Next time you find yourself in the great Reno outdoors, squint your eyes and imagine that there are no buildings, cars, or sidewalks. Picture the Truckee Meadows, free of infrastructure and city noise. There is the Sierra Nevada mountain range to the west, and the Virginia and Pine Nut mountains in the east. If there was no city in between, what do you think you would see?
According to the Truckee Meadows Park Foundation, or TMPF, the state of Nevada has probably lost over 52% of its wetlands since settlers arrived in the West starting in the 1840s. Fortunately for us, TMPF has been working hard to preserve a little piece of the wetland ecosystem that used to thrive in this valley.
The Rosewood Nature Study Area is composed of about 60 acres of marshy beauty, and it’s one of the only remaining wetlands here. The site used to be a golf course, until it was shut down in 2015. Over the next few years, the wetland was neglected, allowing invasive species to take over. In 2018, the city of Reno agreed to let TMPF work on the site, and they quickly got to work restoring the precious land with native species.
In the summer of 2021, TMPF proudly opened Rosewood to the public– with a visitor center full of captivating taxidermy displays, as well as three miles of new trail. Recently, I had the opportunity to walk through the nature center. Less than 15 minutes from my house, I was transported into a world that I didn’t know could exist within our city limits.
Heidi Anderson, Executive Director of TMPF, and Jay Howard, the Trails Program manager, accompanied me as we meandered through the mesmerizing wetlands, with a beautiful view of the Sierra range everywhere we went. On our walk, we spoke about how we’ve found ourselves in this situation, of urgently scrambling to restore spaces like these. “Through channelization, agriculture, through development,” Anderson told me, “we've really just destroyed these wetlands.”
The U.S. loses about 50,000 acres of wetland each year due to these practices, which has much larger consequences than just the loss of pretty scenery. Wetlands have the keen ability to absorb and hold carbon dioxide, or CO2, one of the biggest contributors to the global climate crisis. Wetlands also control erosion– their ecosystem involves plants with strong roots, which hold the ground steady as water streams in from the mountains surrounding us.
Speaking of powerful ecosystems, wetlands here in northern Nevada are also homes to a whole slew of critters and birds. If you visit Rosewood Nature Center, you might just be lucky enough to spot a great blue heron, or a prairie falcon. There’s so much life swimming, flying, and hopping around that you’ll be sure to see something. On our walk, Henderson and Howard kept stopping to point out birds, and a couple of rare fish sightings.
“We’ve identified over 100 different species of birds,” Anderson says with excitement, “and we continue to find more and more pretty much every month.” At Rosewood you also might encounter beavers, muskrats, marmots (check out @rosewoodmarmots!) or a family of weasels, although Anderson says that the weasels are a little shy.
The real star of the show, though, is Peavine Pete. Pete is a rescue desert tortoise, who lives a seemingly comfy life in his little home at the TMPF visitor center. Although Pete isn’t native to northern Nevada, he fits in well amongst the multitude of species that are starting to thrive again at Rosewood.
In the visitor center, alongside a friendly tortoise, you can also check out one of Rosewood’s most recent additions, their David’s chair. This rugged, motorized wheelchair provides a much needed resource to the disabled community. The chair operates in conjunction with a multitude of other tools and programs that TMPF has implemented, in hopes to increase access to the outdoors for all.
Howard explained to me how important outdoor accessibility is at the new nature center: Rosewood also offers adaptive bicycles, and a couple of other wheelchairs equipped for a roll through the wetlands. “I mean you go back five or 10 years, and this stuff didn't exist,” he remarks. Now, “it’s all about the sports world, and not leaving people behind.”
As we walked through the wide gravel trails and talked about adaptive sports, I felt so grateful that such a beautiful part of this land would be accessible for disabled folks. The success of wetland restoration feels sweeter, knowing that it has and will be enjoyed by people with a wide range of abilities. Notably, TMPF has shown a strong commitment to accessibility across all of their programming.
One of TMPF’s projects is the Truckee Meadows Trails Initiative, which Howard is “in charge of, so to speak,” in his words. The initiative is currently working on developing a unified trail system throughout all of Washoe County, which would greatly increase pedestrian accessibility. “There’s a lot going on in the trails community,” Howard tells me, “but not everyone is talking to everyone else. So we are trying to think regionally for our trail system, (and) create connectivity that doesn’t exist” (yet).
If you take a stroll through the Rosewood wetland, you’ll see the results of 14 restoration technicians working Monday-Friday to restore the land to its natural beauty. “We’re trying to remove those invasive species, and plant natives behind them,” Anderson says. “That’s really one of the most effective ways to rehabilitate a space.” Although the invasive plants can be stubborn, now Rosewood is full of cattails and swaying green reeds.
When I asked Howard and Anderson about the history of this place (prior to it being a golf course), they pointed out the importance of Indigenous ties to the wetland. “The Native American history is very important in this area,” Howard tells me, “you know, the people that were here before any of the European Americans showed up on the scene.”
For TMPF, the importance of Native history isn’t brushed aside with simply land acknowledgement lip service. The foundation partnered with local tribes when planning for the future of Rosewood, leading to decisions to plant willow trees, elderberry groves, and other species that are important to Indigenous life and ceremony. These are things that local tribes “continue to have less and less access to,” according to Anderson. “So being able to give that access back to the community is really important.”
By the time we finished our walk through Rosewood, I felt like I gained an entirely new insight on wetlands, and their crucial importance in our battle to sustain the world’s natural beauty and diversity. If you want to learn more about this incredible landscape and the role you play in preserving spaces like these, you can visit the Rosewood Nature Center at 6800 Pembroke Drive. Or, take a look at the Truckee Meadow Park Foundation website (tmparksfoundation.org) to learn more about their programs, projects, and upcoming events.