The White-Margined Penstemon (Pens temon albomnrginn tus Jones), a Rare Mohave Desert Species, and the Hualapai Mountains Land Exchange in Mohave County, Arizona

8/8/2019 The White-Margined Penstemon (Pens temon albomnrginn tus Jones), a Rare Mohave Desert Species, and the Hual

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The White-Margined Penstemon (Pens emon albomnrginn tu s Jones), aRare Mohave Desert Species, and the Hualapai Mountains Land

Exchange in Mohave County, ArizonaJOHN L. ANDERSON

U.S.Bureau of Land M anagement , Phoenix, ArizonaAbstract: The white-margined penstemon (Penstemon albonzargimtzls Jones) is a rare MohaveDesert species with an unusual tripartite distribution with disjunct localities in Arizona,California, and Nevada. The Arizona population is the largest single population occurringwith a range of 15 miles by 5 miles in Dutch Flat near Yucca, Arizona in Mohave County. Theland ownership pattern in Dutch Flat was a checkerboard of public and private land, a legacyof railroad lands. Although the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) designated the white-margined penstemon Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) in 1993 for conserva-tion of this Arizona BLM sensitive species, the checkerboard pattern of public and privatelands within the ACEC made its conservation management difficult. Rural development wasincreasing impacts to the Dutch Flat area as the private land was being sold off in 40 acreparcels. The Hualapai Mountains Land Exchange between the Santa Fe Pacific Railroad andthe BLM provided a tool for consolidating a portion of the ACEC into a solid block of publicland, thereby increasing its manageability for the conservation and survivability of the white-margined pens temon.

A real estate artifact of the westward U.S. expan-sion in the nineteenth century is the large areas ofcheckerboard land ownership patterns betweenpublic and private land. To encourage pioneersettlement, the federal government gave railroadcompanies every other section (the odd-numberedsections) along railroad routes they constructed.Because of the resultant checkerboard land owner-ship pattern, there are no large areas of contiguousownership; consequently, these areas are bothhard to manage for natural resource values onpublic land (either federal or state) and hard todevelop for private land owners. Throughout theWest, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) hasentered into various land exchanges with privateland owners to consolidate federal land ownershipto facilitate natural land resource managementand protection of special habitats and species (LosAngeles Times 2000). In Mohave County, Arizona,one such checkerboard example is the Dutch Flatand Hualapai Mountains area east of Interstate 40and approximately 20 miles sou th of Kingman(Figure 1).Here, the private land was originallyowned by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Rail-road (Figure 2).

In 1997 the BLM and the Santa Fe PacificRailroad, through its representative, IronhorseInvestors (the proponent), began the HualapaiMountains Land Exchange (Figure 3) involvingapproximately 70,000 acres of selected lands (pub-

lic lands selected by the proponent) and 70,000acres of offered lands (private lands offered to theBLM by the proponent). The area covered by theHualapai Mountains Land Exchange containedoccupied habitat of a rare Mohave Desert plant(BLM 1995), Penstemon albomarginatrrs Jones, thewhite-margined penstemon (Figure 4), a memberof the Figwort family (Scrophulariaceae). An anal-ysis of the impacts of the Hualapai MountainsLand Exchange on the white-margined penstemonand its habitat was conducted to determine wheth-er the effects of the exchange to the plant would bepositive or negative (BLM 1998).

Penstemon nlbomnrginatrrs was described byMarcus Jones (1908), wh o said it was "a most con-spicuous and remarkable plant." It is indeed adistinctive species that has never been confusedwith any other species of Penstemon.A member ofsubgenus Penstemon, which is characterized byglabrous anthers that dehisce the full length andare usually widely spreading, Pensfemon albomnr-ginntus is a low growing plant 15-35 cm tall withseveral herbaceous stems arising from a buriedroot crown. It has a glabrous inflorescence ofmedium-sized, lavender-pink, campanulate flow-ers, 13-17 mm long, with a glabrous staminodeand yellow hairs in the throat. The most distin-guishing morphological character of the white-margined penstemon is the scarious white marginsof the leaves, which are lanceolate to oblanceolate,


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Figure 1.Subject area location within Arizona.

usually entire, and shiny glabrous with a bluishgreen color.

In his type description, Jones (1908) citedspecimens from Good Springs Station, Nevada, in1905, and Yucca, Arizona, where he had first col-lected it more than 20 years earlier on May 19,1884 (in the area of the Hualapai Mountains LandExchange). Ironically, his 1884 trip to the Yuccaarea was probably made possible by the comple-tion that year of the Santa Fe Railroad to Needles,California (Lenz 1986). Jones (cited in Lenz 1986)wrote that "The whole spring flora was collectedat Yucca and the desert was a perfect garden in alldirections, never was as good for 20 years after-wards." The white-margined penstemon is one ofthe few Penstemon species that grows exclusivelyat low elevations in the Mohave Desert (Kearneyand Peebles 1960, Munz 1974); others are Penste-mon bicolor (T. S. Brand.) Clokey & Keck ssp. roseusClokey and Keck and Penstemon subulatus A. Nels.As an adaptation to the arid conditions of MohaveDesert valleys, the white-margined penstemon isan "ephemeral" perennial whose stems die back tothe ground after the spring growing season andduring the hot, dry Mohave Desert summer andthe cold Mohave Desert winter. Occasionally, theplant will green up in late summer if there is mon-

soon activity. For much of the year it is not visibleabove ground.

As a rare plant, Penstemon albomarginata has anunusual tripartite distribution pattern in theMohave Desert (Scogin 1989). It occurs in threewidely disjunct localities between three states-Arizona, Nevada, and California. The Arizonalocality in Dutch Flat near Yucca is the single larg-est occurrence, extending in a band approximately15 miles long and 5 miles wide along the westernbase of the Hualapai Mountains and Dutch Flatbetween Rock Creek on the northwest to CowCreek on the southeast, although the entire areadoes not contain the appropriate soil habitat (Fig-ure 5). Nevada has the widest scattered colonies(approximately 15 colonies) in two metapopula-tions over a hundred miles apart, one at Jean-Goodsprings 30 miles southwest of Las Vegas andone at Amargosa Valley 80 miles northwest of LasVegas. California has the smallest occurrence, one4 mile long population of scattered colonies 30miles east of Barstow at Sleeping Beauty Mountain(MacKay 1999).

At all three widely separated localities, thewhite-margined penstemon grows on a similarhabitat-sandy soils-but these sandy soils are ofdifferent origins. In California and Nevada theplants occupy stabilized sandy soils derived fromcolluvial sand deposits (personal observation),whereas in Arizona the plants occupy sandy loamuplands on alluvial fan terraces, and a smallernumber of plants also occupy sandy wash bot-toms. There is also a difference in associated vege-tation of the white-margined penstemon betweenArizona and the other two states. In Arizona thewhite-margined penstemon occurs with Joshuatree (Yucca brevifolia Engelm.) and mixed shrubassociation (Brown 1982), primarily creosotebush(Larrea tridentata (DC) Coville) and white bursage(Ambrosia dumosa (Gray) Payne) with big galletagrass (Pleuraphis rigida Thurb.), whereas in Nevadaand California it occurs with simply the creosote-bush and white bursage association (Brown 1982),and Joshua trees are not present (personal obser-vation). In degraded habitats rayless goldenhead(Acamptopappus sphaerocephalus (Gray) Gray) andburro bush (Hymenoclea salsola T & G) increase asassociated species. There is seemingly much po-tential sandy soil habitat for the white-marginedpenstemon between the existing sites that does notcontain the plant. The reasons for its disjunct dis-tribution pattern, whether biological or physical,are unknown but this pattern probably indicatesthat the Penstemon albomarginatus is a relict species.


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LegendI White Margin Penstemo n Habitat Land Status - Pre-Santa Fe ExchangeIn White Margin Pensternon ACE C I I PrivateStateI BLMFigure 2. Checkerboard land status pattern in Hualapai Mountains-Dutch Flat area.


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LegendWhite Margin Penstemon Habital Land Status - Pre-Santa FeExchange

0 hite Margin PenstemonACEC privateBLM Land Selected by Proponent Shtea LMPrivate Land Offered by Proponent S

Figure 3. Selected and offered lands of the Hualapai Mountains Land Exchange.


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Figure 4. Penstemon albomarginatusJones.

31


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Soil UnitsSoil Units with White-Margin PensternonSoil Units without White-Margin Pensternon

Figure 5. Soil units with white-margined penstemon present.


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Penstemon albomarginatus is a BLM sensitivespecies; it was a Category 2 candidate speciesunder the old U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rank-ing. The Kingman Resource Area Resource Man-agement Plan (BLM 1995) designated Dutch Flat asthe white-margined penstemon ACEC to protectthe best-quality habitat of the species. However,the ACEC contained a checkerboard land owner-ship pattern of roughly equal amounts of publicland, 17,489 acres, and private land, 16,038 acres,making management of the white-margined pen-stemon difficult. The management prescriptionsfor the ACEC in the Kingman Resource AreaResource Management Plan (BLM 1995) called foracquistion of the private land within the ACEC.

MethodsThe parameters of the effects (and their anal-

ysis) of the Hualapai Mountains Land Exchangeon the white-margined penstemon were largely setby the mutually agreed upon locations of the"selected" and "offered" lands proposed in theexchange. Selected lands are the federal publiclands that a private entity, in this case IronhorseInvestors (the proponent), wants to acquire, andoffered lands are the private lands that the propo-nent is offering to the BLM in exchange for theselected public lands. The approximate boundaryof the white-margined penstemon in the DutchFlat-Yucca area had been mapped previously bythe BLM. Sections adjacent to the previouslymapped white-margined boundary were invento-ried to further confirm the accuracy of that boun-dary. A qualitative method of inventory waschosen over a quantitative method because of thelarge amount of acreage involved. In this wayevery selected and offered section of the HualapaiMountains Land Exchange within this area wasvisually inspected on the ground by BLM person-nel trained in identification of the white-marginedpenstemon, except for the sections eliminated withthe stratification system described below.

The sections were ranked qualitatively intohigh, medium, or low quality habitat based on theoccurrence of the white-margined penstemon asabundant, infrequent, or rare respectively (Oosting1956). Soil differences exist within the overallhabitat boundary and not all of this area is suitablesoil habitat. Abundance of white-margined pen-stemon within a given section was a function ofthe amount of appropriate soil type present. Thesoils of the exchange area had been previouslymapped into soil mapping units as part of theMohave County soil survey (Natural Resources

Conservation Service 1996). Based on field obser-vations, the Kingman Field Office BLM soil scien-tist, Paul Hobbs, and the author defined whichsoils were habitat, soil mapping units 50, 54, 54B,and 150B, and which soils were not habitat, soilmapping units 52, 73, and 76. These soil mappingunits are also given ecological site names in theNRCS report, which are used here. The primaryecological site supporting the white-marginedpenstemon is the sandy loam upland in the 6-12precipitation zone; fewer plants grow on clay loamuplands (the surface texture of this unit is still asandy loam) and along sandy (wash) bottoms.These sandy loam upland units are interspersedwith coarse sandy loam (limy) and limy uplandsecological sites that do not support the white-margined penstemon. These ecological sites weresorted into two groups, habitat and non-habitat.This stratification of habitat and non-habitat byecological sites reduced the amount of on- the-ground inventory that needed to be done. Selectedand offered sections containing only non-habitatecological sites were not inventoried. Also, sec-tions on the west side of the exchange containingsandy loam uplands, but in the 3-6 precipitationzone, were not inventoried after initial surveysshowed them to be too dry for white-margin pen-stemon habitat.

After the on-the-ground inventory was com-pleted, the habitat acreage totals for the selectedand offered land were modified by two factors,habitat quality and manageability. First, the habi-tat acreage totals were multiplied by numericalhabitat importance values of 1.0 for high-qualityhabitat, 0.75 for medium-quality habitat, and 0.25for low-quality habitat. The low-quality habitatwas given a much lower rating because the plantson this habitat were very widely scattered. Second,these modified acreage totals were further multi-plied by a land ownership pattern ranking factor.Using as a manageability criteria the concept thatblocked-up units of public and private ownershipwere more or less favorable respectively for thelong-term survivability of the white-marginedpenstemon, the different ownership patterns weregiven correspondingly reduced manageabilityratings of 1.0 for blocked public land ownershippattern (no reduction) and 0.2 for blocked privateownership pattern after the land exchange (thepreferred alternative); intermediate reducedratings used for the existing situation (no actionalternative) were 0.6 for checkerboard public own-ership pattern and 0.4 for checkerboard privateownership pattern. Multiplying the modified habi-


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tat value acreage figures by the reduced manage-ability ratings gave the final habitat unit figuresthat could be used to compare the effects of theland exchange on the white-margined penstemonto the existing land ownership pattern situation.The totals were also compared separately betweenhabitat quality units and within the ACEC.

ResultsThe analysis of the total habitat units for the

land exchange and the existing situation producedmixed results (Table 1). The actual acreage total ofthe selected lands (public lands becoming privateland) is much higher than that of the offered lands(private lands becoming public lands), 3,575 acrescompared to 1,040 acres, but after the acreagefigures are multiplied by the habitat value ratingsand management value ratings, there were only 14percent more habitat units with the existing check-erboard ownership pattern, 1,683 habitat units,than with the blocked ownership pattern after theland exchange, 1,449 habitat units. In comparingactual differences between habitat quality ratings,the offered lands contained 980 acres of high-quality habitat and 60 acres of medium-qualityhabitat, and the selected lands contained 480 acresof high-quality habitat, 1,735 acres of medium-quality habitat, and 1,360 acres of low-qualityhabitat. Because the amount of high-quality habi-tat gained in the offered lands is nearly twice asmuch as that lost to the selected lands, 980 acrescompared to 480 acres, the public land habitatgained in quality of acreage versus quantity ofacreage.

Within the ACEC approximately 4,000 acres ofoffered private land (all or portions of eight sec-tions) became public land after the land exchangeand approximately 1,800 acres of selected publicland (all of three sections on the western edge ofthe ACEC) became private land (exact acreages

depend on cadastral surveys). The entire ACECcontains all or portions of 57 sections, but not all ofthe acquired public lands contained habitat for thewhite-margined penstemon and not all of the se-lected public lands that became private lands afterthe land exchange contained habitat either. Therewere 980 acres of high-quality habitat and 60 acresof medium-quality habitat in the acquired publicland (all of the offered lands with white-marginpenstemon habitat were within the ACEC), andthere were 815 acres of medium-quality habitatand 320 acres of low-quality habitat in the selectedpublic lands that became private. Thus, the ACECgained greatly in the overall amount of publicacreage within the ACEC as well as the amount ofhigh-quality habitat in public ownership (T16-1/2N, R16 W, S19,29, and 33), although slightly moreacreage of white-margined penstemon habitatwithin the ACEC became private land. Nearly 20percent of the sections within the ACEC wereaffected by the land exchange. Sixteen sections ofpublic land in the southeastern part of the ACECare now contiguous by at least two sides with .another section of public land, forming a largecore area of manageable public land. Before theland exchange, only one section of public landwithin the ACEC was contiguous on two sideswith more than one other public section, and infour instances, two public sections shared onemutual side.

DiscussionThe proponent owned the checkerboard pri-

vate lands in the southern half of the ACEC andtheir plans were to develop this land by selling itin 40 acre tracts. Individual land owners couldthen further subdivide their land into smallertracts for sale. Therefore, the Dutch Flat area andthe habitat of the white-margined pens temonwould be subject to rural development whether

Table 1. White-margined penstemon habitat units for the proposed action (preferred) alternative and theno-ac tion a1 terna tive based on habitat value and management value ratings.

Habitat value High Medium Low Management(1 OO) (0.75) (0.25) value TotalPublic acres (blocked) 980 60 0 1OO 424Private acres (blocked) 480 1735 1360 0.20 1025Total habitat units 1449Public acres (checkerboard) 480 1735 1360 0.60 1273Private acres (checkerboard) 980 60 0 0.40 410Total habitat units 1683


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the Hualapai Mountains Land Exchange tookplace or not. With the large increase in populationof the Sun Belt, impacts to the white-marginedpenstemon and its habitat would happen anyway.Without the land exchange, the inevitable impactsof the rural development would be dispersed overa wider area of the plant's habitat; with the landexchange a large core area of high-quality habitatwould be consolidated as public land within thesoutheastern part of the ACEC (Figure 6). Basedon landscape ecology, this area is the largest con-tinuous piece of high-quality habitat. It contains abroad fan terrace below a broad mountain face.Farther north the fan terrace below the mountainsis dissected by three large washes, Bar I-L, HappyJack, and Mackenzie Washes, coming out of theHualapai Mountains, that have eroded the fanterrace and left only smaller strips of uneroded fanterrace for white-margined penstemon habitat. TheBLM thought that the survivability of the white-margined penstemon would be improved by theincreased manageability of the solid block of pub-lic land habitat for conservation of the species byeasing the implementation of proactive measuressuch as fencing and off-road vehicle restrictions.With the existing checkerboard land ownershippattern, BLM management would be primarilyreactive to actions derived from the interspersedprivate land.

The environmental tradeoff from the landexchange is the conversion of the western edge ofthe white-margin penstemon habitat in Dutch Flatto private land. Basically, the Alamo Road whichruns down the center of Dutch Flat has become thedividing line between the consolidated public landto the east and the consolidated private land to thewest. However, the elevation in Dutch Flat de-scends from the east to the west down the fanterrace from the Hualapai Mountains, and thewestern edge of the white-margined habitat thatbecame private land contains the lower elevation,lower precipitation, lower quality habitat. Eventhough a much larger amount of habitat acreagebecame private (3,575 acres) than public (1,040acres), most of this newly private acreage is thelower quality habitat. With the conversion factorsapplied, the comparative habitat unit values aresimilar between the preferred alternative (1,025federal, 424 private, and 1,449 total) and the no-action alternative (1,273 federal, 410 private, and1,683 total; Table 1). In addition, even with theinevitable rural development taking place inDutch Flat, much of the private land will stillremain in a natural condition. This situation

already exists at the north edge of Dutch Flat nearCactus Mountain, where the author has observedwhite-margined pens temon plants growing onprivate land in between the widely scattered dwel-lings and associated paraphernalia.

The generosity of the proponent allowed theBLM to acquire an additional 320 acres of high-quality habitat as a donation. Although this halfsection was not part of the offered lands, previousBLM surveys for the white-margined penstemonhad found :I to be high-quality habitat. The authorapproached the proponent about the possibility ofa land donation and they were agreeable to theidea. Because of its location, this half section, T16-1/2 N, R16 W, S31 E1/2, was very important inthe conservation of the white-margined penste-mon. It borders the core area of high-quality habi-tat within the ACEC, is contiguous on two sideswith other public land sections, and extends thecore area further westward (Figure 6).

Another benefit of this analysis of the effectsof the Hualapai Mountains Land Exchange on thewhite-margined penstemon is with its use as abaseline for the analysis of cumulative effects fromfuture land exchanges. The BLM is currently proc-essing the Cane Springs Land Exchange involvingprimarily another area of checkerboard lands eastof the Hualapai Mountains. However, one of theselected sections is in Dutch Flat, TI7 N, R17 W,Section 4 at the north end of Dutch Flat nearCactus Mountain (Figure 6). There are no offeredsections of white-margined penstemon habitat inthe Cane Springs Land Exchange. Using the samehabitat quality and management criteria, thissection was found to have 480 acres of low-qualityhabitat, which corresponds to 120 habitat qualityunits. Applying the ranking factors for manage-ability criteria, this section would have 72 habitatunits under the existing situation of checkerboardfederal ownership and 24 habitat units under theproposed land exchange action of blocked private,a difference of 48 more habitat units under theexisting situation. The cumulative effect combinedwith the Hualapai Mountains Land Exchange willthen be 1,473 habitat units with both exchangesand 1,755 habitat units under the existing situa-tions, for an additional 2 percent loss in habitatunits (but low-quality habitat) for the white-margined penstemon with the Cane Springs LandExchange.

In summary, the white-margined penstemonwould fare better if Dutch Flat was still the"perfect garden" that Marcus Jones saw in 1884.With the inevitable rural development presently


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LegendCane Springs Exchange Land Status - Afler Santa Fe ExchangeLand Selected bv Pro wne nt.Cane Springs Exchange PrivateLand Offered by Proponent StateEast 112 Sec. 31 - Donated Parcel B~~- hite Ma min Penstemon Habitat0 hit6 Margin Penstemon ACEC

Figure 6. Blocked land ownership pattern after the Hualapai Mountains Land Exchange.


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occurring, the land use situation in the Dutch Flatarea was already causing impacts to the white-margined penstemon. The Hualapai MountainsLand Exchange provided the BLM with its besttool for implementing one of the white-marginedpenstemon ACEC management prescriptions ofacquiring the private land within the ACEC forproactive management. Even though a largeamount of low-quality white-margined penstemonhabitat was lost in the exchange, the BLM was ableto consolidate a core area of high-quality habitat tosupport the future survivability of the species.White-margined penstemon will also be able tocontinue to exist amongst the rural developmentscenario on the private land habitat.

AcknowledgmentsPaul Hobbs from the BLM Kingman assisted

in the field work with the white-margined penste-mon inventory and soil mapping. Pam MacKayfrom Victor Valley Community College, Victor-ville, CA, showed the author the California loca-tions of the plant; Buddy Smith from WesternEcological Services, Inc., Millville, UT, and GayleMarrs-Smith from the BLM Las Vegas Field Officeshowed the author the plant in Nevada andprovided slides of Nevada habitat and plants. TheHualapai Mountains Land Exchange Team, BobPosey from the Arizona Game and Fish Depart-ment and Bob Hall and Becky Peck from the BLMKingman provided helpful comments on the data

analysis. Chris Horyza, Judith McDonald, and BillHarrison from the BLM Phoenix prepared thefigures and tables in both print and slide formatwith ArcView, Adobe Illustrator, and Power Pointprograms.

Literature CitedBureau of Land Management . 1995. Kingman resourcearea resource managment plan and final environ-mental impact statement. Kingman, Arizona.Bureau of Land Management. 1998. Proposed HualapaiMountains land exchange final environmental im-pact statement/ lan amendment . Kingman, Arizona.Brown, D.E., ed . 1882. Biotic communities of the Ameri-can Southwest-United States and Mexico. DesertPlants 4:l-342.Jones, M. E. 1908.Penstemon a lbomarginatus. Contr. West.Bot. 12:61.Kearney, T. H., and R. H. Peebles. 1960. Arizona flora.2nd ed. Supplement by J. T. Howell and E. McClin-tock. University of California Press, Berkeley.Lenz, L. W. 1986. Marcus E. Jones, Western geologist,minin engineer & botanist. Rancho Santa Ana Bo-tanic Earden, Claremont, CA.Los Angeles Times. 2000. 180,000 acres of desert trans-ferred to public. Article July 28,2000.MacKay, P. 1999. White-mar ined beardtongue Penste-mon albomarginatus M. E . Pones. Report to Bureau ofLand Mana ement, Barstow, CA Field Office.Munz, P. A. 1$74. A flora of Southern California. Uni-versity of California Press, Berkeley.Natural Resources Conservation Service. 1996. TheNRCS soil survey of southe rn Mohave County ,interim report. Kingman, AZ. Unpublished report.Oosting, H. J. 1956. The stud of plant communities, anintroduction to plant ecoiogy. 2nd. ed. W. H. Free-man, San Francisco.Sco in, R. 1989. Studies of Penstemon albomarginatus inEalifornia. Report for Rancho Santa Ana BotanicGarden, Claremont, CA. Unpublished report.

Documents

The White-Margined Penstemon (Pens temon albomnrginn tus Jones), a Rare Mohave Desert Species, and the Hualapai Mountains Land Exchange in Mohave County, Arizona