[APWG] Good baby-sitters for public wildflower fields and native grasslands

[Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company]

Dear All,

Here in the San Francisco Bay peninsula, which is about 7-25 miles wide
and runs from San Francisco to San Jose, we have tens of thousands of
acres of grasslands and wildflower fields that agencies have been
purchasing in the last decade, for the purpose of eventually preserving
one million new acres of open space in the nine counties around us.

And in our area, it is the grasslands where most of the Endangered listed
species of plants and butterflies are trying to survive, with difficulty.

The public land managers usually consider themselves mostly land managers,
like taking care of trails and the ins and out of the public uses of the
land, instead of wildflower and grasslands managers.   The old model of
public land management, was to buy the property, put a fence around it and
call it a day.  No significant annual budgets were ever established for
exotic plant control or ecological restoration of the wildflower fields or
grasslands.

When any of the wildflower fields or native grasslands were purchased,
even the best examples were less than 50% native plant cover.  Over time
and without any exotic management, the wildflower and native grass cover
has been plummeting, sometimes close to zero native grass cover, for
example at Russian Ridge, that you can see at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/invent.html

What I am suggesting, is for our generation to become the best
baby-sitters for our wildflower fields and native grasslands habitats, 
And the first easy thing we can do, is to check on the kids at least once
a year.

Using the Evans & Love (1957) modified 100-pace Toe-point vegetation
transect, within a few minutes each year, you can check on the kids and
see who is present, just like the teachers when they were taking
attendance in your elementary school class each morning.

Then, the grassland/wildflower field transect data should be posted on the
web somewhere, so the public can see how the baby sitters are doing with
their job, like my provisional web page at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/WMA.html.

For example, BLM has a couple of hundred million acres of western
grasslands, and it would be interesting to see what a 100-pace Toe-point
transect though each grazing allotment would result in, especially during
these 2012 Extreme drought conditions, like you can see at
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/?  You will see a huge cow-skull image right
over Nebraska and western Kansas this week.

Are the native grasses still there during this massive drought, or did all
of the kids leave with the cows, and we are down to the dust again, just
like in the 1930s?  And when the drought is over, will new exotics spread
into the drought impacted public grasslands, covering more ground than
before?  The only easy way to know is to go out this year and next year
and do some 100-pace Toe-points, which take only a few minutes to do.

The Evans & Love method, also allows you to compare grassland qualities,
and I have devised a grading system for the results:  Very Poor condition,
but with potential for future improvement=0-25% native grass/wildflower
cover,  Poor=26-50%, Fair=51-75%, Good=76-90%, Excellent=91-99%,  As good
as it gets=99.5 to 100%.

It is like scoring at the Olympics, and the best that I have found so far
with a Gold Medal, is Mark Vande Pol in Santa Cruz County, who has
single-handedly, brought 14 acres back to 99.5% native cover.  When I did
the 100-pace (200 feet long) Toe-point though his grassland last year, I
did not step on a single weed.

I don’t know if any of the Mid-western prairie project that were started
almost 100 years ago, like the Curtis Prairie, have achieved that level
yet, or what other Gold medal winners are out there.  But Mark is the best
wildflower field and grassland baby-sitter I have found so far.

So all of the readers of this list-serve, who have grasslands they are
managing, studying, or restoring, I would be interested in hearing the
results of some 100-pace Evans & Love Toe-points each year, so we can all
compare notes across the country.

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333