[APWG] Ecosystem Restoration and Alien Species eradication Costs and Effectiveness Re: Costs of first successful weed conversions, to 100% natives

[Wayne Tyson]

APWG and Craig,

I never figured I would get rich (I didn't) doing ecosystem restoration, but 
I would liked to have made more money. And I would have liked to have spread 
it around some more, even though I tried to by depending upon 
sub-consultants instead of employees. I didn't want to become the GM of 
ecosystem restoration, and I didn't. In fact, I preferred to be a 
sub-consultant, and was on a number of projects. It didn't always work out, 
but I was always happy when it did. I worked my tail off, and was able to 
sleep at night. If I had had Craig's energy, I might have done better.

I don't need no stinkin' computers!* (But I grant that they are useful tools 
in the right hands.)

I still don't have enough answers/responses from previous 
questions/statements to know how to respond to the 90/90 issue, but I am 
open to the evidence. On the other hand, I continue to suspect that 
California, the West, and the World are probably stuck with most of the 
alien species they have, but that they can, in many cases, be driven back 
into relative insignificance by altering the environments in which they 
thrive (degraded ecosystems) to environments in which they do not thrive 
(truly restored ecosystems--fully self-sufficient without perpetual 
maintenance--with permanently suppressed relict populations of alien 
species). Please note that I am talking about both plant and animal 
populations.

While I am happy to see Craig getting things done with great devotion and 
energy, I suspect that, while we have the same goals, we apparently have 
different ways of achieving them; however, I can only speak for myself. To 
keep costs down, I have used different ways of reducing alien populations 
and advancing indigenous ones. Diversity should, can, and has increased over 
time and alien populations reduced. While I would like to see pre-historical 
"purity" in restored ecosystems, I would rather see the money spread 
farther, along with the treated area. While I would like to see military 
spending transferred to ecosystem restoration/alien species eradication, I 
suspect that such a goal is a dream for some halcyon future and that the 
next several generations will have to settle for less that perfect purity. I 
am concerned that overpromising may undercut credibility for ecosystem 
restoration/alien species reduction, especially when huge sums are involved 
and then fail or do not prove self-sufficient and progressive in terms of 
increasing diversity up to the carrying capacity of each site, adjusted for 
site/environment requisites that cannot be provided on large scales.

The Tiny Test-Plot (TTP) method sounds fine to me; I in fact used something 
similar in the early 80's. We (I never worked alone, I just contracted 
alone, with at most one or two actual "employees," (aka "wage slaves.") 
found that the plots could slowly colonize adjacent areas where aliens 
dominated extrapolating from examples of spontaneous recolonization of 
indigenous species, and the idea was that they would eventually merge into a 
single healthy ecosystem, perhaps not entirely free of aliens, reduced to 
relative insignificance. As long as humans exist, there will be a certain 
degree of degradation of ecosystems; I suspect that we first have to begin 
doing less harm, and work toward an uncommon "commons," as it were . . .

While I agree with Craig's three points in some ways, there are other ways 
too look at them generally, keeping in mind that the devil is in the 
details. My comments are [[in double-brackets WT]]

"(1.) DRILL SEEDED, huge mistake.  The plot was drill seeded instead of
broadcast-sown.

[[I have never drill-seeded anything but crops when I was a boy, but I would 
not say that drill-seeding is always a mistake. However, the important thing 
in "seeding" is emergence, density, survival, reproduction, and stand 
permanence at carrying capacity. Both drilling and broadcasting have their 
advantages and disadvantages, depending upon how they are done. The proof is 
in the assessment of effectiveness, and perhaps cost-effectiveness. WT]]

"(2.) SOWING RATE, way too low. The sowing rate of the Stipa grass was only
about 1/10th of the rate per acre needed to get good cover on the site,
and,

[[I don't think cover is everything. There is such a thing as too much 
cover. In addition to suppression of companion species, excessive seeding 
can result in placing excess demand on site resources (e.g., available 
water), especially when seed depth is uniform (which it usually should not 
be). On sites where AWC is limited, more widely spaced plants (seeds or 
growing plants) can initially be more productive in the long run, by 
allocating scarce resources to fewer, better-performing plants rather than 
too many plants that cannot develop with optimal emergence, density, 
survival, reproduction, and stand permanence at carrying capacity. Having 
too many roots to feed can be as big a mistake as not having enough--the 
important thing is what one ends up with. WT]]

"(3.) SINGLE SPECIES, huge mistake. Only one native species was sown, and
no other natives were sown to fill the niche of the broadleaf weeds, like
anything from the sunflower family to take the place of the yellow star
thistle, for example."

[[Well, yes--it would be better to mimic Nature more closely and introduce 
the maximum number of species possible. But, depending upon the details, 
single-species sowing and/or planting is not necessarily, in of itself, a 
HUGE mistake. Had other variables been different, drilling might have been 
effective. It seems to me that a number of factors worked against success. 
Craig, you do mean "anything [[INDIGENOUS TO THE SITE]]  from the sunflower 
family," right? WT]]

[[ [4.] As I said before, I can't do much but speculate without doing a 
proper evaluation (which I have done for governmental agencies in the past), 
but one "mistake" I would think would be glaringly obvious is site 
homogeneity. There are many others that come to mind, but I hesitate to go 
any further, as I really don't like to generalize. WT]]


WT

PS: I published on my methodology rather than outright asked for "license" 
fees. "Licensing" would not have worked anyway, without extensive training. 
Even when I told people how to do it, they found a way to mess it up. There 
is no substitute for an adequate, if not complete, understanding of the 
principles involved. I had developers interview me, then use my copyrighted 
article in their subdivision proposal, implying and outright saying that I 
had been consulted, got their project approved, then screwed it up--they 
were only interested in approval and saving money. I had other well-meaning 
practitioners try to use an article as a cookbook, then completely 
misinterpret one element of the "recipe," causing total failure and complete 
loss of the investment. A state agency once called to complain about the 
failure of a project that I had never heard of . . .

*Misattributed to a character in "The Treasure of Sierra Madre," and here 
further mutilated.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company" <Craig at astreet.com>
To: <apwg at lists.plantconservation.org>
Cc: <landrest at cox.net>
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 9:36 AM
Subject: Costs of first successful weed conversions, to 100% natives


Dear Wayne and All,

Thanks for your two emails.  I hope I answer both of your comments, in
this reply.

Wouldn't have been nice, if we started 60 years ago, maybe at the same
time the first computers were being built, in developing successful
ecological restoration technologies, that could quickly and efficiently
convert solid weed patches, back to 100% local native species within 90
days or less, with no future maintenance?

And it also would have been be nice if weed management and ecological
restoration for the last 60 years, had the same annual research and
development budgets, as the computer did, from some government agency,
like the US military?

That is why my suggested weed-to-solid native plant conversion costs are
so high, at http://www.ecoseeds.com/standards.html because the costs
include all the Tiny Test plots work you have to do, in order to invent
the necessary ecological restoration technologies, that have rapid
Performance Standards supporting them.

You can see for the first few years at the I-505 site in the Sacramento
Valley, at http://www.ecoseeds.com/road.test.html the UC Davis student who
did the planting, started out with lots of Tiny Test plots with many, many
different treatments.

The UC Davis student was experimenting with my Tiny Test plot method, that
he had heard about at my Caltrans workshop in 2000 in Eureka, that he
attended.  You can see all the wood stakes at the west side of the I-505
site, marking out all the different treatments, in one of my pictures.

What he did not do, is to continue those Tiny test plots until they were
100% successful.  He unfortunately reverted to the old method, of using
the entire project as one big huge test plot with only one treatment,
instead of achieving successes in the very small Tiny Test plots first.

The photos of the I-505 Sacramento valley test plots, that I took last
Friday, are failing for several reasons, but the current failure on the
resowing of the west side plot is for at least three reasons:

(1.) DRILL SEEDED, huge mistake.  The plot was drill seeded instead of
broadcast-sown.

(2.) SOWING RATE, way too low. The sowing rate of the Stipa grass was only
about 1/10th of the rate per acre needed to get good cover on the site,
and,

(3.) SINGLE SPECIES, huge mistake. Only one native species was sown, and
no other natives were sown to fill the niche of the broadleaf weeds, like
anything from the sunflower family to take the place of the yellow star
thistle, for example.

I gave a talk for the Bureau of Land Management weed meeting a few years
ago, where I suggested that the current state of weed management in
California, is about at the same efficiency level as the world's fastest
computer in 1952-6, with 5K of RAM, with a stored memory of 64K, which you
can see at http://www.ecoseeds.com/talk.html.

So to get cheap weed-to-100% native plant conversions, you can do at least
three things:

1.) GET ANNUAL BUDGETS necessary to invent the restoration technologies
with Performance Standards, to get 100% weed cover and zero weeds, within
90 days or less, and no future maintenance?

2.) ADD THOSE INVENTING COSTS to the first projects within a particular
ecosystem, with the anticipation that after inventing those successfully
technologies with Performance Standards, they could just be cut-and-pasted
more or less for free, onto other projects nearby?

However, even if you invent successful restoration technologies for one
acre, if you then try to restore the exact same ecosystem only a few miles
away, there are still going to be costs to repeat a lot of the Tiny Test
plots, to reconfirm the successes of your technologies on a small scale
before you do the big project.

3.) BUY OR LICENSE the successful Ecological Restoration technologies from
someone who has already invented methods that have Performance Standards
supporting them, to achieve the 100% native and zero weed cover, within 90
days or less, and zero future maintenance.

That is what Bill Gates did to get his original DOS system, he bought it
outright from another inventor, who did not know the potential of what he
had.  You can see that story in the movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley.

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333




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