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A white-winged dove sits in the nest of a saguaro at the Tucson Botanical Gardens on July 8, 2026.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s hard to imagine a cactus without thinking of a saguaro.<\/p>\n
Adam Farrell-Wortman has spent more than a decade caring for saguaros at the Tucson Botanical Gardens, where he is the director of horticulture.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can go anywhere around the world, (and if you tell) a random person to draw a cactus, they will draw a saguaro,\u201d Farrell-Wortman says. \u201cIt is the icon of the Northern American desert.\u201d<\/p>\n
But these towering cacti are vulnerable to other climate-related stressors \u2014 like extended temperatures, invasive species and fire.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019ve lived here for 65 years,\u201d says Flint Swerd, a retired high school teacher living in Cave Creek. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen so many saguaros dying.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Swerd often hikes and mountain bikes and has noticed saguaros rapidly disappearing as wildfires increase.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe desert ecology isn\u2019t evolved with fire,\u201d Farrell-Wortman says.<\/p>\n
Burns<\/p>\n
Saguaros\u2019 strong interior could make them appear tough against fires. Kim Franklin, a conservation research scientist at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, says the cacti are less resilient than they appear.<\/p>\n
If saguaros are burned at their base, they have a better chance at survival than barrel cacti or baby saguaros, Franklin explained, which are low to the ground. But they still catch fire easily, with fire rapidly traveling from the bottom to the top.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once a saguaro is ignited, fire can burn its soft tissue. If enough of the epidermis, or inner skin, is burned, the saguaro dies completely, she said. If it survives, it\u2019s never the same again; its epidermis can no longer act as a protective barrier against pathogens.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink about if your legs were burned from the knees down pretty significantly,\u201d Franklin says. \u201cThat would be pretty hard on you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Surviving saguaros are left with permanent burn scars that appear as charred patches on the lower trunk and arms of the cactus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When saguaros die completely, they are left with their ribs \u2013 the woody structures that once supported its weight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A white-winged dove sits in the nest of a saguaro at the Tucson Botanical Gardens on July 8, 2026.<\/p>\n
Janes Reyes\/Cronkite News<\/p>\n
Native species<\/p>\n
Saguaro damage isn\u2019t just cosmetic\u2013 it threatens coexisting wildlife, too.<\/p>\n
Birds like the Gila woodpecker and the white-winged dove dig out holes in the saguaro to nest in, making cavities. When a fire kills a saguaro, the birds become displaced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The saguaro is also a food source for many forms of wildlife, and fires put that at risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re incredibly important to all sorts of pollinators \u2026 so many different species, insects, birds, bats, depend on saguaros, for their nectar, for the pollen and for their fruit,\u201d Franklin says.<\/p>\n
Animals like bats are less threatened by saguaro fires because they can fly away, Franklin explains. But if a slower animal like a desert tortoise is nearby during a fire, the immediate impact could be death.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Cactus_1-cronkite.webp\")
Adam Farrell-Wortman with a healthy saguaro at the Tucson Botanical Gardens on July 8, 2026.<\/p>\n
Eleri Mosier\/Cronkite News<\/p>\n
Invasive species\u00a0<\/p>\n
Invasive species are a major fire risk factor for saguaros and the wildlife that coexist with them.<\/p>\n
On the Fourth of July in 2017, fireworks were set off around Sentinel Peak in Tucson. It led to a fire that burned hundreds of saguaros. Part of this, Franklin explained, was related to buffelgrass, an invasive species growing on the mountain that catches fire easily.<\/p>\n
Buffelgrass has thin green stalks with fluffy lavender spikes like cleaning dusters sprouting from it. You can pull on it and spread the soft bristles through the air like a dandelion.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also one of the biggest threats to saguaros. It can fuel intense fires, which burns the epidermis, or skin, of the saguaro. If enough of the saguaro is damaged, it doesn\u2019t only damage the skin and pathogens \u2014 it can completely kill the saguaro.<\/p>\n
Where the saguaros were burned on Sentinel Peak, the buffelgrass returned, lush and thick. It replaced the hundreds of saguaros that used to stand tall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s hardly any saguaros left there,\u201d Franklin explains. The fires also destroyed other plants that used to thrive alongside saguaros.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cBut there\u2019s also nothing else either,\u201d she continues. \u201cThere\u2019s no palo verdes\u2026 there\u2019s no creosote, there\u2019s no other plants either. It\u2019s just buffelgrass.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another invasive species that contributes to saguaros\u2019 fire risk is stinknet, which is also starting to take off across Southern Arizona. In Phoenix, it\u2019s already rampant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The invasive species appears like bright bunches of yellow flowers, but, like buffelgrass, it increases wildfire risk, she says. They form dense, flammable mats throughout the desert and pose a risk to surrounding saguaros.<\/p>\n
Buffelgrass and stinknet are replacing saguaros, not just threatening them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are really bad at long-term thinking, or maybe people don\u2019t care because they\u2019re going to get to see saguaros during their lifetime,\u201d Franklin says. \u201cBut (their) grandkids are not going to get to see them. It\u2019s just going to be a grassland.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The future<\/p>\n
Hope persists, thanks in part to the people working to preserve Arizona\u2019s deserts. Tucson has a strong sense of place, Franklin explains, and the community cares deeply about biodiversity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s hundreds, if not thousands, of people that go out every year to volunteer just to dig up buffelgrass or pull up stinknet,\u201d Franklin says.<\/p>\n
Farrell-Wortman said the community usually steps up to help during environmental disasters. But they need to keep putting in the effort, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to continue doing the things we are doing, like trying to pull out and remove invasive species,\u201d Farrell-Wortman says. \u201cWe have to do things like replant \u2026 maybe putting even more effort, more resources \u2026 care more about the need to replant affected wild spaces so that they can recover from human activity.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the most important thing we can do is at a societal level, Farrell-Wortman explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can no longer pretend that our actions aren\u2019t having a major effect on the natural world around us,\u201d Farrell-Wortman says. \u201cWe have to accept that climate change is happening, is occurring, and that we need to do things to mitigate the destructiveness of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article<\/a> first appeared on Cronkite News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to imagine a cactus without thinking of a saguaro. Adam Farrell-Wortman has spent more than a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":953870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,12490,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-953869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-phoenix","tag-america","tag-arizona","tag-az","tag-phoenix","tag-science-technology","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116969045394349474","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=953869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/953870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}