At 09:23 AM 5/28/99 -0700, Susan L. Collicott wrote:
>
>
>On Thu, 27 May 1999, Dennis K Rockwell wrote:
>
>> By the way, pulling purple loosestrife is pretty much a waste of time, as
>> it is a very hearty perennial and will simply grow back rapidly from the
>> smallest root fragment left behind.

>Dennis, dennis! After putting in hundreds of hours of work a few summer
>ago with Stuart MacKay and others, the loosestrife stayed away for at
>least two years, more like three.

Also, the Czar of Pullers was not ignorant of this. Indeed, multiple
and repeated pullings were prescribed, involving at least one Portland
tweeter (that would be me, my token efforts being only, well, token
though. I watched far more being pulled than I pulled myself).

The point was to continuously clear the pond areas over time,
discouraging growth.

Even if you got rid of them entirely, they'd just repopulate
by seed from the rest of Seattle, anyway.

Even if you fail to iradicate them, temporarily clearing
the pond shores gives habitat to, among others, migratory
shorebirds who literally won't care what happens there a
few weeks after (though after that they'll want it clear
for the southward migration!).

Waste of time? Well, in an abolute sense, ALL conservation
is a waste of time. All we're conserving is physics, and
that presumes the Uniformitarian Principle is right.

In a relative sense, though, conservation efforts do at times,
at least, mitigate, to some degree at least, the rapid and
unprecendented (excepting certain physical events) pace of change
imposed by people.

So what if pulling loofestrife only helps for a year or two?
That just tells us it should be pulled continuously.



- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net