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Arches describes three broad ways plants survive dryness: using brief favorable conditions, resisting drought, or avoiding its effects.
Arches describes three broad ways plants survive dryness: using brief favorable conditions, resisting drought, or avoiding its effects. Sparse growth can be a functioning community, including life in rock cracks and soil crust. The animals follow their own schedules. At Arches, many small mammals are active at night, while some other animals favor dawn or dusk. Reptile activity shifts with temperature and season. A quiet midday walk does not establish that a place has little wildlife.
Start with the plants: Utah juniper, two-needle pinyon, blackbrush, cliffrose and Harriman's yucca. The ringtail, common chuckwalla and Mojave desert tortoise are separate regional stories, each tied to its own documented range. The Mojave Desert and the Colorado Plateau are not interchangeable, and a southwestern Utah species should not be assumed to live at Arches. Rare desert plants and tortoises are described only broadly, with no maps.
A drought-tolerant evergreen with scale-covered twigs, fibrous bark, and berry-like cones that feed wildlife.
A low yucca with stiff, sharp leaves and bell-shaped flowers pollinated by the yucca moth.
An elusive raccoon relative that moves through canyon rock with a long black-and-white ringed tail.
A heavy-bodied, mostly plant-eating lizard that uses rocky crevices as both refuge and defense.
A long-lived desert reptile whose slow life history and reliance on shelter make disturbance especially costly.