Cactus rescuers save spiny plants from bulldozers

It was the 141st mission of the Cactus Rescue Crew, and its challenge could be seen nearby, where whirling water spigots signaled another "championship golf fairway" under construction, another "active adult master-planned community" in progress.

That would soon bring massive "blading" — clearing for development — to this spot outside Tucson populated by baby saguaros, lurching barrels and spiny clumps of hedgehogs.

In Arizona, second only to Nevada now in population growth, the citizens' brigade was organized out of concern that plants on vast swaths of the Sonoran Desert were vanishing. The cactus rescuers, volunteers all, have pioneered a novel, active approach to sprawl, swooping in at the eleventh hour to save the desert flora from the bulldozer.

"It's the memory of the land and the fact that you preserve it yourself," said Dr. Carl J. Pergam, a radiologist, as he deftly lassoed string around the fine thorns, called glochids, on a prickly pear.

"It takes 60 or 80 years for a saguaro to grow an arm," he said of another rescued baby cactus. "So I've saved a life, in essence."

Since organized six years ago by the Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society, the spirited group has rescued more than 27,000 cacti and other native plants from road widenings, subdivisions, golf courses and shopping centers.

It has inspired kindred groups in Phoenix and Lake Havasu City. Tucson, mandated by the state to curtail water use, plants rescued cacti rather than wetland plants in highway medians.

Masters of the art of extricating spines from skin with the flick of a credit card, members of the group learn of property destined for the bulldozer when developers apply to Pima County for permits to clear the land. But some developers have become allies, considering it good public relations to tip off rescuers before land is graded.

The Southern Arizona Home Builders Association has endorsed the rescuers, who sign liability waivers. "There is going to be growth," said Ed Taczanowsky, the association's president, who is a member of the rescue crew. "It's a way to co-exist."

In many ways, the cactus rescue is a savvy response to stringent local ordinances protecting native plants and reflects a movement in the Southwest toward regionally appropriate, drought-tolerant gardening, sometimes called xeriscaping.

In Pima County, developers are required to inventory noteworthy desert plants and to keep 80 percent of all saguaros more than 16 feet high, though they may be relocated. Saguaros are governed by a preservation formula so complex that the county provides a "cactus spread sheet" for developers, said Daniel Signor, the county's senior planner.

Transplanting mature saguaros, accomplished by professional salvagers using hydraulic equipment, is tricky business, often resulting in protracted death to the plant. "It's like an elderly person breaking an arm," said Michael Reimer, the special investigator for the state Agriculture Department, who monitors cactus transport and theft. "They don't heal fast."

In Tucson proper, it is illegal to "deface, maim, damage or disfigure any protected native plant."

That is where the rescuers come in. With the cooperation of developers, they preserve hundreds of smaller saguaros, barrels, ocotillos, hedgehogs, pincushions and other plants that form the "ephemeral, unheralded texture" of the desert, and cover for birds and animals, said Margaret Livingstone, an associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Arizona.

"Much like Frederick Law Olmsted formed an emerald necklace of parks," she said, referring to the famed landscape architect who designed New York's Central Park, "the rescuers are creating an arid cactus necklace around the city."

Rescuers keep some cactus for their own gardens but sell most at minimal cost. People line up for comely Mammillaria and the proceeds can help pay for school science fair projects involving cacti or succulents and public cactus gardens.

The group is adept at finding the desert's most elusive treasures, among them, "the Queen of the Night," the desert night-blooming cereus. Once a year at night, the plant, which is shaped like a forked stick, breaks out in huge white flowers with a dazzling scent.

"It epitomizes what's special about the desert," said Jessie Byrd, a 27-year-old landscape student and rescuer, cradling one she delicately extracted.