The Trail to Recovery

AmeriCorp Conservation Team member Cara Conroy surveys for
the endangered Applegate's milkvetch at Ewauna Flat Preserve.
© Molly Sullilvan/TNC

Like pioneers traveling the Applegate Trail – a southern route originally intended as a safer alternative to the Oregon Trail – the endangered Applegate’s milkvetch (Astragalus applegatei) perseveres in the face of hardship.

Found only in the Lower Klamath Basin’s seasonally wet, alkaline floodplains and marsh edges, this member of the pea family may have historically benefited from the basin’s seasonally flooded grasslands.

But development, encroachment of invasive species, fire suppression, and the draining of area wetlands led to its federal listing as endangered in 1993. Monitored populations have since hovered at unfavorably low levels.

A recent discovery, however, gives hope for the plant’s future.

Earlier this summer, AmeriCorp Conservation Team member Cara Conroy joined biologists in surveying the Conservancy’s Ewauna Flat Preserve in Klamath Falls. "I really enjoy surveying for plants," said Conroy, "and this experience was especially interesting to me since it involved an endangered species."

An estimated 2,000 plants were found at the preserve, but the most exciting news came from another site along the Klamath River, owned by Collins Products.

Armed with identification skills, keen eyes and lots of patience, surveyors from The Nature Conservancy, Oregon Natural Heritage Information Center, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Collins Products spotted numerous Applegate’s milkvetch plants on the company’s property. In fact, there are more plants present there than at Ewauna Flat – or at any other known location – and the Collins Products site is now considered the best intact occurrence of this endangered species found thus far.

Collins Products staff members are currently exploring conservation options for this exciting discovery, and that’s good news for the Applegate’s milkvetch.

Perhaps it’s on the trail to recovery after all.