The tiny Mesa Verde Cactus grows almost entirely on the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico. It’s been listed as federally threatened for more than forty years. But a recent survey suggests there’s hope for its future.
Full grown, these cacti barely top an inch or two in height. They’re hard to spot in their preferred habitat of rocky desert soil, except when they unfurl showy cream-colored flowers. In dry times they can shrink until they lay flat on the ground, waiting for the rain.
The Navajo Nation first hired botanists to survey the Mesa Verde cactus in the Shiprock area in 2004. They found almost a thousand of them. Botanists repeated that survey in 2022 and upped the number to fifteen hundred. It’s not clear if the population is really growing, since these cacti are so hard to find. But the results suggest at least there hasn’t been a crash, despite the growing challenges of drought, climate change, and trampling from livestock and wild horses.
Cacti are often thought to be tough, hardy plants capable of withstanding the most extreme conditions. But globally, they’re among the most threatened living things on the planet.
The Mesa Verde cactus surveys help pinpoint where the species might be struggling. That can guide the creation of conservation areas or other interventions designed to keep it safe.
And now that the cacti are tagged with GPS locations, future botanists can seek them out again and ask new questions about their role in the desert’s ecology.
This Earth Note was produced by KNAU and the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University.