On this 4th of July, I had just flown in from a family member’s wedding. Driving home from the airport we noticed that the hillside was on fire. One (or more) of the fireworks had set fire to some of the bone-dry grass, and the fire was rapidly spreading across the hill. We could see saguaros engulfed in flames.
As part of my work with the University of Arizona and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, I went out over the subsequent weeks to map the area of the fire and to study the mortality of the saguaros and other perennial plants on the hillside. The following is a photo essay to illustrate the problem of buffelgrass. We will not know the exact number of saguaros lost for some time, but over 200 were burned in the fire.