[APWG] Try and get reveg costs down, plus quicker, better quality

[Patricia_DeAngelis at fws.gov]

Along the lines of restoration with natives, you might be interested in a 
recent publication in the July 2011 Restoration Ecology, entitled Plant 
Community Recovery Following Restoration in Semiarid Grasslands (Munson 
and Lauenroth 2011). In short, this project evaluated the extent of plant 
community and ecosystem change on land recovering from dryland wheat 
production, relative to uncultivated native shortgrass steppe and they 
estimate that two decades are needed to achieve full recovery when 
restoring shortgrass steppe where agricultural fields once stood.

Perhaps one or both of those authors are on our listserves - ?

Patricia S. De Angelis, Ph.D.
Botanist, Division of Scientific Authority-US Fish & Wildlife Service
Chair, Medicinal Plant Working Group-Plant Conservation Alliance
4401 N. Fairfax Dr., Suite 110
Arlington, VA  22203
703-358-1708 x1753
FAX: 703-358-2276

Promoting sustainable use and conservation of our native medicinal plants.
<www.nps.gov/plants/medicinal>




"Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company" <Craig at astreet.com> 
Sent by: apwg-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org
01/23/2012 02:41 PM

To
apwg at lists.plantconservation.org, rwg at lists.plantconservation.org
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Subject
[APWG] Try and get reveg costs down, plus quicker, better quality






Dear Wayne and All,

Thanks for your email.  I am going to give two different links to the same
web pages that I have referenced in my email below.

Unfortunately over the last forty years, I have been a witness to the
failure of many non-riparian native projects planted in California, mostly
 because of our massive weed issues that we still do not have a secure
handle on.

What I am proposing, is to start inventing the methods to bring down the
costs of native non-riparian projects, from the billions of dollar that it
currently costs, down to the millions of dollars, and hopefully down to
the hundreds of thousands of dollars eventually.

It is like the original computers in the 1950s, when each computer cost
millions of dollars and filled a whole room, made out of old radio tubes,
like you can see at http://www.ecoseeds.com/talk.html or
http://userwebs.batnet.com/rwc-seed/talk.html, plus you only could get 5K
of RAM and 64K of memory out of those huge monsters.  Now, we carry around
cell phones that have 10,000 times the memory, tucked in our pockets.

That is my goal with both weed management and for ecological restoration
of non-riparian areas, especially the billion acres of the most arid lands
on our planet.  Make the restoration process faster, cheaper and higher
quality.

And also for mitigation projects in the lower 48 States, like pipeline
rights of ways, powerline corridors, Endangered species habitats, public
parklands, mine tailings, gas and oil pads, etc.  Basically, any
non-riparian site where you need to restore the local natives, and do it
as cheaply and quickly as possible, and to the very highest standards of
weed-freeness.

At least in California in Santa Cruz County, at least two properties have
been able to achieve high quality restoration standards, 95% overall cover
at the Shaw 74 acre property, and 99.5% native cover at the Mark Vande Pol
14 acre property.

So the next step, is for each State and the Federal agencies to establish
these high quality standards for all non-riparian projects across the
country.

Then, the second step is to start the conversion of large areas, like the
State of Iowa has been doing for the last decade along its roadsides, by
planting genetically local native grasses instead of the exotics, whenever
there is a planting project is to be done.  Or like using local natives
for pipeline rights of way,  like you can see at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/greatbasin.html or
http://userwebs.batnet.com/rwc-seed/greatbasin.html

When all of our non-riparian projects are held to very high performance
standards, like a minimum of 98% local native plant cover within six
months or less, then, just like the computer industry, we can start to
invent methods to make the restoration costs cheaper, quicker and much
more efficient.

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333



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