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MAKING CONTACT

Transcript #03-08 Invaders From Another Ecosystem
January 16, 2008

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2008/0308.html

Narration: This week on “Making Contact.”

Olofson: The first couple of years it looks like where once there was a beautiful lush green meadow there’s now a bunch of brown stubble.

Narration: Today we visit wetlands around the San Francisco Bay, where scientists are waging a scorched-marsh campaign against a devastating kind of East Coast grass.

Cohen: For most organisms in a marine environment, by the time we find they’re here, it’s probably too late to do much of anything about them.

Narration: Getting rid of invasive species cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year in the United States. And usually, it’s an uphill struggle. But if scientists discover an invader early and they act aggressively, they can get rid of the problem. But that can have devastating impacts on the environment.

I'm Tena Rubio and this is “Making Contact”… a program connecting people, vital ideas, and important information. 

Narration: In a special collaboration between National Radio Project and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, student producer Eric Simons takes a closer look at the control of one of San Francisco Bay’s invaders from another ecosystem.

Narration: A wetland marsh at sunrise is a pretty cool place. The roar of rush hour fades. A little bit. The water’s edge sings with shorebirds. Geese honk and ducks quack. The mud crackles with tiny invertebrates.

Erik Grijalva: We are at a little marsh called Charleston Slough in Mountain View, California. It is early morning. It’s about 7:15 or so, sun’s just coming up over the coast range, tide is out, mudflats are exposed.

Narration: Erik Grijalva is a guy who really appreciates a nice still morning in the marsh. But this is no happy nature walk. In fact, Grijalva’s out here on a mission. With two friends, two trucks, and several hundred gallons of weed killer. Their target? A fast-growing kind of wetland grass called … Spartina.

Narration: In the battle against nature, a good military metaphor can come in handy. Listen to this. This is the state of California’s draft management plan for combating invasive spartina:

Reading: “The best analogy may be that of war, where it is best to strike quickly before too much ground is lost.”

Narration: Right. Anyway, that’s why Grijalva gets to run around calling himself a manager of “field operations.”

Grijalva: I’m Erik Grijalva, I’m the Field Operations Manager for the Spartina Project ...

Narration: His job: to go out into fields of spartina in the San Francisco Bay, and to kill them.

Grijalva: … we are out here treating spartina along this levee edge, hitting these tiny little clones that have begun to establish in this newly restored marsh.

Narration: It’s nasty stuff, this spartina grass.

Peggy Olofson: Spartina alterniflora, which is also known as smooth cordgrass or Atlantic cordgrass, it has hybridized with our native cordgrass, creating a suite of hybrids which we refer to as …

Narration: This is where it gets ominous …

Olofson: … a hybrid swarm.

Narration: Peggy Olofson has worked as an environmental engineer around the Bay for the last 15 years. She’s done all sorts of stuff, from water issues to habitat plans. But right now, she’s focused almost entirely on this one kind of invasive hybrid cordgrass.

Olofson: (Laughing) Yeah. I’m Peggy Olofson, I’m the director of the San Francisco Estuary Invasive Spartina Project.

Narration: And make no mistake, this hybrid swarm … well, it’s a problem.

Olofson: So just like with an open mudflat, the hybrid spartina or the suite of hybrids will go into there, and whatever the elevation is, whatever the water flow, there will be one of those hybrids that’ll like that environment, that will want to grow there. And will flourish there, excluding anything else that might want to grow in that area.

Narration: It’s bad. And the scientific response has been hostile. They’ve sprayed thousands of acres of bay wetlands with herbicide. And now there’s so much dead spartina rotting out there that they think they may just be able to completely eradicate it.But the herbicide they use doesn’t just kill spartina.

Sejal Choksi: So imazapyr, it’s known to be persistent in the environment, it doesn’t degrade very easily.

Narration: That’s Sejal Choksi, the program director at the San Francisco Baykeeper.

Choksi: It’s also known to be non-selective, so it doesn’t just kill spartina. It kills all kinds of aquatic grasses and foliage.

Narration: Poisoning the spartina actually wipes out everything -- good and bad. Plus...

Choksi: There have been suggestions of having human health impacts in terms of when you come into contact with it you can have rashes. I just think it hasn’t been studied enough to know whether there are any toxic impacts to aquatic life.

Narration: But spartina is enough of a threat that most environmental groups say they’ve got no choice. It’s kind of like killing the Bay in order to save it.

Olofson: It is, in a way it’s killing the Bay in order to save it, yeah.

Olofson: As you look at the pictures of the sites or you go out and see the sites where we’ve done control –

Narration: Control is a spot where they’ve sprayed everything with herbicide –

Olofson: the first couple of years it looks like where once there was a beautiful lush green meadow there’s now a bunch of brown stubble, and at first you look at that and you think, oh, that’s, that’s awful. But then you go back and you look the next year and you see an open mudflat with the birds foraging on it the way it was before the invasion, or you see a mixed native plant tidal marsh, and you can see that it isn’t going to just stay dead spartina grass forever.

Choksi: Almost every time a new pest is discovered, the first reaction, the first response is always what chemical can we use to eradicate this creature. ... every single time, hands down.

Narration: So is keeping this one invader out worth the time, the money, and the collateral damage? Spartina’s an interesting case, and we’ll get to why in a few minutes. But it’s hardly unique.

***

Andrew Cohen: As I work out in the Bay I frequently find new things out there. Now that’s pretty exiting as a scientist, to find new things. But we’d really rather not find new species in the system that don’t belong there. And over the years we just see this flood of species coming in, one after another after another. Just when you think you’ve gotten used to what’s out there, the system changes as some new organism comes in and become abundant and changes the way things work.

Narration: Andrew Cohen is my favorite kind of biologist.

Cohen: I’m Andrew Cohen, I’m a marine scientist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute.

Narration: That is, he’s the kind of biologist who, when you say, where is the best spot for me to go find a small invasive Atlantic sponge called dead man’s fingers, he’s like, ah, yes, how about here?

Cohen: Really the nearest dock is either San Leandro Bay or this fishing pier at the end of grand street, which is over here…

Narration: Cohen carries a pail and a magnifying glass. He toes the edge of the dock, sets the pail down, dives onto his stomach and lies there, peering down into the depths. And hanging onto his eyewear.

Cohen: Directly below us, about 15 feet down is a muddy bottom, and a pair of glasses that fell off my face as I was doing this a few years ago, that I never managed to recover. After which I vowed that I would always wear something to hold my glasses on my face and of course I’m not doing that now. But hopefully that won’t happen today.

Narration: Cohen reaches in. Scoops out a big handful of muck. And then starts mumbling scientific names and places of origin and terms like “anthurid isopod.”

Cohen: … anthurid isopod, paranthura japonica, from Japan. This is a long thin one. Kind of looking like an inch worm. They also bite a little bit. They tend to, we collect them and they tend to get down here in the web between your fingers and make these little needly kind of bites in you.

Narration: There are plenty more stories like that, just under the surface of the water. But how did all these biting little critters arrive here?

Cohen: Up the channel is the port of Oakland, where no doubt some of these species disembarked on their arrival in the Bay.

Narration: Ah! The Port of Oakland. Turns out, the country’s fourth-largest port … is actually like Ellis Island for all manner of sea creatures.

Cohen: These days the largest number of species being brought in is almost certainly in the ballast water of cargo vessels.

Narration: A ship crossing the ocean without cargo is a little on the light side. It could get knocked over by wind, or waves.

Music: “Tossed about I’m like a ship on the ocean!”

Narration: So what it does is suck up a bunch of water before leaving the port, to make itself heavier.

Narration: Then, after it’s safely crossed the ocean, well …

Narration: Right. It dumps that water out. And this is happening at a very fast rate, all over the world. Which is why the Great Lakes are infested with Eastern European mussels, and why American barnacles have taken over Patagonia. It really is, like Andrew Cohen says, a flood of species.

Cohen: In the last 15 years or so scientists have been studying what’s in the ballast water on arrival across oceans and after long voyages across the world, and they’ve found that virtually every type of marine organism is contained in this water with living representatives that are then discharged out into the water.

Narration: The port is near to the entrance of the channel. So these creatures hop out, and go cavorting out into the Bay, or down the estuary on their way to new docks and new underwater horizons.

Cohen: Well the things that we have been looking at are growing on one of the floats supporting this dock.

Narration: These exotic organisms have spread like crazy. San Francisco Bay has had ships visiting it since, well, since there were ships. It’s so visited, in fact, that today’s invasive species aren’t displacing native species. They’re displacing yesterday’s invaders.

Cohen: The Bay is pretty widely known as probably the most invaded estuary in the world.

Narration: And in the most invaded estuary in the world, this is what you find.

Cohen: Here’s a mussel, either Mediterranean or native. Growing on it is a sea squirt from Asia, growing on it is another sea squirt from Asia, growing on both of them are sponges from the Atlantic, and a filmy bryozoan from Europe.

Narration: Spartina has a slightly different story. It was brought here by people, too. But it was brought here … deliberately. Wait. Really?

Olofson: When we’re learning about our environment we don’t always do things in the most sensible way.

Narration: In the 1970s, when people first started restoring Bay wetlands, they wanted them to grow back quickly. So they looked around, and they found a kind of marsh grass that grew quickly, and they brought it here. As far as rapid re-vegetation, the experiment was a success.

Olofson: Even on its own it’s a very invasive grass, and it’s found to be invasive in many places around the world. However, then once it hybridized with our native cordgrass, then it was a whole new ballgame. Everything happened differently after that point.

Narration: The hybrid swarm quickly turned into a nightmare. This is how it happened.

Olofson: The parent species we have the nonnative Atlantic cordgrass

Plant: Hi!

Olofson: and the native Pacific cordgrass.

Plant: Hello!

Olofson: And at some point the two of those hybridized, creating a single offspring.

Plant: Howdy!

Olofson: That event itself may not have been significant but what happened then is that offspring backcrossed with one or the other of the parents, or both of them,

Plant chorus: HiHiHi!

Olofson: and then the offspring from that occurrence crossed with each other,

Olofson: and so on and so forth, creating a whole range of hybrids that have not just a single set of genetic characteristics but they have many different types of genetic characteristics that cause them to grow in all different types of positions in the ecosystem.

Narration: But here’s the really scary bit. One of those hybrids picked up the ability to grow way taller than everyone else (kind of like that one kid in the family where both parents are five feet tall and the kid is six-two by the end of elementary school) and then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it found the ability to have WAY more seeds than everyone else. And so, being totally scientific again, they named these special plants … mother clones.

Mother clone: Mommy loves you!

Narration: Those mother clones spread the invasion all around the Bay, allowing spartina to join the list of hyper aggressive Bay invaders. Scientists faced a decision.

Cohen: For most organisms in a marine environment, by the time we find that they’re here it’s probably too late to do much of anything about them. In a few cases it is possible to do something about it, and it’s much easier and much cheaper and much less harmful to the environment in terms of the side effects of doing control if you catch it early and act early and aggressively to deal with it.

Narration: Spartina is one of those cases. It’s a devastating, globally invasive species. In the Bay Area, scientists say they caught it in time to do something about it. And the herbicide use became politically acceptable when environmentalists realized what was at stake.

*** BREAK ***

Joy Albertson: My name is Joy Albertson, I’m a wildlife biologist here at the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge complex.

Narration: The San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge is a major part of the West Coast’s largest restoration effort, an attempt to turn salt ponds back into wetlands. Right now the refuge covers 30,000 acres of marshes, mostly in the south part of the Bay. And it’s home to a few charismatic endangered species. I asked Albertson to show me around …

Albertson: We’re going to the largest marsh loop in Newark Slough. This is right along the Tidelands Trail, which is one of the refuge’s wetlands trails…

Narration: … and to tell me about the California clapper rail.

Albertson: Oh my. A clapper rail. Clapper rails are about the size of a very skinny chicken. They’re brown, but they have a long bill.

Narration: There are about 1,500 clapper rails left in the world. All of them are in the San Francisco Bay, and most of them are in the south bay wildlife refuge.

Albertson: So, the clapper rails nest in the high cover within the marshes.

Narration: This is the problem. The clapper rails need that exposed space along the channels to feed. They need that certain kind of plant in the marsh to nest. And you can probably guess what’s coming.

Narration: Given the chance, spartina would go right ahead and eat up the whole marsh structure -- clapper rail habitat and all.

Albertson: If in fact we didn’t do any control of the spartina, we would just end up with vast homogenous meadows of spartina alterniflora, which is not the endpoint that we’re looking for.

Narration: So far, the battle against spartina seems to be heading toward victory.

Albertson: The areas that we have treated look very good. So at this point, in most of our marshes, we are in the mop-up phase.

Narration: Still, there’s some spartina left.

Albertson: What’s left here is just along the edges, really just a fringe which is near the water and harder to control. This was an eight-foot tall jungle before. So, although there’s still some left, it’s a lot better.

Narration: But they have to be vigilant.

Albertson: If we didn’t do anything for a few years, this plant would spread again up into the pickleweed and also down into the slough. We could even have, we could even have it spreading all the way to the other side of the slough. It grows really fast. We just need to remove it altogether and prevent any seed from being produced.

Albertson: Whew. (Sneeze.) I’m allergic. I think I’m allergic to that. At least I’ll say so.

***

Narration: Back on solid ground, the Invasive Spartina Project shares an airy West Berkeley loft with some other friendly groups. Like the California Invasive Plant Council, which has a clock that reads, “It’s Time to Wipe Out Invasive Plants.”

Narration: This is the war room, where the Spartina Project team maps the invasion with GPS data and satellite imaging. That’s how they figure out where to go with the herbicide. It’s also how they figure out what’s at stake. Peggy Olofson.

Olofson: I’m very, very fond of some of these prehistoric marshes we have. The prehistoric marshes would be Petaluma Marsh in the North Bay, a couple of snippets of marshes around central bay and then Arrowhead marsh, which is a historic marsh. To have these places, Arrowhead has been invaded by hybrid spartina... Even before I knew what it actually was I knew something was amiss there.

Narration: The project started when scientists realized that places like the wildlife refuge restoration projects were threatened by spartina. They didn’t try to kill any of the grass at first. Instead, they looked at their options. After a few years of study, they asked the experts.

Olofson: We brought together experts from all around the world at the International Spartina Conference in San Francisco Bay in November of 2004. We brought people from France and China, Tasmania, New Zealand.

Narration: All of which have their own spartina problems. And there are also spartina infestations in England, Chile, and Bangladesh. Some of them, like China, didn’t recognize it in time, and so it’s essentially too late.

Olofson: We showed them our spartina problem here. Then we sat them down at a table at the end of the conference and we said, well what do you think of our problem? And they said, oh, this problem is minor. If you get on it right now, and don’t let it get to be like it is in many other places in the world, you can definitely lick this. But it has to be full-scale, it has to be aggressive, it has to be right now. And that’s the approach we took, very aggressive, and it’s been quite remarkable that we’ve been able to accomplish the objectives that we set out and I’m glad that we listened to the encouragement to act now and act aggressively. Seeing it come even close to China Camp, or come even close to Petaluma Marsh, it just makes my heart beat way too fast, it causes me anxiety, and I’m really happy that we now have a really good handle on controlling it.

Narration: It’s strange to call mass death a success. But that’s the modern world of aquatic invasive species, in which many environmental groups agree there’s no other choice. Still, not everyone is entirely convinced. Sejal Choksi.

Choksi: Baykeeper is an organization, a nonprofit organization that has been in San Francisco for the last 20 years. Basically, the movement is a local, on the ground organization that can protect a water body. We protect San Francisco Bay.

Narration: Choksi says the Baykeeper agrees that invasive species are a big problem. Her group even sued the United States Environmental Protection Agency to try and get invasive species in ballast water considered an aquatic pollutant. But they’re leery of chemical solutions.

Choksi: The one thing I do know is every single time one of these chemicals comes on the market it’s proclaimed as the new chemical that doesn’t have all the problems that the old chemical had, that’s not as toxic as the old chemicals. So everyone jumps on board and starts using it, and then a few years later they discover well, this one actually is more toxic than we realized.

Choksi: One of the things that Baykeeper is trying to do through our invasive species work is try to address the root source of the invasive species. If you are removing a really large source of these invasive species then hopefully there’s not as much need for a chemical application.

***

Narration: Other places have tried digging out spartina or covering it with huge tarps. But as he watches workers struggling just to spray the plants, Grijalva says that for the Bay Area, like it or not, herbicide is the least harmful way to go.

Grijalva: None of the mechanical methods are appropriate on a large scale on the San Francisco estuary, because we have a limited amount of marshland left in the Bay, and much of that marshland is home to one of several endangered or threatened species. And to simply come into a marsh that is say, infested with spartina, and dig out the spartina, which would require digging out the roots to a depth of about two feet, would essentially destroy the marsh.

Narration: So, they chose poison. But there are very few days when the group can actually apply herbicide. They have to do it in summer, before the plants go dormant for the winter. But in many marshes, they have to wait until after the clapper rail breeding season is over in September. The wind has to be less than 10 miles an hour, the tide has to be low, the weather has to be dry. When all the stars are in alignment, they attack.

Jay Kasheta: Watch out for that hose there. I’m Jay, by the way.

Narration: Thomas Benny and Jay Kasheta work for a contract company that does the spraying. It’s tough work.

Kasheta: I’m just glad it’s super low tide. (Breathing hard, walking.) The problem with it is when there’s no vegetation, sometimes down here it’ll be two feet thick, you sink right down there and end up losing one of your boots. End up on your back and have to crawl out like a wet dog. And then other times it’s like walking on this, but you never know until you take a couple steps. Usually by the time you realize it’s soupy, you’re pretty stuck.

Narration: It’s not an easy place to work. Between long forays into the marsh, the workers break to smoke and talk about the equipment they need. Like full-body waders. With metal insoles.

Kasheta: Drew was saying he bought a pair that had steel shanks in ‘em. Which is nice for out here, ‘cause you never know what you’re going to step on.

Grijalva: Yeah, we had two people go out –

Kasheta: Bob!

Grijalva: and another one of our contractors

Kasheta: He stepped on a nail, too?

Grijalva: Well, he had to go the hospital that day because he needed stitches, he ripped his foot open, but it was on the top. It went through the top and just sliced over his foot.

Narration: Sliced feet and other marsh hazards are another reason Grijalva and the Spartina Project don’t think that highly of trying to dig out the spartina.

Grijalva: Aside from the ecological impact of non-chemical methods, just the reality of doing it. When you see two guys doing the spray work in a muddy marsh like this, imagine trying to dig that clone out of this section of marsh, remove all that material to a dump truck or some off-site place. You’re looking at this marsh right now and here’s a marsh that’s 40 acres in size and we’re treating three acres of spartina within that. And it’s going to take most of the morning just to spray it.

Narration: Benny and Kasheta spend a hot morning racing back and forth into and out of the marsh. They only fall into the mud a few times, but each time they emerge from the reeds red-faced and panting. Grijalva carries a map of all the spartina clones in the marsh. He uses it to direct Benny and Kasheta around.

Kasheta: So, ah, these clumps in here?

Grijalva: Right there? Yeah. That’s spartina.

Grijalva: Looks like there’s another little one right there.

Kasheta: Right on the edge of the scirpus?

Benny: What?

Grijalva: (Laughing.)

Benny: I don’t see anything.

Grijalva: What, do you got a date?

Benny: Yeah, with the chiropractor. And the ICU. … Where?

Grijalva: Right there.

Benny: Out there?

Grijalva: Smaller clone, right on the edge of the scirpus.

Kasheta: Oh, that’s way out there.

Benny: It’s not on the map?

Grijalva: It’s not on this map.

Benny: You’re making it up again, are you?

Grijalva: I’m just drawing random shapes to see how well you can perform going out into the middle of the marsh.

Grijalva: You know, the funny thing is, if I draw a shape on here, spartina appears in the marsh, ahead of you.

Kasheta : Well let’s go get it. Get your waders on.

Narration: At the end of the day, another marsh is on its way to freedom from spartina. With success like this, Grijalva and company are putting themselves out of a job. Sort of. Because they’re good at mobilizing to chase away invasive species -- and there’s still that whole flood of invaders to deal with. Seems quite possible we’ll have to keep killing the bay in order to save it for years, or maybe decades. Maybe you’ll see Olofson and Grijalva in a few years running the invasive phragmites project, or the invasive Russian thistle project. Or maybe … well, maybe there’s something on its way that we don’t even know about yet. Maybe in a few years, this new thing will land in the marsh, and have the clapper rails running scared and the ducks intimidated and the harvest mice fleeing for cover, and … (Boom).

Narration: That’s it for this edition of Making Contact. This show has been a special collaboration between National Radio Project and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Thanks to student producer, Eric Simmons who wrote and edited this show under the guidance of independent media producer and U-C Berkeley J-school lecturer, Claire Schoen. And a special thanks to Dan Turner, Ron Rucker and the “Monday Morning Breakfast Crew.” Our Theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. For a CD copy of program #03-08, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736 or you can get our podcast at radioproject.org. Lisa Rudman is our executive director, Puck Lo, associate producer, Samson Reiny and Elena Botkin-Levy, interns and I’m executive producer Tena Rubio. Thanks for listening to Making Contact.