[APWG] Prizes needed to invent successful methods of stopping a "Mustard Tusnami"

[Craig Dremann]

Dear All,

Perhaps I should introduce myself.  

I'm a private business owner who has been inventing Ecological
Restoration Licensed technologies, mainly for arid Western native
grassland ecosystems, for the last 34 years, and my company is the
"Reveg Edge" in Redwood City, California.  

I just came back from the Mojave desert and Death Valley 8 days ago.

For all the NPS land managers reading these messages, I found a
real-life example of where there a PRIZE or Prizes will be desperately
and immediately be needed, to successfully convert this new weed
infestation back to local native ecosystems.

An exotic mustard, Brassica tournefortii, has just entered the Mojave
desert ecosystem along the medians and ditches of Interstate 15 and
California Route 58...and according to other observers, along other
route and highways.  

In the last few years, it is moving very, very rapidly from the road
edge, outwards solidly into the desert.  There's a good chance that it
could eventually overwhelm at least three National Parks/Preserves:
Death Valley, Joshua Tree and the Mojave Preserve, and it is already
established itself firmly in a few thousand acres of Lake Meade NRA, as
reported in the Las Vegas Sun from last month:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/feb/01/c00002417.html?mustard
= Photo with caption.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/feb/01/518218988.html?mustard
= Story

The BLM land where the mustard is moving into---as well as the NPS lands
where it will probably end up---only gets an average of 3
cents per acre per year from Congress to do any exotic plant
management/ecological restoration.  A problem like this new
mustard-invader could cost, even in this very beginning
infestation-stage, tens of millions to 100 million dollars, to keep the
Mojave desert ecosystem from collapsing. 

I'm building a web site where you can see some scary photos, at 
http://www.ecoseeds.com/juicy.gossip.seventeen.html

I'm hoping that anyone who has contacts with the BLM and NPS WO folks,
will give them a heads-up so they can start asking Congress to allocate
adequate funds to nip this exotic before it can spread much further, and
"rebuild" the ecosystems where it is currently established.

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333