[APWG] Restoring a whole continent's native understory--the Rocky Mtn. herbaceous jungle.

[Craig Dremann]

Dear Bill and All,

Thanks for your email.

Yes I agree that the climax forest and the lack of any management by the
former Native American peoples for the last 150-250 years in the East is
impacting on the lack of herbaceous natives and native grasses, in part.

However, here in the West, even our climax forests have been hammered by
grazing up to the alpine zone for 100-150 years, to the point that even
in the forest openings, the native plant understory which orignally
consisted of over 100 herbaceous species in places, no longer exists.  

Even today, the Forest Service and BLM in the West, still allows grazing
in deserts and up into the alpine zones, even when there is so little
native plant understory that it takes 100 acres to sustain one cow. 

I've seen hundreds of square miles of this understory extinction when I
was consulting with the US Forest Service in Idaho in the fall of 1997
regarding their Mountain Tarweed barrens, that stretches the length of
the Rocky Mountains from Idaho to New Mexico, at 8,000-8,500 ft.
elevation.  

In the mid-1800s after the railroads were put in, ranchers used to ship
sheep and cattle to these lush herbaceous forest understories in the
high Rockies---because of the high summer rainfall, they were like
succulent jungles. 

By the 1930s the herbaceous jungles had mostly disappeared, not because
the Native Americans weren't there burning, because these herbaceous
jungles never got dry enough to burn--it's because all the sheep and
cows ate them up!

So, the only thing left out of the jungle of over 100 original native
herbaceous species, is a single species of native tarweed, Madia
glomerata, the "Last of the Native Ecosystem Understory".  

How do we know there were originally 100 species herbaceous in this now
barren land?  Because starting in the 1930s, three different generations
of US Forest Service researchers tried, each in vain, to restore the
tarweed barrens, back to the herbaceous jungle, and the first researcher
went looking for the few relic stands of the jungle that was left and
made notes about them in a scientific journal article.

I totally agree with what you're going:  "convincing and expediting
USFS's conversion from exotic species to native species for disturbed
land re-vegetation in the National Forests in SC.  We facilitated their
development of local source native grass seed supplies to use in their
work.  USFS in SC is now almost pursuing an herbaceous natives
restoration program in re-vegetating disturbed sites." is exactly what
I'm talking about.

And at the same time, we need to start preserving what little great
examples are left of the intact and unmolested native ecosystem
understories that we still have on this continent, like the pictures I
show for our California ecosystems at http://www.ecoseeds.com/wild.html

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann, redwood City, CA (650) 325-7333