[APWG] Why not succeed the first time, with Performance Standards?

[Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company]

Dear Wayne and All,

Thanks for your email.

Did everyone enjoy the Europe to Africa vegetation Megatransect  at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/europe_africa_megatransect.html ?
I extended the web page yesterday, to cover from the northern tip of
Norway (70N) to the southern tip of Africa (34S).  How about those rocks
in Mali at 18N?

What I am suggesting, is that we start looking for weed management or
Ecological Restoration methods, with Performance Standards, for our
projects, espcially the government-funded ones, like habitat restoration,
or highway roadsides, etc.

Up to now, when someone purchased local native seeds, or purchased native
plants from a nursery, there was a hope that the seed company or the
nursery would be able to tell you, how to plant those seeds or plants, so
they would succeed and thrive in a wildlands situation.

Being the owner of a seed company and nursery myself, it is all that a
seed company or nursery can do for the price, to deliver good germinating,
weed-free native seeds, or nurseries to deliver healthy native plants---to
expect them to give you any advice on how to plant them in a wildlands
situation, is way, way beyond the scope of their work.

Successful technologies on planting those natives back into wildlands, and
getting them to survive, is a separate, very expensive puzzle to solve,
and is going to require a separate, very significant investment.

That is why I set forth a set of costs per 1/10th acre, on how much it may
cost to invent the technologies necessary, at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/standards.html

A similar situation happened in the computer industry before 1967. 
Computers were built and sold, and the software and operating systems were
free.  But when the programs and operating systems were free,  there was
no economic incentive to write better ones, so they were very slow and
clunky--it might take 12 hours to process one job, for example.

Then, in 1967, Kenneth Kolence started the first business to write and
license software, and his first product was one that is still used today,
the disk defragmentation program, which rearranged the programs on the
disk so all the parts of each program were right next to each other,
greatly speeding up the computer operations.

It seems much more efficient, to start out buying or licensing a
pre-tested weed management or ecological restoration program, that has
some solid Performance Standards supporting it?

Otherwise, the scary, horror-show of the I-505 planting in the Sacramento
valley, we see it is possible to invest $450,000 on a couple of acres, 
and by using the unlicensed, public domain, off-the-shelf free restoration
technologies, still not get it right after six years and five planting
attempts?  Why not succeed the first time?

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333