Ranger Patrol Along The Fence Line Border Of White Sands

(White Sands National Monument) 41 degrees, rain, cloudy

Rain is a rare event where we are volunteering in New Mexico.  They only receive about 10 inches of rain a year and have 330 days of sunshine.  It is chilly today without the pretty blue skies and there is still snow on the ground.  The rain does help refresh everything and the folks around here really get excited about it. 

Last week I got to drive around the border of the National Monument with one of the rangers doing a fence check.  John helped arrange this for me.   It was an opportunity to see areas of the dunefield not accessible to the public.  The dunefield in the picture above are the fastest moving dunes.  They travel on average about 40 feet per year.  They are lower in size, very rounded,  and look so different.  The gypsum sand is moved by the high winds and the pull of gravity along the slip face or leading edge of the dune avalanches the sand. 

There have been lots of movies filmed out here.  Most recently a George Clooney film called Men Who Stare At Goats was filmed in this area.  There is an upcoming movie with Johnny Depp that will be filmed soon.  Unfortunately, we will be gone. 

This area borders along the Missile Range.  The space shuttle landed near here in the 1980's.  I could not take any pictures of the missile range but it is certainly a very unusual place. 

Walking the fence line

The purpose of this trip was to check the fence line around the border of the monument.  In 1969 New Mexico Fish and Game introduced 97 African Oryx to the missile range.  The purpose was to provide wild game hunting to the area.  Great in theory but the animals became a big threat to the monument when their populations soared to over 5000.  There are not any predators to this animal and it has really flourished. 

The monument eventually had to erect high fences to keep the oryx out and  1998 removed approximately 228 of them from the park.  This was done by  tranquilizing the oryx and removing them by helicopter.   The fence line is now diligently checked weekly to keep them out.  Despite these efforts there are always a few that manage to get in. There are now more oryx in New Mexico than where they originally came from in Africa. 

African Oryx

It was a great day.  If I had known how fun it is to be park ranger, I would have certainly pursed this career. 

Have you checked out the new addition to Picasa?  I downloaded the recent 3.9 addition from their website and it has some pretty cool new features.  My pictures today use a feature called deep shadow that makes your pictures appear to "float".  Can you tell the difference? 

I also used a fun one called Polaroid and Focal Zone for the picture above of the snowman.  Check it out!  I have used Picasa to manage my pictures for many years.  It is free and so easy to use.