PHOENIX — If the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, the journey to save a desert begins with a single cactus. And this Arizona woman is on a mission to do what she can to preserve the Sonoran Desert landscape, one cactus at a time.
“A desert doesn’t have to take a thousand years to regenerate. We’re putting things out there to help it regenerate now,” said Jenny Vitale.
Vitale is an engineer by trade, but she also spends her time volunteering to rescue cacti.
In 2021 she had an idea. She was driving through the Tonto National Forest and looking at a burn scar there. “It killed me to see all that life just wiped out,” she recalled.
It wasn't just fires threatening the desert, but also the ever-expanding sprawl of the Phoenix Metro. And it's not like those cacti could get away on their own. So she decided to do something about it.
Vitale reached out to the forest service and some of her development clients, asking if she could get her hands on some cacti — metaphorically speaking — and replant them to help with revitalization.
Turns out, the answer was a resounding yes!
That was the start of Vitale's cactus rescue project as she began to work through the proper legal channels to get permits and licensing. Vitale said Boyce Thompson Arboretum has been an integral part. They've guided Vitale through Department of Agriculture permitting and even got their hands in the ground to help salvage the cacti.
“Instead of clearing and grubbing them, we come and salvage them. We store them temporarily and we work with places like city of Phoenix, Tonto National Forest, and we’re trying to get some projects with Maricopa County Parks and the City of Scottsdale started,” said Vitale.
Vitale took 12News to a Scottsdale site slated for home development. She showed us how to scout the site, mark what you hope to take and then how to harvest the cacti.
Vitale documents every last plant taken and reports them. She also has to work around plants which are ‘tagged’ as part of the site’s native plant survey. Those are off limits.
She treats it kind of like a treasure hunt: never sure of what she's going to find.
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Once Vitale harvests each cactus, she stores them until she finds their next home.
Right now, she’s helping to revitalize the area around Hunt’s Tomb inside Papago Park in partnership with the City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department.
One of the most unique aspects of Vitale’s mission is that she does it without a single dollar.
“There’s literally no money exchanged anywhere. It’s entirely volunteer and entirely donation based,” said Vitale.
But there's something about cacti that makes the situation extra thorny. And no, it's not their spines. It's that you can't just put the cacti back into the ground.
Cacti have evolved to protect themselves from the sun — kind of like how people get a tan. Except, cacti can't turn themselves to even it out. They need to face a certain direction.
“Some cactus do have to be planted [facing] south. They grow a thicker skin on their south side. They put a few more needles for shade on the south side and if you don’t plant them 20 to 30 degrees of south, they sun scorch, they sunburn just like a human,” said Vitale. This adaptation includes some of the most iconic cacti including saguaros, barrels and hedgehog cactus.
When Vitale hunts for these type of cactus she marks them with pink tape before taking them out of the ground. That way she can put them back in the exact same direction.
Even if Vitale's focus is on cacti, she wants her work to inspire people to pursue their own missions. As she says, “I think everybody can make a difference.”
“If you have a critter cause, if you have a plant cause, or human cause, just get off your butt and go do it, just make it happen,” she said.
“Let’s all be good stewards of this desert,” said Vitale. “We’ve lost a lot of desert to the heat, lost a lot to development and a lot to fires, if everybody can just pitch in and be good stewards, then the generations who come after us will have something very nice to enjoy.”
If you’d like to volunteer to help replant you can visit the city of Phoenix’s website: https://volunteer.phoenix.gov/custom/501/opp_details/2835
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