Team Arundo del Norte Meeting January 27, 1998 Attending: Ellie Insley, Deanne DiPietro, John Rusmore, Joel Trumbo, Kent Nelson, Paul Jones, Richard Dale, Tom Dudley, Peeter Vilms (I have to look at the sign-up sheet) Updates: Joel on status of the grant- * Mapped 16 sites at GreyLodge * Doing plant-density measurements * Going to start spraying in late summer. * Starting next month with meetings with chemistry and toxicology lab. * Will leave biomass on the ground. * Complicated procedure to deal with the spraying trials and will need to plan carefully. * RFP for the brochure... * Working on the Quality Assurance Project Plan (which is required for any EPA environmental project) * Mark is going back over literature for past Arundo projects as well as toxicity. Want to make the best decisions regarding cutting or not cutting and timing of herbicide application. Cut stump was favored for a while and now is not necessarily always considered best method for the highest kill rate. Richard on Partners for Wildlife- We're trying to build an opportunity for landowners to get funding from USFWS. Grant was due on Jan 15, very competitive. We applied and have been told to wait and see. CalFed has taken at least 97% (of 100 million dollars worth of funding) for delta region projects, and it is our recommendation that there be funding allocated for another region (the North Bay). Tom on the Survey project- There was a disaster caused by Arundo in Riverside- there was bridge damage related to flooding and now there is interest in getting long-term funding and in working with others on the problem. FEMA had funds to deal with the immediate problem but wants to get more funding for a watershed approach and there needs to be local support. Congressperson Calvert (Linda Fisher is the aid). Interstate cooperation is being discussed as well as work on other species. Survey- Janice A. is starting to put the information into a database, starting with info from the surveyors of the counties. Jim Robbins will be doing research in coordination of surveying in a larger area. Wants to correlate land use variables and Arundo invasion, especially nitrogen-producing land use practices. Looking at old aerial photos of the Santa Ana area over time to investigate possible influences by land use. Auto exhaust may even have an impact by producing nitrogen. Impervious cover and run-off in watersheds is another factor. After 15% impervious cover biotic integrity drops off (Paul has documentation). We should have a separate meeting on this subject- it has a significant impact on watershed planning. Suggested that Jim puts his thesis proposal up on the web page- he says he has a lot of material already written and will make it available. Deanne plugged putting bibliographic information on the website and will take care of posting it if it is forwarded to her. Feb 25 there is a workshop on mapping and monitoring of Arundo. Tim White is heading it up. First week of April- workshop on biology and ecology of Arundo. John Rusmore is doing GIS on Arundo on the Sacramento River. Peeter Vilms- Peeter is a major player in Sonoma Co environmental and land use planning activities. He was recommended by Karen Gaffney as a possible media production resource. Peeter presented a slide show describing Sonoma Co agriculture with sound and coordinated fade-changed slides. The slide medium and video is not mutually exclusive- you can integrate them later. Cost for the Yolo RCD video production was $14,000 with the projection equipment, which was a bit low- there was a contribution of about 2/3 of the images pro bono. To produce the video from a finished slide-based piece (with sound) was about $3,500. Copies are $3-4 per each, with cost of duplication dropping when you make more than 200 copies. The production of a slide show and then a video from the slides will maximize the use of our funds and create a presentation that will be easily shown with standard equipment. Paul thinks we should go with something that's appropriate for the scale of our current funding and use it as a springboard to get more funding to do more expensive productions. Next round of CalFed might be better for the on-the-ground projects and there may be a chance at that as well as FEMA funding. Potential for collaboration with El Soreno group? They have an education component and now's a great time to coordinate with them- Richard will contact them. RFP: Joel distributed a draft. There is $45,000 associated with this part of the project (Task #, education materials). This is for all three components; we'll want to find one contractor that then subcontracts. All three products will be reviewed by the group before final production. The 4-page brochure: Estuary Newsletter is great for the brochure because they already have a distribution mechanism (for the Bay-Delta). We may to write it so it's less regional for use by So Cal groups. We can have the contractor coordinate with the So Cal groups for inclusion of their materials. This part will cost about $4-5,000. We'll want to balance the generalization of the contents with the need to target our northern California audience, but it will be very useful to make it applicable to other regions. Landowner guide and handbook: More specific materials describing resources and eradication methods targeting the northern California area. Richard has provided a proposal for this product. There may a slight broadening of the topic to address the greater issues of invasive species and watershed management at least to direct people to resources for more information on these topics. Issues: permitting, re-vegetation, how an eradication scenario will play out in terms of risks and liability issues. Straightforward and simple, step-by-step. Visual media product: For approximately $20K we'll have an extremely versatile and useful tool. Can Sonoma Ecology Center become the primary contractor? Richard thinks SEC would like to do it and will submit a bid. The best product for the money will be selected with some consideration for a bidder with experience with ecological subject matter. Comments will be taken over the next six weeks on the wording of the RFP and should be directed to Joel. It would be good to have a liaison in the Corps and the USFWS and keep them up to speed on what this group is trying to do. Paul presented them with the idea of a general permit but it was seen as unnecessary. USFWS has not responded on the issue. We have the Coho and fresh-water shrimp to deal with. The So Cal general permit deals with bird T&E species, but they don't have any instream aquatic species. We should create an eradication plan for one or two specific sites, then invite the appropriate reps from Army Corps and NMFS for a discussion of what we can and can't do. Normally you attend a pre-permitting meeting and this would essentially turn the table around. A streamlined process may be long in coming but it will be very helpful for success with landowner interaction. Best way to do it is to have a regional general permit. We need to show that there will be a multitude of little permits needed soon and there will be more. So we need to get our eradication workplans together: landowner, location, name of project, timeline and plan. Lois Battuello- Napa River Karen Gaffney- Russian River John Rusmore- American River Richard Dale- Sonoma Creek Watershed Paul will contact the Army Corps and NMFS John Rusmore (American River Parkway Exotic Management Team, a group of consultants) on American River activities: Survey data is being entered into a GIS, identifying demonstration plots with signs that show what's happening. Reach is from Folsom Lake to Sacramento. Tracking some 40 exotics, 35 of which are on the CalEPPC list. Demo plots will be done on the most troublesome ones. Want to show the problem and how it can be dealt with. Alex-X Biomass makes boards for furniture out of Arundo and PAYS $30/ton to cut and haul Arundo biomass. There could be concerns of improper cutting (there may not be attention paid to the outfall of scraps) and then Nurseries- we need contact information for all the nurseries in our area, send them the brochure with a cover letter. California Association of Nurseries and other associations and the shows and conferences they hold may be good points of contact. Deanne will pull out the email addresses of the core review committee and send them out for Joel to use in getting feedback on the RFP and for personal use. Next meeting: April 9, same location and time. This is a long time off, but we can make progress on some things. ------ Deanne DiPietro