Comments?

 

-----Original Message-----
From: apwg-bounces@... [mailto:apwg-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Craig Dremann
Sent: Monday, January 01, 2007 1:44 PM
To: Fuhrmann, Paul
Cc: apwg@...
Subject: [APWG] Philosophies about the Invasive the Potential of ImportedPlants?

 

Dear Paul, Andrea and All,

 

I think Paul and Andrea are bringing up very good points.

 

There's a distinctive gap between botanists, National Parks managers and

most of the rest of America.   Most people are barely aware of the local

native plants or exotic plants in their wildlands surroundings, because

their lives almost never touch them or interact with them.

 

Sure, people can see the big picture, like the towering Coast redwoods,

or the huge Sierran Sequoias---but what's all that stuff underneath the

trees and covering all the hills of California that catches fire each

year?  Gee, it is almost 99.99% solid, three foot tall, exotic annual

grasses from Europe! 

 

And there's also the 490 year old philosophical concept here in North

America, from 1492 to about 1982, where you never brought local native

plants into your lives---everything from the front year lawn to the

trees, shrubs and flower garden were all imported from some other

continent, usually your own continent of origin, like Europe. 

 

For 400+ years, we have wanted to be surrounded by what was familiar.

 

If you are not adding parts of the local native ecosystems around your

own home, how can you ever develop any awarenesses of your

surroundings? 

 

Plus, there's still a HUGE amount of RESISTANCE from some government

agencies to stop using exotic plants when planting things on their

lands, and start the conversion to the use of local ecotypes of natives,

like most State DOTs and the BLM in most states.

 

Every state DOT has an environmental division, but almost none of them

are using local natives along their roadsides, and plant exotic plants

each year instead. 

 

The USDA, Agriculture Research Service and Cooperative Extension

services HAVE botanists and ecologists, but unaware of their

surrounding, they are still importing and releasing new exotic invasive

plants for our wildlands, like the new "kudzu" of legumes that has been

tested to successfully invade California's rangelands, a group of 14 new

annual exotic legumes: 12 Medicago species and two Trifoliums.

 

The Department of Interior HAS botanists and ecologists, but unaware of

their surroundings and the public lands that they manage, they are still

planting each year up to a million pounds of exotic seeds onto our

public lands in the Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado,

etc.   Here's what the fall 2002 seed-buying contract looked like:

 

(Sol. No NAR020155, P.O. Box 25047, Denver, CO. 80225-0047) issued

8/27/2002, shows the following staggering annual amounts of exotics:

 

Crested Wheatgrass.......Total bulk pounds......28,200

Siberian wheatgrass......Total bulk pounds......29,200

Intermediate wheatgrass..Total bulk pounds...... 5,500

Pubescent wheatgrass.....Total bulk pounds......66,100

Russian Wildrye..........Total bulk pounds......70,000

Smooth Brome.............Total bulk pounds...... 4,300

Orchardgrass.............Total bulk pounds...... 4,400

Annual ryegrass..........Total bulk pounds......16,500

Triticale................Total bulk pounds......12,500

Alfalfa..................Total bulk pounds......47,200

Yellow sweetclover.......Total bulk pounds...... 7,100

Sainfoin.................Total bulk pounds......11,100

Small burnet.............Total bulk pounds.....128,300

Forage Kochia............Total bulk pounds......23,200

=============================================================

Persistent exotics being sown on BLM land......453,600

 

So unless this exotic-seed-tsuname isn't stopped by the State DOTs, the

US Department of Interior, and the USDA stops importing and releasing

new exotics, all the discussions about the importation of new exotics

might become academic, when millions of acres of North America are

annually being converted to weeds?

 

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann, Redwood City, CA (650) 325-7333