But it always helps if you can put food in people's mouths. A peppy pollinator. Photo courtesy of USDA Bee Lab, Utah State University, Logan. Unhappily, the San Rafael Desert's bee-flower communities are at risk. Much of the desert is open to off-road vehicles, which can crush bees' nests.
Scientists are even more concerned about exotic weeds that are starting to sweep into the area.
Perhaps the most pernicious of these is a Eurasian plant called cheatgrass, which can turn native plant communities into monocultures with astonishing speed. Although cheatgrass has favored the more fertile soils of western Utah, it is spreading and adapting fast. Some scientists say wilderness designation could protect the San Rafael Desert's unique bee-flower communities. The Bureau of Land Management, which administers the San Rafael Desert, hasn't included the area in the 5.7 million acres it's studying for possible designation as wilderness. But the Utah Wilderness Coalition's Citizen's Proposal, which calls for 9.1 million acres of wilderness in the state, would protect many of the bees' hangouts.