The Reserve maintains several human-made freshwater sites. A few are large seasonal ponds and some are much smaller. These smaller freshwater spring substitutes we call guzzlers, originally put in in the 80's. We have 18 in all.
Most of the guzzlers have native vegetation and cover providing refuge for lots of different critters. My goal is to recreate conditions that might exist at a freshwater spring site. Few of these reference sites remain in the watershed, but there are some.
We also have two small excavated areas that hold freshwater some months of the year. Right now, when all other large ponds are dry, these two smaller ones continue to hold water since the recent 4 inch rain event.
Shirley Murphy investigates one of the smaller ponds.
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