[RWG] [PCA] Costs for each State's future roadside native program, and Utah's surveys

[Craig Dremann]

Dear Lewis and All,

Lewis_Gorman at fws.gov wrote:
> 
> Craig,
> Does the roadside native plant program assume the roadsides would be
> kept in a grassland?  
=======================================

The local native ecosystem understory replantings will probably end up
being a local low-growing herbaceous native perennials mix with a few
native perennial grasses, even in the Eastern forested areas.  

For example, in the Colorado densely-forest highest-rainfall portion of
my Megatansect, the best examples of native understories were made up of
perhaps 20-60 herbaceous perennial species and 3-5 native grass species,
and in my notebooks, they are called "WON" or "Wealth of Natives".

If you look carefully at the Eastern roadsides---along all the roads
that are cut through tall dense forests---everywhere I drove from
Maryland to Alabama and Georgia, I was able to find tiny patchs of those
original low-growing understories, of the original ecosystems surviving
along the roadsides.

We will need Federal funds for each State DOT, to conduct roadside
Megatransects in their States, to discover what's left of the native
ecosystem understories, and protect the fairly pristine examples that
are left, to use as models.

Since the late 1990s, the State of Delaware has been in the process of
planting test-plots of Delaware native species, and compare them with
some of the usual sown exotic species.  I made a list of what Delaware
had been planted, when I taught DelDOT my "Local Natives for Roadsides"
class in 2000, that you can see at http://www.ecoseeds.com/deldot.html

One of the really major expenses in replanting native along roadsides,
is the huge investment will be needed just to figure out the proper
species mix that could hang together successfully and stay weed-free,
plus also stay relatively tree-free in forested areas.

Once again, the scientific concept of allelopathy, like what is
described in the Journal of Chemical Ecology,  could be used as an
important tool, to discover which low-growing local natives could
suppress tree seedlings, to eliminate mowing.

That's why it is so important for each State DOT to map and preserve
whatever good roadside examples of original native ecosystems they have
left, but that process would probably only happen in every State, if
there were sufficient annual Federal funds made available.

The California DOT started a program 10 years ago in that direction, the
Landscape Architecture's "Botanical Areas" to help preserve and
highlight some native roadside ecosystem examples, that you can read
about at 
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/LandArch/CaliforniaWILD/bmapage.htm

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333