Emory oaks are everywhere you look in Sedona.
According to the International Oak Society, the Emory oak, which prefers moist environments, “attains its greatest size on the banks of Oak Creek next to giant Quercus arizonica [Arizona white oak].”
Emory oaks are commonly found at Slide Rock State Park and can also be spotted in the Dry Beaver Creek riparian area. The Sedona Westerners have been known to stumble across stands of them in Boynton Canyon during their hikes, and the Lone Tree, or Kachina Tree, a popular cliffside attraction in a remote part of the canyon, is an Emory oak.
In addition, the Emory oak is one of just 13 species of native non-riparian trees included on the city of Sedona’s approved plant list. The city’s land development code requires a minimum of 50% of plant species on a development site to be native species.
Named for U.S. Army engineer William H. Emory [1811-1887], who oversaw the surveying of the Gadsden Purchase, Emory oaks provide more than just shade during a summer hike or a splash of fall color. Historically, they were one of the most important sources of firewood in Arizona. Their acorns fed deer, squirrels, game birds and the Southwest’s early human inhabitants, who also used the acorns for ceremonial purposes.
Vincent Randall, former chairman of the Yavapai-Apache Nation Tribal Council, can recall stories that his grandmother told him about how the acorns of the Emory oak provided a vital supplement to insufficient government rations during the forced relocation of the Apache in the nineteenth century.
“When I was growing up, the acorn was out here just like your salt and pepper on the dining room table,” Randall told NPR during an interview on “Weekend Edition Sunday.” “And whatever you ate — gravy, whatever — you just flavored it with it. But I don’t see that anymore today.”
Drought, climate change, fire suppression, livestock grazing, loss of groundwater, the end of traditional land management practices and competition with introduced species have all contributed to the decline of Arizona’s Emory oak populations. Trees are weaker and produce fewer acorns than in previous years, a trend Apache elders have been observing for several decades.
“Drier, warmer conditions projected by climate models [were] shown to reduce future suitable Emory oak habitat, particularly in central Arizona,” Northern Arizona University ecologist Sara Souther wrote in 2021 in a paper published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.
Alarmed by the loss of acorns, oaks and oak habitat, the Apache have led the effort for the Emory oak’s preservation, even though most remaining trees are located off reservation. In 2018, the San Carlos Apache Tribe, Tonto Apache Tribe, White Mountain Apache Tribe and Yavapai-Apache Nation formed a partnership with NAU and the Forest Service, the Emory Oak Collaborative Tribal Restoration Initiative, to address the oak’s decline by employing both traditional ecological knowledge and modern land management practices.
Now their conservation efforts are receiving a boost. NAU announced on Dec. 7 that the National Science Foundation has awarded the coalition a $1.5 million grant for a follow-on research and conservation project to be known as “DISES: Restoration of a southwestern cultural keystone species: Integrating socio-ecological systems to predict resilience of traditional acorn harvest by western Apache communities.”
“This project builds on work done through the Emory Oak Collaborative Tribal Restoration Initiative, a collaborative partnership between NAU, the U.S. Forest Service and five different Apache tribes,” NAU stated in a press release. “Their goal is to restore and protect Emory oak stands to ensure the long-term persistence of Emory oak using tribal traditional ecological knowledge to guide goals and activities.”
“We are taking a holistic landscape-level approach to understand the threats to these woodlands,” Souther, who has been named principal investigator on the project, said. “Emory oaks are a cultural keystone species for western Apache tribes and the dominant oak in the Madrean oak woodlands, which cover around 80,000 square kilometers [30,800 square miles] across the Southwest and U.S.-Mexico borderlands.”
Souther described the overall goal of the Emory oak restoration effort as being to “return forest structure and fire regime to historical conditions, in order to reduce competition for resources, which will hopefully improve acorn crop and recruitment.” She outlined a number of measures necessary to achieve this goal, including stand thinning to remove competitors, prescribed burns, herbivore exclusion, the pruning of established oaks, grass seeding and the planting of drought-adapted trees.
A decision memo from the Red Rock Ranger District approving EOCTRI’s restoration of oak groves, issued in October 2020, likewise called for “removing nondesirable competing vegetation; re-introducing fire though broadcast burning; and fencing off areas to protect and increase seedling establishment from grazing and recreation impacts.”
“Restoration efforts should focus on increasing water availability for Emory oaks and reducing the likelihood of high-intensity fires,” Souther summarized in her 2021 paper. Vegetative thinning of oak stands is particularly important to tree health, as it both decreases the likelihood of wildfires and minimizes the effects of fire on trees.
“Prior to European settlement of the Southwest, low-intensity fires swept through oak systems regularly, excluding species that, unlike oaks, were not adapted to fire,” the International Oak Society states. “The legacy of 20th century fire suppression is a landscape of woodlands choked with woody vegetation that decreases water and resource availability for oaks and causes fires to burn hotter and higher than in the past, reaching tree canopies and killing even fire-adapted species, like Emory oaks.”
Replanting initiatives, by contrast, are problematic for some Apache, who view the placement of oak groves as an exercise of divine decision-making in which humans should not interfere.
So far, oak habitat restoration work in the Sedona area has been carried out at oak groves in Hartwell Canyon, Dry Creek and Woods Canyon. Further conservation projects are planned for groves in Loy Canyon and Long Canyon, along the West Fork of Oak Creek and surrounding Fossil Creek southeast of Camp Verde. Other focus areas have included Needle Rock southeast of Camp Verde, Crackerjack Mesa in the Tonto National Forest and several locations on the Fort Apache Reservation.
The DISES project will begin in March 2023 and continue through February 2028. In addition to habitat restoration, the project will involve ongoing data collection. Individual Emory oak trees will be tagged and participants will monitor their reproduction, growth and resistance to disease to help develop a clearer picture of the environmental challenges the trees face and to inform future management strategies.
“To the Apache people, Emory oak, eagles and otters are an indication of environmental health,” Randall said.
