Northwest Faces Indestructable Weed
March 22 -- A type of grass that is used to control coastal erosion has taken such a hold on parts of the Pacific Northwest that scientists fear for the future of some of the region's critical wildlife habitat.
The grass is called "Spartina," and don't let its beauty deceive you. As author David Gordon noted in his recent book, Heaven on the Half Shell, it is the plant kingdom's answer to Attila the Hun.
Scientists have poisoned it, dug it up, smashed it into the ground, and yet the grass continues to thrive.
A modest form of ecological warfare has been declared on Spartina, a leathery, tough plant that is turning thousands of acres of mudflats along Washington's coast into salty meadows.
Mudflats are crucial to the survival of everything from shore birds to salmon, according to experts, and unless Spartina can be brought under control, priceless feeding grounds may be lost.
"It's a huge crisis," says Blain Reeves of the Washington state Department of Agriculture. Reeves, who is coordinating a multi-agency attack on Spartina, admits that so far the best that scientists have been able to do is slow the growth of Spartina, which has claimed between 20,000 and 30,000 acres of mudflats over the past few years.
They've tried just about everything, including attacking it with huge "flailing" machines that try to beat it to death.But there's been only limited success.
Strength From Its Roots
To the casual observer, there may not seem to be much of a problem here. Spartina can be "very pretty," says Sally D. Hacker, a biologist at Washington State University at Vancouver.
"It can be lush and green," says Hacker, who is trying to get a handle on the scale of the problem as part of a project sponsored by the Washington Sea Grant Program.
But underneath Spartina's appealing exterior is the root system from hell.
"It accumulates sediments around the roots," Hacker says, rapidly building up the elevation of the land on which it sits, and changing a mudflat into a salty marsh. Lost in the process is the biologically rich intertidal zone that supports so much wildlife.
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