Now in its 17th year of monitoring and treatment, the San Francisco Estuary Invasive Spartina Project remains a uniquely ambitious invasive plant removal effort: from its timeline (indefinite) and size (covering 70,000 acres with more than 150 landowners and managers) to its budget (about $50 million to date) and use of technology (genetic testing, GIS, airboats, helicopters). It’s been an effective one, too, reducing stands of invasive cordgrass in the region to a tiny fraction of what they once were.
“We are excited at the continual progress over two decades, even with all the permitting and pandemic challenges,” says project manager Marilyn Latta of the California State Coastal Conservancy, which manages the Invasive Spartina Project (ISP) in partnership with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
The ultimate goal of all this work is to replace invasive cordgrass species with the native one—a distinction that untrained eyes are sometimes unable to make, though the invasives play a very different role in local ecosystems. Found everywhere from upland areas to oft-inundated mudflats, patches of invasive cordgrass can often be accessed only at certain times of day, when the tides are right. And even then, crews require specialized equipment to access eradication sites.
There are four different invasive cordgrasses in the San Francisco Estuary—all of which are treated by the ISPbut by far the most problematic is a hybrid between native Pacific cordgrass (Spartina foliosa) and non-native smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), which was introduced from the East Coast in the 1970s as part of early Bay restoration efforts. The hybrid grows taller, more densely, more aggressively, and in a wider range of conditions (from mostly submerged mudflat to mostly dry marsh and upland transition zones) than all other versions of the invader. Where it grows, it destroys habitat that native plants and animals depend on.
Since 2005, the ISP has been methodically using high-tech tools to identify stands of intruders and hybrids, and eradicate them with carefully targeted herbicide treatment. It is a continual battle pitting a broad network of staff and stakeholders of the project against the plants’ rapid spread.
Challenges and Progress
This year, 20.5 net acres of invasive cordgrass have been detected within the San Francisco Bay’s marshlands, down from more than 800 net acres at the treatment outset in 2005. The bulk of those remaining acres are in areas that were closed to invasive cordgrass removal in 2011 due to federal concerns over the endangered California Ridgway’s rail.
However, the initial closure to protect the rail was much more extensive. The last five years have been spent gradually phasing in cordgrass treatment across roughly half of the marshland that had been included in the initial closure area—while monitoring rail numbers. The results from those areas have been positive: rail counts have held steady, while invasive cordgrass has dropped dramatically and rapidly. “In just a few years, we’ve seen a more than 80% reduction in invasive Spartina at many of those phased sites,” says Latta.
The project is consulting with USFWS for a new permit inMay and Latta is hopeful that additional areas will also have their treatment restrictions lifted, allowing a phased approach including treatment, revegetation, and rail protections and monitoring. “We’re at a critical point, because the invasive [cordgrass] continues to pump out seed to all the areas we’ve already treated,” she says. “If we can’t complete this effort, all of the other restoration is at risk.”
Replanting with native cordgrass. Photo: Dorothy Aldridge
Once the initial restricted areas were opened up, progress was rapid, benefiting from myriad incremental advances in methodology accrued during the projects’ two decades.
Each marsh is unique in terms of access, hydrology, elevations, and other species that are present. Beyond the physical site logistics, the methodology and technology (such as GIS software and field applications) have also advanced over time.
While simple changes, like whether each day’s GIS field data uploads remotely in real time, or needs to be manually uploaded from the office, have greatly improved workflow, there have also been more sophisticated improvements.
“This project stretches the boundaries of the tools and products we use,” says Latta, adding that the project’s GIS manager Ingrid Hogle has worked with the engineers at ESRI to modify and tailor the software and the GIS tools to better fit the program’s needs.
Some tools, such as ISP’s custom code to run data analyses in the field, using genetically-verified reference information to provide an identification, did not exist at all at the outset of the ISP.
Another improvement uses specialized small-gauge, low-pressure “Intelli-spray” reeled hoses, allowing for more efficient, targeted herbicide application at a greater distance from the staging area.
Side Projects
By 2019, 14 years into treatment, the ambitious initiative had branched out into many new frontiers, thanks in large part to a grant awarded by the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority and administeredby the California Invasive Plant Council (Cal IPC), an Invasive Spartina Project partner. Among other things, that funding supported a two-year project in which the Invasive Spartina Project served as a nexus for Conservation Corps workforce trainings, led by Cal-IPC and other ISP partners such as East Bay Regional Parks and Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.
The trainings provided crews with contextual information about habitat restoration and invasive plant treatment, says Claire Meyler, the training coordinator with Cal IPC. “We would talk about Spartina really as a springboard to talk about bigger picture ecological ideas—like the importance of protecting the Bay and the danger of invasive plants,” says Meyler.
Training with Civicorps in 2022. Photo: Claire F. Meyler
“These trainings have been huge,” Latta adds. “It’s great to get younger and [more] diverse and underserved community folks out in the field to receive job training on Bay ecology and wetlands.”
This training can serve to transition the participants from manual labor to informed, empowered crews.
“The crew leaders felt a lot more confidence,” says Cal-IPCC’s Claire Meyler, who led the trainings. “A lot of the times they can feel like they’re hired hands, doing work where they maybe don’t understand the whole frame of reference as to why we do this. This gave them more [tools] think in those bigger terms about what it takes to actually make a plan to manage invasive plants in a landscape.”
And since trainings were conducted by professionals working in the field, they offered direct access to potential mentors and other connections for trainees who might be interested in pursuing a career in the field.
“It’s not easy to get into any career, and this career is not the most well known,” says Doug Johnson, directorof Cal IPC. “By integrating with [professional partners], the crew members were learning directly about land management locally, from people who are working in it professionally.”
Back to the Baseline
Despite all the new avenues of implementation for the Invasive Spartina Project, the leaders and crews have never lost sight of the need to ensure they are actually benefiting the species and habitat they set out to save.
An important monitoring effort to evaluate this impact was also funded by the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority grant. Point Blue Conservation Science was enlisted to update to the bay’s California Ridgway’s rail population estimate, which found that the bays rail count has increased by roughly 200 birds since 2009-2011, the last time a baywide estimate was conducted. These counts are particularly critical to the ISP as concerns over rail populations are what led to some treatment areas being closed to the project in 2011.
Ridgeway’s rail. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Abundance of these rails is estimated via a formal method of call counts at select sites, during breeding season. The new report, which was releasedin January 2023, covers 2019 through 2021. In the new survey, methods were revised to be more closely aligned with the North American Secretive Marsh Bird Monitoring Protocol, says Latta.
“These survey results and the substantial revegetation of native Spartina and other native species make me hopeful that we’ll be able to get approval to continue treating the remaining areas,” says Latta.
Looking ahead, Latta says that she sees a steady march to an actual finish line. If phased treatment is approved at remaining sites in 2023, she is optimistic that detectable invasive cordgrass might be eliminated within the next decade. After that, the hope is to transition to long-term monitoring by individual landowners.
Top Photo: Treatment near Bair Island with airboat. Photo: Drew Kerr, ISP
Jacoba Charles is a naturalist and science writer. Her first article, at age eight, was about the behavior of ducks as observed from the roof of her family’s barn. It went unpublished. She later graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism (2007). In addition to writing for Estuary News, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, and Modern Farmer, Bay Nature, Marin Magazine, and various literary publications. Her botany blog can be found at flowersofmarin.com and her website is jacobacharles.com. She lives in Petaluma with her family.
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Hothouse Earth
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Photo by Megan Nguyen
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.