Photos Courtesy of University of Arizona Desert Laboratory

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We are in a deadly fight to save the Sonoran Desert as we Tucsonans know it — and we are losing.

The enemy is, of all things, a small but fast-growing plant called buffelgrass. It is hard to imagine that a simple grass could kill saguaro cacti and destroy an entire ecosystem, but that is precisely what is happening in and around Tucson.

Experts say that unless we take action quickly, the saguaro cacti you now see growing in the Catalina Foothills and Sabino Canyon are the very last saguaros that ever will grow there.

Buffelgrass was brought from Africa to the United States in the 1930s to feed cattle and control erosion. But it escaped its boundaries and became a quiet yet deadly killer. It attacks the saguaros and other desert plants in two ways. First, it wins the battle for water, space and nutrients in the soil, preventing native plants from germinating and maturing.

Second, unlike most desert plants that evolved in the absence of fire, buffelgrass thrives on fire. Not even the mighty saguaro can resist a grass that burns at temperatures of up to 1,400 degrees, with flames reaching as high as 20 feet. Once an infested area burns, only buffelgrass grows back, usually in even thicker stands.

Because buffelgrass has no natural enemies in our country, it spreads rapidly like a virus. Some experts say it is doubling in acreage every year. At that rate, a one-acre patch today, left unattended, would cover 1 million acres in 21 years.

At risk is our quality of life in the beautiful Sonoran Desert. But that is only part of the threat. Lives literally are at risk in the many homes, especially in the Foothills, that are surrounded by buffelgrass. In areas with large buffelgrass infestations, home values likely will be depressed, both from the fire risk and the loss of desert landscapes. Also at risk is Tucson's tourism industry, a $2 billion component of our economy.

The science is clear that there are effective ways to eradicate buffelgrass. It can be pulled up by the roots and it can be killed with herbicides such as Roundup. On a large scale, however, both methods are labor-intensive and expensive.

The experts understand the problem, as do some of our political leaders. Even so, buffelgrass is spreading so rapidly that almost nobody is keeping up with it. At a recent meeting I helped organize with 45 scientists, land managers and governmental leaders, a moderator asked how many believed they were getting ahead in the fight with buffelgrass. Only two people raised their hands.

The challenge we face is not expertise but political willpower. New money is not lying around waiting to be used to fight buffelgrass. We need our elected officials to change their priorities. They must divert money spent on other goods or services and start spending it on fighting buffelgrass.

We need each jurisdiction to eradicate buffelgrass within its boundaries. We need to raise a minimum of $500,000 to finance a buffelgrass-control center to provide expertise and coordination across jurisdictional boundaries.

Finally, we need each of you to tell your elected officials you will hold them accountable if they don't start leading in this fight to save our Sonoran Desert.

We may be losing the fight right now, but we still have an opportunity to defeat buffelgrass and save our desert if we act decisively and quickly. You cannot procrastinate when facing an enemy that, if unchallenged, doubles its territory every year.

Battling buffelgrass