[RWG] Cost analysis for weed management/restoration performance standards

[Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company]

Dear All,

To prepare for my March 20 talk in Redwood City, CA. about how to get
99.5% native cover when doing weeding projects or doing ecological
restoration, I am asking everyone who is weeding or restoring native
grasslands on public lands in our County.

The results can be boiled down to = What is the cost per acre, to increase
the percentage of native plant cover by one percent?

For example, I just got the data from two projects funded by the Federal
government, the USFWS in Endangered species habitat in the hills of
Redwood City.  The two different treatments produced different results,
one was able to increase the native cover by 7% and the second raised the
native cover by 15%.

The 7% increase was a single treatment that cost $500 per acre per
percentage native cover increase or $4,500 per acre.  But repeated
treatments using that method with the goal of getting 99.5% native cover,
then the total cost to get 99.5% cover could be $45,000 per acre.

The 15% native cover increase site, was done to help control weeds around
an already existing Endangered plant species, and also increase the number
of plants.  That work required the growing out of plants, and careful hand
weeding so as not to disturb the existing Endangered plants.

The costs to increase each percentage of native cover, was $15,000 per
acre, or a total of $225,000 per acre, which is identical with the costs
of the Caltrans weed management/restoration project at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/road.test.html.  And to continue the treatments
and plantings in this Endangered plant area, to get to 99.5% native cover,
would be about $1.5 million per acre.

That is why it is so important that we take a look annually at the actual
costs per acre to get a single percentage native plant cover for our
project.

Looking  at the actual costs to restore a site, would help agencies fund
restoration projects like these more realistically, and maybe look for
ways for the process to be done cheaper and more efficiently?

Plus knowing the actual costs, would help public agencies to set more
realistic bond requirements for pipeline and other projects on our public
lands, or for more realistic, real-world amount for funds that are paid by
developers for a HCP (Habitat Conservation Plan) mitigations,

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333