[APWG] Could NEB DOT do some Tiny Test plots this year, like DELDOT & IOWA?

[Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company]

Why doesn't NEB DOT do like DELDOT & IOWA DOT?

Dear Alison and All, especially any other DOT readers,

Thanks for your email.

My recommendations on how to learn to use natives in the place of exotics
along roadsides, is for the whole United States, not just California and
the Great Basin.  I taught my converting roadside weeds back to natives
workshop in Delaware to the DOT there, in 2000.

Both Iowa and Delaware for the last decade, have had vigorous programs to
convert roadside weeds, and to start to limit the sowing of weedy exotics
along the roadsides, especially after new construction, and transition to
the use of local native genetic material.

You can see the scope of Delaware’s 22 Tiny Test plots in 2000, planting
129 species of natives, plus the locations and which species were planted
in each plot, at http://www.ecoseeds.com/deldot.html

And Iowa has been spending several million a year to work on the
conversion of their roadsides, back to local native species, at
http://www.uni.edu/ecotype/ at the Iowa Ecotype Project.

And their are other links that may be helpful for DOTs at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/highways.html and I would also recommend
http://www.ecoseeds.com/juicy.gossip.six.html about intentionally-sown
exotics along our roadsides and in our public lands.

My suggestion to any DOT, is that the use of persistent exotics along the
roadsides will eventually be looked at as a huge mistake and a really bad
impact on our North American native wildland ecosystems, so why not follow
the Delaware and Iowa model, and we all get to know our local native
plants, in Tiny Test plots ASAP?

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333