[APWG] "Show me the 99% local native cover, in 18 months or less"

[Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company]

Dear Chris and All,

Thanks for your email.

After doing this work for 40 years now, there are two points of failure
for all weed management and/or revegetation plans that I have seen over
and over again, for the last four decades:

1.) No pre-project successful small scale test plots, using soil from the
site or tests done on the site.  This should be written into every single
mitigation or revegetation project in North America, BEFORE any approval
for construction of things like well pads, pipeline easements, etc..

Never allow the private sector to produce environmental damage that they
cannot show you, at least in a small scale test plot, that they can heal
that damage when they are done, back to 99% local native plant cover for
wildlands areas within 18 months or less.  That includes using local
genetic material, no NRCS cultivars and zero use of exotics.

Like in the movie Jerry McGuire, instead of “Show me the Money” you are
asking “Show me the 99% Local Native Plant Cover, with less than 1% weed
cover!”

2.) Any mitigation plan or revegetation plan,  and even for large scale
weed management plans, need very, very  rapid performance standards
supporting the plan.  That means, that whatever you do to fix the wound,
or convert the weeds, it has to take effect immediately, and faster than
the local exotic plants can come in and mess it up.

PERFORMANCE STANDARDS: You can never allow any longer than 6 months to get
less than 5% weed cover on a site--plus no longer than one year to get
more than 90% native cover, and less than 1% weed cover.

FIVE YEARS MAY BE ILLEGAL UNDER STATE CONTRACT LAWS: People probably do
not realize, that the usual mitigation plans that allow five years for
performance are probably illegal under most State contract laws, and
should be abandonded.   And the bond levels are usually way underfunded,
and are unable to ever accomplish the mitigation that was promised, and
once the bond is forfeited, then the State taxpayers are left with the
costs.

EX-SITU TEST PLOTS: I received three gallons of the top two inches of
topsoil on November first from a 42,000 acre area that has to be converted
from nearly 100% weed cover, back to as close to 100% local natives, that
I have put into Craig’s Ex-situ Test Plot Hospital and Intensive Care
Unit.

What is coming out of the exsitu plots, only 18 days after sowing the
native seeds, is that stronger antibiotic measures need to be added to the
plots to counter the 62 million ripgut seedlings that are coming up, per
acre.

But the good news about the plots, is that within 3-4 weeks, I am already
getting clues on what to do overall for the 42,000 acres, and what the
costs will be for materials, like how much native seed you need to sow per
acre, and what the budget should be for the costs of seeds and materials,
for example.

THE NEED FOR SPEED:  The plan from these Ex-situ test plots, will be a
three-phased restoration, to suppress the weeds the first six months back
to less than 1% cover, from the current 100%, and then in the next six
months, to get at least 50% native plant cover, and end with close to 99%
native cover in the third six months.

So the plan is to go from 100% weeds, back to as close to 100% native
cover within 18 months or less.

If your mitigation, weed management, or restoration plans do not achieve
progress on that scale, you should have the oil and gas companies keep
setting up or paying for small scale test plots, until they can get
plantings to work that quickly.

LAND DOCTORS: If you look at land damage, like the gas pads as a bodily
injury, or the weeds as a disease, then you as a land-doctor, needs to
invest or find others land-doctors who have already invented, the methods
to take care of your patients very quickly and efficiently.

If you no pre-restoration test plot work appear anywhere in the plans, to
test drive the mitigation plans on a small scale, like in that PDF
document you linked us to, then that is absolutely the very first
requirement to make.

Then, if you follow the plan that I am proposing for our PGE gas pipeline
here at Edgewood Park, that could be a basic protocol to follow, that
could produce successes for your area also.

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333