table needs preservation or in time, it all becomes a dust bowl. I own land north of this area and I will see this barren wasteland (now) but it might become crops with smiling workers later on. I will see it every time I drive by. I give up my view of the beautiful desert to allow the freedom of some one else to develop their private land. We need to plant more trees to make up for “progressive destruction” like this. Think twice about locking up all the land for the nature worshippers. The Liberties you work to remove may be your own. Why does it cost a dollar for a tomato? lack of supply. That’s why this happened. I believe the Lord wants more food to be grown, and the devil is into starvation. You are being blessed and you don’t even see it. Good luck eating some Joshua trees. I tried it. And I got my whole mouth rebuilt in Los Algodones………
I was there and talked with the drillers— they said it was for water for the new farmland they are making by clearing the desert—- Looks a lot like Yuma when they get all the irrigation in.
Just drive the road to Kingman and you will see what the finished product looks like…. Beautiful if you are a farmer— i would like to get out on it and detect once they push it….but I guess I wont get a pass on that request….
Do you know who the drillers are? I.e. which company initiated this? I heard the land was purchased by an out of state company, but I don’t know which one. Any info would be helpful.
Does anybody know where this is? Near highways, roads? What state? Let see the changes from space. I know how to do this…Now where to post…. 🙂
This is in Meadview, Arizona at the intersection of Pierce Ferry Road and Greggs Hideout Road:
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7825726,-114.1274261,17z
Sure would be cool to see from space!
Thank You Christine. I should be able to look at the area before and after the clearing. Should be a couple of days because I have other things on my to-do list. 🙂
After doing a little bit of research, I gathered that this was some undisturbed private ranch land. Although beautiful, and containing many Joshua Trees, if it was private land, there isn’t much we can do about it. Complain a lot, but the complaints will fall on deaf ears.
Laws are made to be changed.
After all, women wouldn’t have the right to vote and blacks would still be slaves if “somebody” hadn’t cared enough to cause some CHANGE.
We were hoping to get BLM to do a land swap with a section with little vegetation, but the “Friends of the Joshua Trees” chose to support and protect the farmer. Thousands of acres will be cleared and while they rehomed 50 trees, they wouldn’t even assist with rehoming the many additional small trees that residents wanted to adopt and that now got bulldozed. So we’re coming in real late, they already drilled the well and started clearing.
I suppose we’ll just clear the entire desert for alfalfa and nut trees and in 20 years we have NO water left and it will all turn into a giant dust bowl.
Only humans can be so incredibly stupid.
This is true, if we don’t check the unlimited growth of wells that can mine the aquifer, it can turn into Willcox that has no guts to defend its aquifer and the land values fall to sub $300 an acre because they mined the aquifer and the locals are being ruined.
A Joshua tree has a bulb like the back of a camel that stores water at a deep level then sends a tap root even deeper to go after residual water that fell deeper to replenish that bulb. It’s in the lilly family, it’s not a tree per say. I think they were started here by intelligent life that knew they would make it here.
Can you say……………. “Food is precious”.
This was food for birds and animals. That was cleared off to make food for cows or people, a greater good, imo.
Personally, I want someone to build a burger and fries joint at the end of Gregg’s Hideout Road, and a boat launch to provide some competition for what’s on the Meadview side. You give me a burger joint and I’ll show you some smiling campers. Kids playing in the water, eating broccoli or slices of cooked cow from the alfalfa grown here.
As you sit in your drywall enclosed apartment from mined earth and oil burning machines that made the drywall and cut the trees to build your framed structure, and provided for your overall safety.
It’s a little beyond me. I wince at the visual loss, but I hope for something better.
Hypocrites need to put some wrenches in their pockets and walk into the ocean.
Why do they always have to do these things. Those trees should be a protected species. I actually thought they were. They are very old and do not grow everywhere. At least why can’t they replant elsewhere?
They are protected on PUBLIC land and we need to change the law to protect them on private land. I’m all for REASONABLE private property rights, but this massacre is far beyond reasonable.
When I drive by I want to see green foliage of some sort. This destruction of the scrubland is bad but it can only get better after they plant something. I think Palo Verde trees are as cool as Joshua trees and they are a serious food source for wildlife. We need some diversity of trees out there. For the Palo Verde trees to make it, they need more water than a Joshua tree and that’s why we don’t see more of them. If we could make swails or cuts with a backhoe to recreate the “wash effect”, then in the bottoms of the cuts you have a good chance the Palo Verde trees can grow because more moisture down lower. Nature does this with wash erosion putting in the cuts and the birds spread the tree seeds. Where’s the Johnny Appleseed for Palo Verde trees?
What if there was a law that said “If you clear cut the desert of 12 acres, then 3 acres somewhere else must be planted in new trees. (Because I don’t think the law would pass the legislature if you make it 100/100 or 100/50. If you said 100/25, you could possibly get it passed.) So if they clear cut or bulldozed 10 acres then 2.5 acres needs to be planted somewhere else. They can’t plant crops in washes anyway and the washes just happen from erosion. Erosion is bad waste of topsoil. So all the law would do is provide to stop erosion and add some greenery for critters to live there. It’s going along with what nature is already going to do. This cleared off area is going to revert to desert scrublands if nothing gets planted. It just takes a long time, too long, to get looking green on it’s own.
I am saying and my point is that we have other more “high visibility” areas where we could plant Palo Verde trees and we are focusing on this damage instead of what we can do to make up for this loss. And just plain old mesquite trees are excellent food trees for wildlife. When the mining was more serious in the 1890’s a lot of the trees were cut down for firewood. Where ever they grew then, they would grow now if we just replanted them. This replanting ethic is what we need to progress towards. People wonder why Arizona is dryer now than in times past. I studied this. I think the cutting down of rain forests in Mexico is ruining transpiration and the air has less evaporated water in it blowing north. They make up this fictitious story about the ocean and call it “El Nino” and who in their right mind thinks the oceans evaporate water differently now than in times past? It’s a diversion from naming the real culprits. The forest cutters in Mexico changed the biosphere over the past 100 years. So overall, we need more trees planted to make up for what destruction was done during the heavy mining years. I don’t know how to re-forest Mexico. Placing blame is lame and the rain in Spain goes mainly down the drain.
Planting trees can change all that. So where can we plant? Try in the washes right outside your house. You can say “well we don’t own that?” Just go out at night and stick some baby Palo Verde trees in the wash. You always wanted to be a radical protester. What about OPW……other people’s washes. That’s after you planted your own to the max. Just walking in step with nature. You might die of heat stroke trying to plant them in the daytime. Plus the nosey neighbors might get to gossiping. But every time you look out your window………you can see the fruits of your radicalism. Silent but effective. Baby trees………”these are my children”. I’m not growing dope, I’m trying not to be one. Pick out your favorite tree, and just plant them where it’s likely to get water when it rains.
Then you can maybe handle the mild emotional depression from seeing these clear cuts. I have to keep myself motivated around here, just too many complainers. Looking for my lost shaker of salt……….
Very sad indeed. I just saw the google maps image, and I can see the pile of razed Joshua trees being burned. Very similar to the razing of the peat swamps forest in Sumatra and Borneo, where they burned vast lands of wilderness for monoculture plantations.
We decry the “massacre” of trees, yet enable the massacre of infants in the name of convenience. By Christine’s own copied definition in Websters, “1
: the act or an instance of killing a number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty”.
Seems the definition actually fits the infanticide we’re engaged in.
The Joshua trees were great and lets hope the food plants they grow in it’s place will be greater. We can’t eat Joshua trees, yet they do look cool. You need to believe in private property rights so you have some freedom on your land that is being taxed for what? If you worship these trees , it’s wrong. Yes, it’s a sad loss but we haven’t seen what is being set up to grow there now. It cost some one money to clear off these scrub lands, they won’t let it sit barren. Something has to be planted to recoup their expenditures. So relax. It’s an ongoing element of western conquest. You enjoy Lake Mead and camping along the Colorado River and driving around in a circle every year in your RV. 150 years ago you would have had a back shot full of arrows. But that ugly problem got solved by progressive, brave men. So when the buffalo went away what happened……cattle industry took off and mass quantities of food were harvested because again…….no more catching arrows in the back. The trees, cut down……yeah it sucks……but I need broccoli and I don’t want to be paying a dollar for a tomato. And, the human family is a healthy part of the eco system. It means more jobs for some folks. We can’t have the major industry of modern Arid-Zone A as people sitting in their mobile homes running A/C on full and watching flat screen TV till their brains rot out and their booze glass goes bone dry. Somebody needs to make something of value to back all this money they print up. So what they grow there to me, is more important that Joshua Tree scrubland. They might want to make a giant swail and collect rain water. That can only be done on flat cleared off desert. Is water important? Got Food? Nope. You want to stop any progress to worship the creatures. They brought back the coyotes and the wolves so now who isn’t scared to hike on mountain trails after dark camping. It’s hunkering down in your tiny armed camp…….so much fun? And you animal worshippers just brought back a lot of 4 footed terrorists. imo. They eat your pets, and you think it’s progress? Let’s put all the trees back because we don’t need to grow food, we can eat the goat’s milk and go back to the commune and just live off the goats and breed hippie kids without a clue. Your progress is regress. There are still Joshua trees all around, lets keep them protected on Federal lands, a proper balance. Plant a tree and stop your yapping. Have you planted a single tree in the last 5 years? No but we watched others planting them on our TV……..
This has to be the most racist and dumb comment ever submitted here.
As dumb as Trump himself.