Oakland Council votes for herbicide ordinance

Am not personally familiar with the Oakland foothills, though some generalizations apply to most all of the CA foothills near the coast and valleys..

by

luna moth

The fire problem with the CA foothills is the invasion of annual grasses that completely dry out in the summer and then cause severely hot and fast wildfire. These grasses came as hitchikers with the immigration of cattle brought by European settlers..

The displaced perennial grasses couldn't take the cattle chomping down to their roots, so they left. Annual grasses didn't mind cattle chomping their roots because they grew new ones every year. Now the cattle have left but the native grasses may need some coaxing to return..

People really don't need ANY (as in; not one drop) herbicides for fire prevention. All that will do is make people and wildlife sick over time and the grasses will become herbicide resistant. Fires will still occur with or without pesticides..

Native perennial grasses hold in moisture in their roots and leaves year round and are less likely to ignite in a tinderbox fashion like the dry annuals. If there is a fire, it is cooler and doesn't spread as quickly. This is similar to cooler burning old growth forests compared to hotter burning clearcut tinderboxes. "Thinning" doesn't work, old growth restoration does. Many ecosystem species need fire to reproduce, but there are different degrees of fire. Perennial grass fires will not be as hot as annual grass fires, thus easier to extinguish..

People can continue spraying herbicides until they're blue in the face (cause one day they will be) and only continue a worsening problem. If people don't get to the roots of the problem by replacing invasive annual grasses with native perennial grasses, we can witness the herbicide treadmill phenomenon as the annuals become resistant and every few years a stronger herbicide is needed..

..and the fires still burn..

Please consider the zero herbicide option and look at the potential for restoration of native perennial grasses..

California Native Grasslands Association;

http://www.cnga.org/index.php

Seed solutions;

http://www.seedsolutions.com/Wildfire_Reseeding_Options.cfm

BTW, don't let anyone quote a steep price for grasslands restoration. People can do what they set their minds upon for less expense than "proffessionals".

Article below talks about perennial sagebrush replacing firefuel cheatgrass;

http://bioagnews.byu.edu/newsRelease.asp?id=62

"Plants aid in fighting wildfires


With each passing year, and each passing fire season, a group of BYU professors and students inch closer to fighting fast-spreading and life-choking wildfires with something other than water and fire retardant - plants.

Well, actually, professors Bruce Roundy and Val Jo Anderson, both from the Department of Integrative Biology, first fight plants with plants, and then fight fire with plants.

Anderson and Roundy, along with other university and federal scientists, think certain plants are the key to preventing unnaturally wide-ranging wildfires.

"In the past, the attention has been on putting out wildfires - the national money had all gone to fire suppression," Anderson said. "It might be more effective and cheaper to prevent fires."

Wildfires in the Great Basin, which includes most of Utah, Wyoming and Nevada, thrive off an exotic plant species commonly known as cheatgrass.

The grass is an especially effective fuel for fires because it grows early in the spring and then dries out before the hot summer months.

Known for its blond coloration and sticky seeds that frequently get stuck in socks, cheatgrass is common in both residential and wilderness areas.

Delbert Jay, Utah County fire warden, said cheatgrass is the No. 1 carrier of wildfires in Utah.

The United States received its first dose of cheatgrass in the 1850s when cheatgrass seeds, mixed with grain seeds, arrived in shipments from Europe unbeknownst to U.S. farmers. Because of cheatgrass' large, spiky seeds the grass spread quickly to the west aboard livestock fur and travelers' clothing.

Randy and Anderson, along with several students involved in mentored-student learning programs, hope to weaken cheatgrass's invasive hold on the Great Basin's rangeland by growing native and introduced plants in place of cheatgrass.

Of particular interest to the BYU scientists are native perennials, or plants that send roots deep into the ground and whose life cycles last for two years or more.

Native perennials, such as sagebrush, constantly struggle for water and nutrient resources with faster growing and faster spreading plants known as annuals. Annuals, such as cheatgrass, germinate, grow, drop seeds and die every year.

While wildfires destroy both cheatgrass and perennials, only cheatgrass is aggressive enough - with its short roots and rapid life cycle - to grow on fire-scarred landscapes.

"What's there will just die and cheatgrass will take over," said Luke Marchant, 23, who works with Roundy and Anderson at BYU's Spanish Fork farm.

Research indicates that before cheatgrass reached the Great Basin, fires occurred about every 35 to 75 years. Now, with cheatgrass growing on 100 million acres, wildfires occur in the same area every three to 10 years, Anderson said.

Scientists and firefighters are learning that fighting wildfires, which burned 1.7 million acres in the Great Basin in 1999, requires more than just water. It requires starving fires of their prime fuel source - cheatgrass.

"The only way you can do a fuel reduction in rangeland areas is reintroduction (of native plants)," Anderson said. "Once the fire hits, then you have to re-vegetate. The idea would be to re-vegetate before that."

In Anderson's profession of rangeland ecology, the reintroduction of less fire-friendly plants in place of cheatgrass is called "greenstripping."

Greenstripping is exactly what its name implies. Scientists plant strips of native, nonfire-feeding perennials, such as sagebrush, wyomingensis and Mexican cliff rose, throughout cheatgrass-infested areas.

The "greenstrips" offer short-term protection against spreading wildfires.

In the meantime, scientists, such as BYU's professors and students, busy themselves by determining which native perennial plants grow together and grow the quickest under certain conditions.

For example, Roundy said recent data indicate cheatgrass is better reduced by a mixture of shrubs and perennial grasses than by perennial grasses alone.

Once data is analyzed and conclusions are made, scientists can return to regions criss-crossed by greenstrips and plant perennials in place of the remaining cheatgrass. Eventually, scientists and firefighters hope the greenstrips will grow into each other and become green land.

"It is going to be a progression; we want to put more arrows in our quiver," Anderson said. "Probably in 10 years we will have a greatly expanded arsenal of plant material for rehabilitation and fire control."

There is more to fighting cheatgrass than just putting an end to wildfires. Cheatgrass is not only a fire hazard, but an environmental hazard as well.

Anderson recalled an experiment carried out near the Dugway Proving Ground, about 40 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, where a student trapped small mammals on a plot of land that had been burned five years earlier. Although the number of mammals the student found living in the cheatgrass was not different from the pre-burned count, the mammal diversity was markedly different - only two or three species were found in the cheatgrass.

"I really think its cool to try and get the natural habitat back to the way it is supposed to be," said Tashina, Chipman, 20, a sophomore, majoring in wildlife conservation, who is working at BYU's Spanish Fork farm."