FoundSF

Historical Essay

by Jake Sigg, 2024

Ed. Note: This essay appeared in Jake's regular weekly emails as "Autobiographical note 65 - Invasive plants"

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The principal focus of my life in retirement is protection of natural ecosystems. This biographical note sketches the early years starting in 1988 when I was forcefully introduced to the subject. Although I was the gardener for the California native section of Strybing Arboretum, I wasn’t aware of the value of native plants. I liked plants from all over and there wasn’t anything special about being native.

I now rail at what I call our biologically illiterate society. I was benighted—like the overwhelming number of others, but especially in the United States with its exploitive commercial culture—that places low value on such matters A subject of such importance should be part of the education system. That ignorance has a price, as we are beginning to find out; biodiversity is now recognized as intimately connected to climate warming.

My discovery of the issue took place when the parks superintendent transferred me from Strybing Arboretum to the southeast section of the city to supervise maintenance of athletic fields and playgrounds. My office was in Crocker Amazon, next door to McLaren Park. It was there that I discovered the fields of wildflowers in adjacent McLaren—and the aggressive invaders, like fennel, that were displacing them.

Greg Gaar and I started removing the destructive intruders. That was my epiphany and I came to see that this was what I should be spending my time on rather than maintaining athletic facilities. So I retired, now viewing my transfer to this part of town a blessing in disguise. Gardening without fences was more rewarding and interesting. I lost interest in horticulture.

Ice Plant (Carpobrotus edulis)

Photo: Jake Sigg

McLaren was not the only haven for native plants. Greg weekly found new refuges that were in urgent need of help. Awareness of infested areas increased rapidly and we were stretching ourselves ever more, eventually coming to understand that much of what we invested was lost because of the lack of follow-up. This was a common experience with similar groups around the world. Two sisters in Australia even gave a name to the remedy—the Bradley method—just because they wrote about their experience, but every group discovered the obvious for themselves.

Although Aldo Leopold recognized the consequences of biological invasion early in the 20th century, it wasn’t until the 1980s that the issue started to gain traction. At this time I became president of the local chapter of the California Native Plant Society, which meant that I was now on the state board. I often talked about this issue at the state board, with the consequence that I was named chair of the Invasive Exotics Committee, a position I held for about 15 years. Relatively few were interested in the subject then, so for many years I took positions and de facto made invasive plant policy for CNPS. Many CNPS chapters had invasive exotics committees, and I traveled around state at my own expense speaking to many of them.

Local groups began to form to address the issue, one of them being the California Invasive Plant Council, (or Cal-IPC, pronounced cal-ipsy), which had its formative meeting in Morro Bay in 1992. Cal-IPC holds a well-attended annual symposium and keeps watch on Sacramento and other places.

Actions at this time were informal and ad hoc, often as individuals. Here are some examples in my life:

I dropped in on the Department of Food & Agriculture—which is charged with food production/protection—to see what they were doing about invasive plants. Not much. But three higher-ups came down to the lobby to talk with me, and told me all the hoops we would have to jump through. At least I seemed to have touched a nerve; they were taking the issue seriously, and this was new.

I accepted an invitation from a committee chair of the California Association of Nurserymen. There were about 30-40 on the committee, and the temperature dropped 40 degrees when I entered the room. I presented the problem and tried to assure them we were not talking about commercially valuable plants—for example, pyracantha. “Fella”, one of them said gruffly, “whenever a new subdivision goes in, every single one of them has a pyracantha in the front yard.” Are these people hard of hearing, I wondered? Is there no way we can talk to them? It took time, and required ongoing dialogue and negotiating; such was provided later by Cal-IPC.

While the threats to biodiversity were obvious to a few activists, it was much less so to the public at large and even encountered hostility in some quarters, such as a meeting of the Pesticide Applicators Professional Association in Redding. On my way to talk to them I realized that the plants I was interested in were very different than those they would be spraying, so I wracked my brain about the plants to use as examples.

Yellow Starthistle (Centaurea solstitialus')

Photo: courtesy Montereywildflowers.com

Oh, yellow starthistle—everybody hates yellow star, I thought; it ruins pastures and other lands and occupies 12 million acres in California. The audience of about 200 was silent and I felt I wasn’t connecting with them. At the end there were a couple of polite tap taps. One man came up after and said “Man, you ought to get your facts straight…” then launched into figures how much honey was produced from yellow star and other perceived benefits.

Most expenses were paid by me. However, I was invited by USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) to an all-expenses paid two-day workshop in Washington DC on setting research priorities, and the US Fish & Wildlife Service paid my airfare to Washington DC for a hearing on a proposal to release biocontrol agents on tamarisk (salt cedar) in southwest U.S., a project I had worked long and hard on.

The Endangered Southwest Willow Flycatcher sometimes nested in tamarisk where, because of dams and water diversion, soils were too saline for native willows and cottonwoods. There was fear that bugs that ate tamarisk might deprive the flycatcher of nesting sites. ARS researchers had found a number of insects that feed on tamarisk in its native range and wanted approval to release them into the wild. The tamarisk issue was my initial exposure to the blunt aspects of the Endangered Species Act. The urging of CNPS to release control insects helped USFWS gain approval for their release.

Tamarisk was lining nearly all rivers, wetlands, seeps and springs throughout the southwest that animals—including endangered ones—depended on, and tamarisk was drying them up. I accused the Fish & Wildlife Service of using the Endangered Species Act to endanger species. ARS was eventually allowed to selectively release insects that fed on tamarisk, and the flycatcher is still in these habitats, so the release may not have significantly affected it.

In many areas impacts are huge, as the insects are decimating tamarisk, but effectiveness of biocontrol agents vary, depending on geography and elevation.

Local level: I pulled radish and iceplant at Crissy Field without permission. Park patrols were uninterested and took no notice. Similarly, we pulled invasive plants in neglected city parks owned by the SF Recreation and Park Dept, again without permission. No one cared at the time.

I conducted local weekly work parties on RecPark lands. Starting in September 1990 I kept logs of how many hours we spent and where. Starting small, we had some years that totaled >1200 hours. Participation varied because we were largely dependent on people between jobs or in school. These CNPS work parties have an unbroken weekly record going back to 1988. We now work alongside SF RecPark’s Natural Resources Division staff every Wednesday.

Greg Gaar and I both managed to get seats on the Citizens Open Space Advisory Committee, which made recommendations to the RecPark general manager on distribution of the City’s dedicated open space fund, at the time averaging around $16 million annually. Over the six years we were on the Committee, about $6-7 million was approved to acquire open space rich in natural resources, such as [Bayview Hill|Bayview Hill]], Hawk Hill (near Funston/Rivera), Palou-Phelps, The Rocks at 14th & Ortega, and others.

There were two heartbreakers: When Mayor Frank Jordan appropriated $1 million from the fund, and the other was when we were forced to pay $2.6 million for the Bayview Hill lots, after the Real Estate Dept. had evaluated it at $64,000. The discrepancy was because Bayview had severe access and infrastructure needs. How did they get such an inflated price? Because the landowner was in tight with Mayor Willie Brown. I almost cried; there were so many desperate needs and to see such a hunk disappearing into someone’s pocket was exceedingly painful. Although still painful to think about, at least we have Bayview Hill, which is priceless.

I was under severe time pressure and left the committee after six years. In retrospect, I wish I had stayed on one more term until the Aquavista inholding on Twin Peaks and the rest of the lots at Palou-Phelps were acquired. I naively thought that getting them identified as qualifying for acquisition was enough. Twenty-eight years later they are still in private hands and vulnerable to development. In fact, there was a recent proposal for developing some Palou-Phelps lots.

Natural areas were unmanaged except by CNPS; only hazard situations got any attention, and McLaren Park, for example, was a place to dump refrigerators or abandon cars. There were almost no walkers in the park, and they were all male. (Later, neighborhood groups became more involved, and the park is now well visited and used.) CNPS met with RecPark and said, in effect: You’ve bought these lots, now manage them. They immediately agreed, and created the Natural Areas Program (now Natural Resources Division).

We lobbied the California Legislature to establish weed management areas, and eventually succeeded. Because there were not a lot of issues in San Francisco, that WMA has not been highly active. But San Mateo County was very active and loaded with issues, and for a few years I attended monthly meetings, which I really enjoyed because there were so many good people doing good things.