Cactus Census
Saguaro National Park makes the news every ten years or so.
Saguaro National Park counts its saguaro cactus population every decade.
Good to know.
“In the past, we had more of the very tall ones, the older saguaros,” Swann said. “But a lot of those older saguaros have died over the years.”
That can’t be good.
“The population seems to be coming back,” Swann said.
Yay!
(I)t will take time… “A saguaro that’s about an inch tall, is about seven years old,” Swann explained.
Indeed that is so. Sooooo slooooowwww….
When people used to regularly take saguaros out of the desert to put in their yard, they actually took a whole generation of medium-sized plants out. That’s why with the oldest saguaros dying, they’re not being replaced with new giants yet. It will take years for the newly protected babies to fill in behind that lost generation.
