59°F
weather icon Clear

Latinos find their roots at Lake Mead

Conservation and nature are near and dear to Diana Tapia and Cecilia Arteaga. So the pair, who are interning this summer as Lake Mead National Recreation Area communication specialists, set out to create an event to combine their love of nature and their goal of celebrating Latino heritage.

The Find Your Roots event they organized Saturday morning helped start Latino Conservation Week. Tapia and Arteaga, who landed their gigs through the Latino Heritage Internship Program, joined four volunteers to clean purple sage seedlings and transplant plants in the park’s nursery.

Tapia and Arteaga said their grandparents always recycled and conserved, storing salsa and beans in old sour cream containers and forgoing the dryer to hang laundry out on a clothesline.

“It’s still keeping our Mother Earth in mind,” Arteaga said.

Find Your Roots began around 8 a.m. with a short hike in the cactus garden, led by Tapia. Tattoos of a compass on her right forearm and mountains on her left biceps stood as emblems of her navigating skills.

She showed off some of the plants native to the desert, including the brittlebush. In the summer, its leaves are washed out and gray. But in the spring, the leaves are a vibrant sunset orange.

The brittlebrush’s colors lingered with Tapia, but Arteaga remembered creosote’s scent.

“It smells like desert rain,” she said.

Down the road inside the park lay a cream-colored greenhouse: the Song Dog Native Plant Nursery, named for the coyotes that scatter mesquite seeds around the desert.

Saturday’s group gathered outside to hear Kelly Wallace explain the importance of saving native plants. Because a portion of Interstate 11 is being built on part of the park’s land, Wallace and her team salvaged plants that could have been destroyed during construction and kept them to replant later.

“We pay attention to the genetics of a particular area,” said Wallace, biologist and nursery manager. She said the nursery manages a collection of at least 200 species of seeds, keeping them in a walk-in refrigerator.

“It’s like the Fort Knox of seeds,” Tapia said.

In the nursery, four-wing saltbushes that germinated and grew their roots in a cone-shaped container were transplanted into a bigger pot for more room to grow. Turning the container upside down, volunteers grabbed onto the root and placed the plant in new soil.

“Ah, it collapsed on me,” said Juan Robledo, a volunteer with Chispa, a League of Conservation Voters subset that caters to Latinos and families and aims to influence policymakers.

Robledo found the root and righted the plant.

Just as they hope to help the plants grow, organizers from Saturday’s event hope awareness of nature will grow during Latino Conservation Week.

“We’re trying to pretty much come together to get people to experience their natural lands and develop that dialogue with the Latino heritage,” Tapia said. “It’s part of our culture.”

Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @brianarerick on Twitter.

Don't miss the big stories. Like us on Facebook.
THE LATEST
Community pride on full display

A mixture of lime, paint and water was used to touch up the city landmark, which saw the B first painted in 1985 and two years later the C by BCHS students. It had been 10 years since the last time it was touched up. Event organizer Bret Runion said he was pleased with the turnout and hopes to see even more assist in future years.

It’s official: STRs banned in BC

For an issue that has caused so much local uproar for more than a year, the question of whether Boulder City should formalize the informal-but-still-binding ban on short-term rentals (STR) within city limits ended with more of a whimper than a bang Tuesday as the City Council voted 4-1 to adopt text changes to city code clarifying that the practice is illegal and establishing a system of civil fines for STR owners who continue to operate.

A busy Saturday in Boulder City

Saturday proved to be a very busy day in Boulder City as events included repainting of the BC on Radar Mountain (see page 2 for photos), as well as the city’s Easter Egg Hunt at Wilbur Square, Flowfest and the popular goat yoga class at Bicentennial Park and the Injured Police Officers Fund car show at Veterans’ Memorial Park.

To chip or not to chip?

In its second time at the plate, as it were, the proposal by Boulder City Councilmember Cokie Booth to require that pets within BC be microchipped ended up with a lot of people talking about maybe taking a swing at the ball but no one actually doing so.

Council candidate slate set

A total of seven candidates for city council and three candidates for justice of the peace of Boulder Township will face off in the primary election scheduled for June 11.

Ultrarunner to push himself to the limit

It’s not uncommon for friends or even family members to try and best one another whether that be athletics, academics or relationships.

Vets home hit with 18 citations

In a recent unannounced inspection, the Southern Nevada State Veterans’ Home was cited 18 times for issues ranging from verbal abuse of a patient to failing to provide meals at an appropriate temperature, to employees not having keys to locked gates, which would be needed in the case of an emergency evacuation.

BDCU looks back on past year at annual meeting

For more than eight decades, the Boulder Dam Credit Union has been the most popular place for Boulder City residents to do their banking, not to mention see friends and neighbors.

Top o’ the evening to ya

Photos by Ron Eland/Boulder City Review

BC repaint: Countdown is on

It’s almost time to don that old pair of jeans, the ratty tennis shoes in the back of your closet and a shirt you’re not worried about ruining.