By Hanna Tamrat, Staff Writer,
Inside Bay Area
Monday, August 15, 2005
ALAMEDA - The stretch of bright green meadow at the Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary along
Alameda's shoreline is doomed to wither starting next month.
Waving in the breeze, the 7-foot-tall cordgrass is a
spectacular sight.
"I like it," said Richard Wood,
70. "It's better than mudflats."
The longtime
Alamedan resident has been running along the shore every day since 1961, he
said.
But the greenery is nonnative cordgrass that
gained a foothold at the sanctuary, choking out native plants and wildlife as it
colonizes tidal mudflats.
A regional effort is
underway to eradicate 89 acres of the Spartina alterniflora and its hybrids by
the San Francisco and San Leandro bays. The Alameda Public Works Department and
East Bay Regional Park District will spray herbicide in September over 21 acres
of multiple stretches of shoreline surrounding Alameda, including the Elsie
Roemer sanctuary, San Leandro Bay along the Alameda shoreline and parts of the
Oakland Estuary waterfront.
Commonly known as smooth
cordgrass or Atlantic cordgrass, the plant's scientific name is Spartina
alterniflora.
According to a 1998 San Francisco
Estuary Institute Study, Spartina alterniflora is an East Coast cordgrass, which
was introduced to San Francisco Bay at the Coyote Hills Regional Shoreline by
U.S. Army of Corps of Engineers during a marsh restoration plan in the 1970s. It
spread to Alameda in the early 1980s.
For more than
a decade, several cities around the Bay have been trying to control the exotic
invader and were unable to gain ground on their own, said Peggy Olofson,
director of California State Coastal Conservancy, which will fund the
eradication program.
The marshes where the cities
have managed to control the invasion become reinfested with seeds that travel
from far distances floating on the water or carried by the wind, she said.
But these seeds do more than travel.
"An interesting phenomena created an extra problem,"
Olofson said. "When the nonnative plant produces pollen they go to the flower of
the native plant (Spartina foliosa) and hybridize. The hybrids grow out larger
like a bacteria on a petri dish."
As of 2003, the
hybrids have expanded over 300 percent of the San Francisco Estuary region. They
have thicker and taller strains which allow them to tolerate deeper water during
high tides. And, as more hybridization occurs between the new hybrids, the
offspring thrive.
The herbicide Imazapyr may be the
only chemical strong enough to destroy them.
The
effectiveness of the herbicide may be one concern but its safety for human and
aquatic life has been a major one.
"Every time a new
chemical comes to the market, it is usually replacing one that has harmful
impact or is not effective," said Sejal Choksi, director of San Francisco Bay of
Baykeeper, a non-profit public watch dog agency.
In
search of a chemical that gets the job done, herbicides that are potentially
toxic make their way to the market. When harm to water quality and aquatic life
is detected, that chemical is replaced with a weaker one.
"It is a never-ending cycle," Choksi said. "It is a habit we need to
break and seriously consider the non-chemical alternative."
A few years ago, her agency campaigned to put into state law the
requirement of a permit for anyone who wants to use pesticides (including
herbicides) in waters under the Clean Water Act, she said.
While the eradication of the cordgrass is intended to preserve the bay's
ecosystem, it threatens a habitat that has adapted itself to the new vegetation.
One of the bird species nesting at Elsie Roemer is
the California clapper rail, an endangered species. But its population appears
to have increased with the spread of the non-native plant, said Olofson.
The birds seem to like the taller and denser
vegetation which provides more cover from hawks and marsh mammals and prevents
tidewater from washing away their nests, she said.
But if left untouched, the clapper-rail-friendly cordgrass could take
over all the mudflats, leaving no room for the birds to forage, she said.
The Alameda Public Works Department will receive
about $31,000 from the conservancy and add some of its own resources to do its
portion of the cleanup, said Jim Barse of the city's Public Works Department.
Following two meetings in June and July, a third
public meeting on the issue will be held at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 17 in City Hall
Council Chambers.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/searchresults/ci_2943752
For more information on the
spartina invasion project, visit http://www.spartina.org
Hanna Tamrat can be contacted at htamrat@angnewspapers.com