Native/Non-native Issues

There has long been a backyard habitat program in Washington state, though I don't know the details.  Here is a link to an article about a small program in Oregon.  I think we should do something like that here in southern California.  It would help by giving visibility, credibility, and guidelines to the contribution we can all make in our own yards.

--Brian

--Brian

Craig Gustafson of the Union Tribune wrote an article linking the lack of "brush" clearing by convict work crews to the recent wildfires. (Mr. Gustafson has obviously been doing more writing than reading.)

Kay Stewart, a prominent San Diego Landscape Architect, wrote the following letter to the UT in response. (Posted here with her permission. Thank you, Kay!)

--Brian

Hi Mr. Gustafson,

Your article about work crews and "brush clearance" was all about numbers of prison labor camp crews, millions of dollars spent on working them to cut down "brush", and comments by people who managed those crews. Your article however didn't ask the most important question: if the work actually resulted in reducing fire risk to structures or lives when the wildfires happened. What your article needed was a map of areas that the crews had worked on in the '80's and '90's, to see if their work reduced risk to properties in any of the fires that did occur at any time.

Most homes lost this past year (read the stats) were from embers not from walls of flame rolling off of overgrown shrubs. The homes on the north edge of Rancho Bernoardo were hit by tremendous heat and embers burning from the stands of willows and cottonwood trees in the east basin of Lake Hodges that had been left high and dry the year before due to the drought. Trees are not what is referred to as "brush" and are rarely to focus of these work crews.

Willows and cottonwoods usually have a lot of moisture and don't burn, but the drought left these standing dry and combustible.

The idea that removing huge swaths of shrubs (which are carelessly called "brush") will prevent homes from being lost is not a good idea: when you remove the shrubs, and do it so there is virutally nothing left alive from the original shrubs, faster growing annual plants replace them, plants we rightly call weeds (and which these crews also call "brush. These weeds produce highly flammable fuel much faster (five times as much growth of dead fuel per year is one estimate) than the original shrubs did. This perpetual money pit of annual weed removal can be justified in terms of fire risk reduction only if it is done very near the home, within a hundred feet, and if it is done carefully so the fast growing weeds don't take over, and if people make changes to their propertyto reduce fire risk starting from the house on out.

If not, people would be feeling a false sense of security. If they didn't pay attention to the landscapes around their homes their property becomes a fire trap: big untended trees with dead stuff trapped in branches or dropping onto roofs and ground; build small dimension lumber decks, flimsy wood garden structures; fabric furnishings that are exceedingly flammable.

They don't replace hazardous windows with low-risk windows, or put screens on vents, or replace shake roofs or cover rafter ends, or put stripping around garage and tool shed doors all that brush cutting was a waste of time, even if it is close, because when an ember blows in from a fire even a mile away the house ignites. All those plants cut down was a waste of public funds and resources and time.

In short, your article is twenty years behind the fire science and the resulting direction of public policy. But there is a use for labor crews in reducing fire risk, but people may not like having convict labor so close:

If those crews instead were sent to clean up roofs, trim dead branches and leaves from trees near the homes, rake up and haul away flammable litter near the home, and if at the same time a trained fire marshall noted and listed all the fire risks to the home that were posed by louvered or single glazed windows, unsealed and hollow-core doors, unscreened vents and wind turbines, pet enclosures, open-framed decks and flammable fabric awnings, umbrellas, wood piles, exposed flammagle outdoor storage, wood fences close to the home, and wood furniture, then the money would substantially reduce fire risk to property.

If shrubs burn out in the wilderness that is a natural process. Why should you waste money and labor knocking them down so weeds can grow that you have to knock down five times as often if the fire doesn't pose a risk to a home?

The only smart thing to do is to keep embers from igniting a house and clean up the site immediately around it.

If an ember gets into a house it is a personal tragedy. The work needed to prevent the tragedy is not to send crews of laborers or herds of goats out to eradicate the vegetation for hundreds of feet around any structure. Fire breaks where crews can stage a fire suppression may be justified in some places, but embers jump 15 lanes of freeway, so a fire break without a fire crew isn't much use. Making those places diverts money, scarce and valuable funds, from doing the work that would prevent the tragedy, an diverts it now and every year thereafter, having set the stage for the annual weed infestation.

"Brush management" or "clearing" have made real mistakes in trying to reduce fire risk. Careful shrub pruning and thinning takes care and thought. It can mean avoiding having to personally hire (or use tax funds, which is our money too) a crew every summer to remove that year's growth of dry dangerous weedy fuel. With pruning and thinning the effort might be every four or five years instead, with minor work between.

Crews worked in our canyon last fall. Thank goodness they hauled away twenty years accumulation of dead and down eucalyptus and acacia litter (non native, not called "brush") in the no-man's land across the valley, but the places near me where they cut down small native shrubs that had grown only inches since we trimmed them eight years ago are now covered with 4-foot high weedy grass that I will have to go cut down myself and bag and haul up before fire season. If they had left the shrubs, which were only 18" to 20"

high, I could have trimmed the tops back some, 1/10 of the volume of work and labor. So I am speaking from personal experience as well as professional experience.

I am sure it is disappointing to the men who used to run these crews to see their jobs disappear, but as citizens we have to use our public funds in the smartest way and those massive shrub clearing projects were not the smartest thing to do. These men have skills that can be used for smarter work.

Kay Stewart, landscape architect

Janet returned from her walk this evening with a grocery bag full of nasturtium greens and flowers. We had read that they are edible, so she wanted to try them. I made a salad from them. Here's how:

First make a tomato/cucumber salad by chopping equal parts tomato and cucumber, about 1/4 part onion (red is best), and mixing them in a bowl with some red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, and chopped or dried parsley. Let it sit, stirring occasionally to get the flavors out.

Wash the nasturtium greens and chop them to salad size. Toss with broccoli, alfalfa, and fenugreek sprouts. Put on plates. Sprinkle on black pepper and some chopped or dried parsley.

Spoon the tomato/cucumber mix along with some of its juice over the greens. This is all the dressing you'll need. (Leave that coagulated crap at the grocery store where it belongs.) Bury the salad in nasturtium flowers and serve it up.

I'm sure there are lots of other weeds you could add, but nasturtium is what Janet brought back from her walk so nasturtium is what we're eating.

I would urge anyone who is inclined to eat their weeds to be sure what it is you are eating first. Make sure it is non-native, non-poisonous, and hasn't been sprayed. Then let's see what you can cook up. We've eaten mustard, dandelion, fennel, and nettles from our yard. I think the nettles are native, but they're growing near a hose bib and we just trim the tops once in a while. If you like cooked greens, by all means, try nettles. They are delicious! Fennel grows all over the San Diego area and the greens go very well on salads in addition to the usual dishes made from their stalks or seasoned with their seeds.

--Brian

Here's a great article on the problem of type conversion; when and how our native ecosystem gets converted to highly flammable weeds:

What does it look like? Something like this.

And fire is not the only thing that can cause type conversion. Anything that repeatedly clears the native chaparral plants from the landscape will do it. The photo above is from an area which was formerly grazed by cattle. The native chaparral was just beginning to move back in, but the plants were small and didn't have the roots to recover from the fires which burned through here in October, 2007. They certainly had not had time to build up their savings in the seed bank, either. So we're back to weeds. The chaparral plants will probably start creeping in again, but if this place burns again in a few years (which it will because of the weeds) then they'll be snuffed again. And so it goes with too much of our world.

--Brian

I found this quote on Tom Chester's website:

Man should not destroy what man cannot create!

I don't know if they are his words or someone else's, but they are excellent advice.

--Brian

Check out this article.

Maggie Houlihan, City Councilwoman in Encinitas, is trying to do something about the invasion of non-native plants. This is an issue which has a lot in common with the protection of chaparral habitat. After a fire or other disturbance, the non-native weeds often get established faster than our native chaparral and prevent it from growing back. These non-natives are often much more prone to fire than chaparral plants. And that leads to perpetual fires.

In the city, these plants are not only fire hazards, but are also huge water hogs. Look around folks. We haven't got enough water as it is. I say, let's save it for ourselves, and for fighting the fires that these non-natives bring with them.

--Brian

As a long-time Oregon boy, I have found California to be the land of BIG. Big mountains, big parks, big companies, many rich people, big highways, big government. Unfortunately, this attitude seems to carry over into habitat protection. We've got some awesome national parks and monuments. But if it isn't awesome, it seems to be just ignored. Small parcels or unglamorous places seem to be of no concern to anyone. "Brush" is considered a fire hazard to be eliminated. If a piece of habitat isn't the best example of its kind, it receives no respect at all.

But think about a bird - a California gnatcatcher, for example. Or a Roadrunner. Or even a California Towhee. Or what about a Wood rat? Or a Gopher snake. These creatures do not need a national park. They do not need a thousand acres of wetlands or a stand of towering old growth forest. They just need a little patch of healthy habitat. Any one of those creatures can live in half an acre of good healthy chaparral. In fact, all of them can and more! And it's just those little patches that are being erased in our panic-stricken wholesale assault on the "brush" that people seem to think is the cause of our massive wildfires. (Remember: most of these fires are started by people, not nature, and the species which replace natural chaparral after brush clearing are usually even more flammable!)

So what can we do?

I am tired of fighting these defensive fights. Defensive fights always result in compromise and lost ground. I want to make progress, not lose it.

I think we need to seek actual PROTECTION for small parcels. I am not suggesting that Big Brother make some blanket rule outlawing brush clearing. That may make some of us happy, but we know it would never succeed. I am suggesting a plan which a homeowner can enroll in to protect the brush in his/her property.

The state of Washington has a "Backyard Wildlife Sanctuary" program. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife uses this program as a means of encouraging people to landscape for wildlife and disseminating information about how to do it.

The state of Oregon has tax incentives for small woodlot owners who keep a minimum amount of land in forest production. I used to own ten acres of forest land in that state and nine of my acres were assessed only a few dollars a year in taxes as long as I kept it timbered.

I don't suggest copying either of these programs, but using them as examples of what others have done. We should learn from them and formulate our own program for our own problems.

My first suggestion is that the state of California, at the owner's request, should formally recognize any parcel of natural habitat, no matter how small, and offer formal protection for it. The owner would be responsible to document the general type of habitat, its size, and its location (a sketch on a plat map should suffice) and would be responsible to maintain it in a healthy state. The state would protect these parcels from agencies or individuals who might seek to force their clearing and would offer educational assistance like the Washington program does.

What does that mean? It means that you could not be forced to clear your natural habitat by any government agency or their private contractors. It also means that you could not damage or reduce the protected habitat, either. If you did, you would have to pay back the taxes that you saved while the property was protected. (See tax incentives, detailed below.)

I would like to see some sort of tax incentive because that would really increase the participation rate. The way the Oregon system works (or did when I owned my property): the portion of your property which was kept forested was taxed at a lower level. But if you removed the forest you had to repay the tax savings for the past five years.

The program I am proposing would protect even smaller parcels than the 10 acre minimum of Oregon forest tax deferrals, but could still work similarly. I propose that the non-protected portion of the property would
be taxed at the normal rate, but any protected portion of a lot would
be re-assessed at 10% of full market value for tax purposes. The suburbs of California include a great many lots of 1/2 to 2 acres in size, and a lot more up to even 10 acres. For an example: If you were to take a 1/2 acre parcel with a reasonable sized house on it worth $500,000, exclude the house and a 30' fire-protection zone around it, you could still retain half of the lot in native brush. That might constitute $50,000 worth of real estate. So the main $450,000 of the lot would be assessed at full value but the protected portion would be assessed at $5,000 - for a total assessed value of $455,000 instead of $500,000.

Finally, the law should provide liability protection for parcels included in the program. A fire can start in any dry vegetation, not just in native stands, but ignorant people will blame the native plants when a man throws a cigarette into it and lights it on fire.

I have been thinking about this since talking to Rick Halsey in early 2006, but this is the first time I've attempted to write it down. So I'm sure there is much I have not thought of. I am interested to hear what others think of this idea. I'm pretty sure the comments are working now, so let's hear them!

--Brian

We here at savethechaparral.org are proponents of preserving native chaparral ecosystems, whether in large or small pieces. That said, we recognize that not everyone is going to convert their urban/suburban yard to a viable piece of chaparral habitat. We hope that everyone will at least try to plant native species as much as possible. But if you do plant non-native ones, please be careful of what you plant. Some species are very fire prone - not a good thing to be planting in our neighborhoods! And some species are very invasive. Invasive means that they will self-propagate and spread outside of your original planting, and will crowd out our native species.

Here is a link to an organization which is resisting the use and spread of invasive non-native plants. Please bookmark it and use it when selecting the plants for your yard.

http://www.cal-ipc.org/

--Brian

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who help and people who don't. We would like to thank Rick Halsey from the California Chaparral Field Institute for giving us a great deal of help in our recent brush with the forces who profit from converting native chaparral habitat into highly flammable weed fields. I will be writing more about that soon, but for now, we'd like to thank Rick and welcome him as an editor on this site. This is a man who truly knows and loves the chaparral and is fighting to save it from oblivion.

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We would also like to thank Kay Stewart, Carolyn Martus, and Carrie Schneider from the San Diego chapter of the California Native Plant Society who gave us much help and advice. These are tireless crusaders to preserve the native plants that support the incredible web of life that exists in Southern California.

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If you care what happens to native habitat in southern California, I urge you to get into contact with these groups and give not just money but something much more valuable: your time.

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--Brian