SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
A good news story out of Utah, where there's been progress protecting the environment from a pesky invasive species. KUER's David Condos says one man took action and has seen his efforts multiply.
DAVID CONDOS, BYLINE: Picture a deer drinking from a quiet stream in the Red Rock Canyon country of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Now, imagine standing in that same spot, but you can't see any of that. Well, that's how the Escalante River looked when retired national park ranger Bill Wolverton came here more than two decades ago.
BILL WOLVERTON: It was completely engulfing the trail from here.
CONDOS: It is an imported ornamental tree called the Russian olive that's become a destructive invader of ecosystems in the southwest.
WOLVERTON: It was just a tunnel. Literally, a closed canopy. Trees reaching out from both banks and intertwined.
CONDOS: So he did something about it. He grabbed a handsaw and some herbicide and made it his personal mission to remove the trees one by one.
WOLVERTON: I couldn't stand the thought of seeing this river completely overwhelmed by such a horrible weed. I just had to get rid of it for the sake of a really special place.
CONDOS: Eventually, other volunteers joined him, and the work paid off. Twenty-five years after he began, Wolverton says the Russian olive is now gone from 85 miles of the river's path to Lake Powell.
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CONDOS: Now conservationists are carrying on his crusade.
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CONDOS: On a riverbank where the trees have been removed, Christine Prins is showing a crew of conservation workers how to identify the plants growing here now. A botanist with Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Prins, says when Russian olives multiply, they choke out native plants and cut off wildlife habitat.
CHRISTINE PRINS: So when you started with one tree, all of a sudden, you have a hundred trees. Then all of a sudden, you have a thousand trees, and then you have 10,000 trees. And then, after a while, that's the only tree you have.
CONDOS: So continued success requires ongoing work.
PRINS: Hey, what does it mean to - when we say woody species? What does that mean? What are we focusing on, you guys? Any guesses?
CONDOS: Kevin Berend is with conservation group Grand Staircase Escalante Partners, which oversees these efforts. He thinks they can be replicated elsewhere.
KEVIN BEREND: I really do think that this is a model of successful riparian restoration in the southwest, and it's just a matter of telling that story.
CONDOS: Native trees like cottonwood and willow are starting to retake ground, but the future of this work is now uncertain, as a big grant supporting it has been halted as part of the Trump administration's federal funding freeze.
For NPR News, I'm David Condos in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
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