Rich Wagner

NMWF News:

Rich Wagner, an ecologist at the nonprofit Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program, has made extensive study of the fungi that have evolved alongside cottonwoods and other native plants in the Rio Grande Bosque. He will present a talk on his work Feb. 11 through the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s “Wildlife Wednesday” series.

Wagner’s free talk will start at 5:30 p.m., Wed., Feb. 11, at Marble Brewery’s Northeast Heights Taproom, at 9904 Montgomery Blvd., NE, in Albuquerque.

Up until the last century or so, the Middle Rio Grande flooded every spring. The vast river flows watered cottonwoods and other plants and left fresh sediments when the waters finally receded in summer. Of course, that’s no longer the case.

A series of dams along the Rio Grande now captures spring runoff and releases it slowly to meet the needs of cities and agricultural users. 

Every drop of water in the river these days is spoken for. Only the existence of the endangered Rio Grande Silvery Minnow and a few other endangered species account for keeping minimal summertime flows in the Middle Rio Grande, which nonetheless occasionally runs completely dry.

That stark change in river flows coupled with the wholesale invasion of nonnative plant species such as salt cedar and Russian olive have created challenging conditions for cottonwoods and other native plant species. All that, in addition to widespread development, has resulted in loss of wildlife habitat. 

While it’s easy to see such changes on the surface, Wagner’s research shows that disturbances in the bosque also hurt the fungi that coexist with and help sustain plant roots in the soil. In working to replant areas, he said it’s important to add soil from undisturbed areas of the bosque that still retain the essential native fungi.

“There’s a huge benefit, there’s a reason why plants and fungi have been developing these mutualisms for 450 million years or so,” Wagner said of keeping native fungi in the mix when replanting. 

“In reality, it’s really a pretty simple thing,” Wagner said. “Take dirt from over there, put it in the hole. You’re basically just inoculating the hole with some fungi from not too far away, so they have a jump start on what they’re doing here.”

Wagner has a master’s degree in biology from the University of New Mexico, where his research focused on the effect of different disturbances in the Rio Grande Bosque on different fungal communities. He’s worked as an ecologist with the Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program since 2019 and is a research lecturer on faculty at UNM.

The Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program, which has a long association with the Bosque School, now operates at UNM and enlists students from K-12 classrooms to help collect data from the bosque. Many different government agencies use research findings from the project in planning restoration projects along the bosque. Wagner said the program takes an average of 8,000 kids into the field each year. 

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