[APWG] NEWS: Researcher Finds Way to Fight Cheatgrass--Just a bandaid to keep from listing the Sage Grouse

[craig at astreet.com]

Dear APWG,

This is just a pie-in-the-sky bandaid to pretend that we can manage the
cheatgrass, without spending the money to fix the real problem that is
causing the cheatgrass in the first place, the lack of N-P-K and organic
matter in the Great Basin soils, that are needed for native seedling
survival.

We found that out the hard way when restoring a 100-mile gas pipeline
through BLM lands in the 1990s north of Reno, and you can see our first
failures at http://www.ecoseeds.com/good.example.html.  Then you can see
when we brought the soil nutrients up to what the local native seedlings
needed for survival, at http://www.ecoseeds.com/greatbasin.html.

You will also see in the article that this bacteria program is tied to not
listing the Sage Grouse, which is my personal Endangered Species petition
from June 2002 that Congress last December illegally stopped the listing
by defunding the USFWS from acting according to the ESA laws.

Anyone in the Great Basin can confirm my findings at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/good.example.html.  Harvest some local native
grass seeds and scoop up the top four inches of soil nearby where the
plants are growing, but wherever the cheatgrass and no native grasses are
established.

Then, put part of that soil in pots or boxes, and sow the seeds.  With
another part of the soil, do a soil test for N-P-K and organic matter, and
add to another pot of soil the N-P-K and organic matter needed shown by
the tests, and sow some seeds in that pot.

That is exactly what you are seeing on that website in the two photos. 
Flat with soil and no fertilizer, even though the soil was taken just a
few feet away from existing native grass plants, was too poor for seedling
survival, and the seedlings sprouted and died.

Second box, added the needed N-P-K and organic matter, and native grasses
happy and waving in the wind.  When the scale is measured over the
millions of acres in the Great Basin, of how much N-P-K and organic matter
has to be put back, that is going to be one-millionth the cost if we just
sprayed the cheatgrass with herbicides, or bacteria or whatever.

You cannot keep allowing the sheep and cattle to walk away from the
nutrients from an arid ecosystem over decades or a 100 years, and not
expect that one day, the soil nutrient levels will be too poor for native
seedlings to survive?  We are causing the eventual extinction of that
entire ecosystem through our continued grazing.

So even if we could wave a magic wand today and all of the cheatgrass
disappears across North America tomorrow morning, the local native plants
will still be unable to recolonize any areas where the soils are too poor
for their seedling survival.  And each native plant has its own
soil-nutrient seedling survival threshold, so there is no
one-size-fits-all for the soil nutrient levels, as we found with the Reno
pipeline project.

At any rate, I am glad to see instead of listing my Sage Grouse as
Endangered, that people after 13 years are starting to pay attention to
that poor bird, and perhaps see how many billions of dollars it is going
to take to fix things for everything that lives in the Great Basin?

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333
The Reveg Edge, Redwood City, CA 94064
Inventing Licensed Native Grassland Ecological Restoration technologies
since 1972.

> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/science/researcher-finds-way-to-fight-cheatgrass-a-western-scourge.html
>
> Researcher Finds Way to Fight Cheatgrass, a Western Scourge
> By CHRISTOPHER SOLOMON
> OCT. 5, 2015
>
> Cheatgrass could vie for the title of the most successful invasive species
> in North America. The weed lives in every state, and is the dominant plant
> on more than 154,000 square miles of the West, by one estimate. When it
> turns green in the spring, “you can actually see it from space,” said
> Bethany Bradley, an assistant professor at the University of
> Massachusetts,
> Amherst, who studies biogeography, the spatial distribution of species.
>
> See the link above for the full article text.
>
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