[APWG] purple loosestrife--and other roadside exotics

[Craig Dremann]

Ruth Douglas wrote:
> 
> Craig and others, the idea of it costing $8.8 million for 1 acre of restored roadside is about beyond my ability to comprehend. Could you just give us a broad brush list of expenses that add up to $8.8 million?
> 
> Many thanks.
> 
> Ruth

Dear Ruth and All,

The Caltrans/UC Davis grant details are linked to the web page showing
the photos of the project so far, at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/road.test.html . 

For about $450,000 in two years, the grant was supposed to get 2 acres
of native plants in place of the exotics (about $225,000 per acre) but
is only able to get about to get about 1,000 successful square feet in
place for that price.

In California, one agency, CALFED is giving giving out $300 million
annually for ecosystem restoration projects, and it seems that nobody is
taking a second look to see if anything is still there.

I recently looked through over 1,000 pages of one CALFED $636,000 grant
No. ERP-98-E13 "Union School Slough" that was for restoring native
grasslands at another Yolo County site, and I couldn't find a scrap of
evidence that anything survived.

In  another project, just a few miles east of the Dunnigan Hills site,
36 acres of native grasslands were sown four years ago along the Colusa
Basin Drain---checking the site about a month ago, there was only 20
square feet of native grasses out of the 36 acres still in place---the
rest choked out by exotic weeds.

We can throw hundreds of millions of dollars at the exotic plant issue
in North America---but until we invent the necessary methods to build
thriving local ecosystems from scratch--- "Ecosystem Prototypes"---then
many of our efforts may end up being the very, very expensive UC Davis
project in the Dunnigan Hills.

Sincerely, Craig Dremann, The Reveg Edge
Box 609, Redwood City, CA 94064 (650) 325-7333