Environmentalists launch campaign against invasive plant

| Saturday, January 18, 2003 10:00 PM PST ∞

TIM MAYER
Staff Writer

CARLSBAD ---- Carlsbad resident Carolyn Martus said she's discovered the power of e-mail in her fight against the devil of a weed known as pampas grass.

Martus said she was shocked one day last summer when she walked into a Wal-Mart garden center in Oceanside and discovered it was selling pampas grass to home gardeners.

Originally from South America, pampas grass is a popular landscape plant admired for its bright, white, feathery, flowering plumes that can reach 6, 8, even 10 feet tall and last through much of the winter.

But in Southern California it has been labeled by environmentalists as the "Great Satan" of invasive, non-native plants. Its wind-blown seed will spread hundreds of feet, take root in open areas, and choke out grass, sage, willows and other plants vital to wildlife.

Fresh from her Wal-Mart visit, Martus said she cranked up her computer, looked up the address for Wal-Mart corporate headquarters in Arkansas, and fired off a short e-mail explaining the situation and asking the store chain to stop selling the stuff out here.

From Wal-Mart headquarters, the e-mail was forwarded to Linda Prendergast in Chino Hills, Wal-Mart's horticultural buyer for West Coast stores.

Prendergast responded by taking pampas grass off the list of plants Wal-Mart nurseries can buy for sail at all 100 stores in California as well as at stores in Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and Washington.

"There's nothing heroic about it," Prendergast said. "We just decided this is the right thing to do and took it off our listing. I have noticed personally that the pampas is getting a little bit out of control."

Prendergast said the plants won't disappear from shelves immediately and stores are allowed to sell what they have in stock.

"There will be some residue out there ... although that amount is minimal," she said.

Martus knows the plant well. A biologist working for Camp Pendleton ---- where the plant has been banned from sale or use in landscaping ---- she specializes in trying to restore habitat for native wildlife.

"That's how I get paid," she said. "Any restoration project around San Diego County is centered around removing pampas grass, arrundo (giant reed), tamarisk, etc. and replanting with native species.

"This time of year, the female (pampas grass) is putting out hundreds of thousands of seeds, the winter rains come, and you get all these little seedlings that pop up. The plants just go crazy."

Martus, who said people don't realize how destructive the plant is, also has had some success at approaching the owners of smaller nurseries and is carrying on her e-mail campaign to other larger garden chains.

"My experience is once you talk to someone and educate someone, they say 'Oh, I didn't understand how bad the plant is. I'll take it out of our yard, or I'll stop selling it,'" she said.

Martus' education campaign is being endorsed and Wal-Mart's action celebrated by environmentalists and others involved in fighting the invasion of non-native plants statewide.

Carl Bell, a botanist and regional adviser on invasive plants with the University of California Extension Service, said "my take on it, after dealing with the nursery industry, is if we can get them to do something voluntarily, as with Wal-Mart, that's the way to go."

"The market will take care of it, if we can make the market work," he said.

Doug Johnson, executive director of the Berkeley-based California Exotic Pest Plant Council, said "sometimes a well-placed letter actually does change things."

He said his organization was formed in 1992 to bring together everyone involved in the problem from ranchers, to scientists, to public land managers in an attempt to understand invasive species and how to control them.

"We want to work cooperatively with nurseries and growers," Johnson said. His organization is working on an information campaign and aimed at the nurseries and the public. It is also developing a list of plants, native and non-native, which are non-invasive and can be used safely to replace pampas grass and other problem species.

Carrie Schneider, a microbiologist and member of the San Diego chapter of the California Native Plant Society, said she is also contacting local nurseries and trying to educate the public. "When people find out what a problem it is, they really don't want to use it."

Her advice: "Don't plant it, tell your neighbors not to plant it, and kill it if you see it."

Chances of any local or statewide ban being imposed or being enforceable are slim, experts said, because of opposition from the nursery industry and because the plant and its seeds are so readily available over the Internet.

John Schoustra, a Ventura County plant grower and chairman of the Invasive Plants Committee for the Nursery Growers Association of California, said a ban would be harmful because nurseries in California grow pampas and thousands of other plants for export to cities throughout the United States and many foreign countries.

Midwest cities such as Chicago buy thousands of plants every year as landscape ornaments. "Pampas freezes in winter and dies there. But they plant thousand of them just so they can enjoy them for a few months," Schoustra said.

"The right alternative (to a ban) is to make sure the retailers in (Southern California) are aware of the problems and will refrain from selling them," he said.

Contact staff writer Tim Mayer at (760) 901-4043 or tmayer@nctimes.com.

1/19/03

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