Fighting Invasive Buffelgrass in Arizona & Restoring Desert Ecosytems

Okay, welcome to the crime pace of bond any doesn't podcasts. I'm here
with Tony Figueroa. Who's the senior what's your thing? What's your exact title?
Senior Manager of Invasive Species for for Audubon Tucson. Is that correct?
Or did I fuck that up? I mean it got the gist, uh,
freshly, freshly promoted, so it is quite a mouthful. But uh,
the senior manager of the Invasive Plant programs ah at the Tucson Audubon Invasive
Plan. I got too loose with it, you know. I'm I really
want to applaud your patients here because we were supposed to start this an hour
ago, and I fucking just you know, I think I I think my
dopamine levels are just all messed up. I just got back home after a
really nice long trip and uh and then I'm just you know, writing it's
just man, it's I'm I need to take like a fucking I never take
a break from thinking about any of this stuff. So I think it's at
a killer pace. But you are really Yeah, I appreciate that, Thank
you man. So but anyway, so I I want to have a talk
today about about buffalo grass. You know, Uh Thomas had recommended me.
You know that I speak to you. And because you guys have bubb you
know, buffalo grass, which you know frequently gets misinterpreted as buffalo grass,
which is a completely different plant. It's, you know, just common names,
just suck ass. Buffalo grass is a name you can You can say
buffalo grass to somebody twenty times right to their face, and they're gonna say
buffalo grass. Well that's why whenever I say it now, I'm like,
buffalo, not buffalo, not buffalo. Buffalo's a boudolous species. Was it
dak de loit's is that? Is that actual? But I gotta fucking look
that up. I don't know. I think I think it's daktyla anyway.
But in buffalo grass is a great plan. Buffalo grass is an invasive,
highly invasive planet. It's not frost tower and it's not freeze talent rather,
thank God, because if it was, it'd be smothering you know, God
knows how many ecosystems and northern latitudes. But it's an invasive grass that evolved
with megafauna, with the grazing pressures of megafauna in Africa, and the African
continent, and so it comes here. I was introduced by ranchers, which
is so fucking idiotic. It was like intentionally introduced, and where I live
it was introduced along with another really bad one, guinea grass, and these
have just I mean, I'm in a place where so few people, it
is such a small minority of people that give a fuck or pay attention to
ecosystems, you know, or plants at all. Because I'm in Texas,
which is a little more you know, you're in Arizona. It's a little
more loose over there. You know, I think, I don't know what
it is. It's maybe the approximate of California. I like Tucson. It's
a nice It's a nice halfway point between like the delusional religious authora tarianism of
Texas and the the fucking identitarian progressivism of California that refuses to see how it's
inherently bourgeois and classes. You know. Two. Sounds like a nice It's
a nice middle ground. So but anyway, in Texas, I mean,
no one. I feel like this huge, this huge invasion happened in the
last twenty to thirty years of this plant, and so few people noticed that
it was smothering everything here and causing so many extinctions. So that's what I
want to talk about today, and then we'll go all over the place.
We can talk about whatever. You know. We'll keep it loose, but
I guess really quickly tell me your experiences with what is it pennacetum silly air
now it used to be, or no, it's centris silliers. I think,
yeah, people dance between both of them. We stay with Pennacedium silili
aires because it's it's just better. But my experience with it, I'm a
Tusan native born and raised, and I've kind of seeing the progression of it
happening before I was botanically aware. I just kind of saw something changing in
the landscape in our neighborhoods and growing. It's like, what is this ugly
ass grass that just keeps on spreading throughout people's alleys and whatnot. But then
went back to school after working in a pharmacy for far too long and realizing
people didn't want any help or want to listen to anything, so maybe I
could help the environment. After traveling the country with my wife after we got
married, kind of realized man somebody should protect these natural spaces, like going
to national parks, national forests, everything like that. I think that that's
one of the things that makes Arizona and the Tucson region different than Texas is
there's so much public lands out here. You have the opportunity to go out
and see what nature actually looks like in the natural setting and not the demolished
commercial or ag ranching whatever it may be in the other places. We just
have so much public land, and that's a huge everything has been destroyed.
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's many differences between I'm you know, to
be clear, I'm obviously not. I'm not. I don't know how the
funck I ended up here. I love the flora and the geology, but
the culture is, man, it's one of the most repressed places. I
think the entire like southeast quadrant of the country is really fucking new to me.
It's kind of blowing my mind. The more I experience, I'm like,
oh god, damn. But anyway, but yeah, but there's many
It's pretty mind boggling. If you look at like a public lands map for
like the western states of New Mexico going west versus Texas going to the to
the east, everything everything. People don't have land to go and use.
Yeah, and you're stuck in the strip. You're stuck in the strip mall.
Where the fucking you know, I don't know, but anyway, Yeah,
so so going on so that. Yeah, in Arizona's got a lot
of that, and it's nice. I mean Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada,
California. The public land, it's it's people who live out there are
so lucky to have that. Yeah. But as as I got the opportunity
to go and travel and see these places, I never realized that there was
a job field available working in public lands. So first thing I thought was,
man, I should figure out how to get a job in the National
Park Service. So when gotte the internship after graduating from the u of A
College of Natural Resources, and originally it was with a wildlife conservation degree,
but I realized there isn't shit for jobs in terms of wildlife jobs. You
can get a doctorate and still be an intern somewhere or get some low paying
job. So decided, hey, it looks like there's opportunities in an invasive
plant work. So went down that rabbit hole. Started my internship and we
were the Buffalgrass Squad through this AmeriCorps internship program there, and Sawara was one
of the first places to recognize, Man, this stuff is just taking it
over and we need to start doing some work. It was first spotted in
Sawara National Park in nineteen eighty nine, and then it wasn't until the two
thousands that they were really getting heavy into the treatment. So I came into
it in like twenty eighteen ish and they had their program rolling. But I
instant, really instantly realized that there was just this seasonal turnover dilemma with working
in the National Park Service. And I had heard through some of my relationships
there, the Tucson Audubon was trying to start an invasive plant program that would
be a permanent, year round position where you had benefits and all these good
things like a real employee. So I was like, Oh, you said,
permanent employment in Tucson. That's a dream job. So kept following that
pipe dream until it was finally funded and created, and that was in January
of twenty twenty. We started with this collaborative partnership with the National Park Service
and the Fish and Wildlife Service, and we created this group called the Kawatis.
It's the Collaborative Audubon Treatment and Inventory Squad. Oh, I see what
you did there after the kwate Monday. And then it's a nice acronym too.
People love kuwaitis, so you know, you're digging around in the dirt
and getting after things, so it's attractive to people. So cool cool what
is it pro scionid species? I probably missper super cool raccoon. But that's
how we started in January twenty twenty and we were just a three person crew
traveling all throughout the Southwest, primarily Arizona and New Mexico and then uh a
third of the year we were at Sawara National Park, so working with the
Fish and Wildlife Service on their refuges here and then national Parking. It's all
around the region. And so what were you guys doing. You you were
just treating and surveying for invasives primarily buffalo grass or what invasives in general.
When in the Tucson area and in southern Arizona it was primarily buffalo grass projects,
but things like yellow blue stem are invasive trees, salt ced or what
is what's yellow blue stem? Is that that the thing they called kyberg,
bluestem or whatever the fuck it's called. It's the King Ranch. So your
your buddy's there in Texas at the King Ranch. They they have spread this
plant Bathria klou don't ever call them, but don't ever say that again.
Say that again. We're not friends. Don't fucking I'm sorry, it's it's
triggering, right, I have to talk to my therapist and reevaluate my life.
But anyway, yeah, so okay, King what is the genus and
species of its both Bathria kloam I. But that stuff is just taking over
Texas. I flew into Houston UH in May and the entire tarmac is just
surrounded by that stuff. That's like a sod forming tall grass. So it
is just horrendous in terms of its ability to outcompete all of the NATA native
plants. And it also presents a tall biomass that has fire fuel problems,
and it's starting to invade into UH southeastern Arizona now, so it's these grasses
are big problem. I guess what what amazes me about these grasses? Well,
first left that they're intentionally spread, which is fuck and nuts to me.
I mean, it's the twenty first century. This shouldn't be occurring anymore.
This is you know, ecology has been a sturdy science now for not
quite a hundred years. But you know, I mean, we know that
how destructive these are, and we know that bringing this one thing in means
that a lot of other things are gonna cease to be there. And people
are still doing it. It's like, there's still these fucking idiots in Texas
are still I love saying these fucking idiots in Texas. That's such a like,
it's such a fucking I swear to God without being a dick, I've
just noticed so much, so many fucking dummies. I'm not going don't get
me started. This is there's people in I'm sure a lot of people who
are listening to the podcast in Texas would agree with me, But I don't
want to go off on a rant though I've been good at doing that.
I mean, people are still doing there's still you know, they're still in.
They're trying to breed, especially with like Buffalgart, they're trying to breed
a freeze tolerant version of it, which is so nuts. Like if you
do that, that's like fucking Pandora's box. I mean this stuff to see
what it done here. I mean I first came here ten years ago just
to see, you know, some of the cool cactus populations and other plants
down here, and in that a decade late. I look at photos I
took a decade ago of some of these places. You know, they're all
geotagged. And I go back now and all the all the diversity has been
had, if not more, there's like twenty percent of the species diversity left.
And it's just a fucking monoculture of of guinea and buffalo grass. And
it's not it's not I mean, it's not even like a carpet. It's
like a thick because these things grow tall. It forms this intense thicket,
you know, which is shitty if you have to walk through it too,
because snakes, if snakes are hanging out in there, you're not gonna be
able to see him if. I mean, it's so it's just so fucked
and it's everywhere. It's everywhere, and people here are kind of you know,
you talk to like plant people and they're like, yeah, it's terrible,
but you know some of the old timers are like, I've seen it
happen in my lifetime. But a lot of people are just oblivious. They
don't. I mean, it's just wild to how many people are just oblivious
to plants in general, but oblivious to this huge I mean, this is
a huge fucking ecological change that occurred. This is like, this is similar
to like the eradication of American chestnuts from eastern forests. You know, it's
just so, it's so heavy. It's such a monumental change to the landscape,
and it was intentional, and I don't understand. Guess this is why
I don't understand why. I'm like, why would you introduce these grasses when
we have native ones that are fine, that can supplement, like, you
know, just breed those breed native grasses if you really want to do something.
You know, it's just part of my imaginary soap opera, The Lifestyles
of the Uninformed, and then consider it. Yeah but anyway, yeah,
so, But I mean the thing about these grasses, I don't know about
the kr bluestone, but you know, the buffalo and all that. I'm
really interested in their ecology because I'm sure they're enormously important where they're native.
I mean, every invasive is like that, you know, where it's native,
it's a huge component of the ecosystem. Bluegum Galyptus is they're fucking wonderful
trees in Australia and Tasmania specifically. I've been in those forests. They're incredible,
but you know in California they're monumentally destructive. And same thing with buffalo.
I mean, this is a plant that's been through the selection pressures over
tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or millions of years of co
evolving with these animals that were highly dependent on it, and so it had
to get big and robust in response to not only the you know, climatic
extremes of where it grows, but also the fact that was just constantly getting
gnawed down by these huge animals. And so that's why it is the way
it is. But you bring it here and there's no checks and balances and
it just goes nut. Yeah, its evolution is just impressive, and its
ability to persist in these areas is incredible. But it's from Kenya and you
said it. You know, you have those megafaun out there grazing it,
and then it also has this fire cycle it goes through you know, so
you have the lightning come and strike the tall standing biomass that nobody's eating anymore
because it's not super palatable once it's big. So lightning comes, burns it
all out, Then the rains come, then all the green upcurves again,
and then all the big megafauna come moving in to graze on it. So
it has this beautiful life cycle out in Kenya. But when you bring that
here into the Sonoran desert, we don't have that fire adapted ecosystem. When
our desert burns, everything just dies, So there's there's very little regrowth from
the plants in our ecosystem when fire is introduced. So I've joked that it's
the Sonor and Getty is what we're converting this landscape into. And it's going
to be devastating if we just allow it to keep on spreading and taking out
all of our native plants. That you know, one of the things people
asking Too son Anaban, what's too Sonataban doing in this work? I thought,
you guys are bird people, and it's like, well, if if
you don't care for the plants, you don't preserve the plant community. That's
what all of our animals depend on. Are the plants, you know,
And it's not just the not just the things eating plants. It's like,
well, I thought the thing eats insects, you know, like, well,
yeah, the insects also depend on those plants, and they didn't evolve
with the non native species, so they're not super palatable to them. They're
not there, right, Yeah, explain you know the insects. Actually you
can't just bring them in. They actually need something to eat and they're dependent
on other things. And it gat cascades down like that. It's you know,
yeah, and it's mind boggling. When you're out in the field doing
the work and you're in these big stands of buffalo grass, it's like you
don't have any of the native insects or birds around you, and sometimes you
think that you're going to be stepping on rattlesnakes or something like that. But
when you get in really dense stands, it's like it's so thick that they
don't even like to live in there because they're not getting enough sunshine. Stuff
just outcompetes everything and it's so thick and obnoxious that it just really screws over
the entire food web. Yeah, it's it's so fucking sad. Yeah,
yeah, exactly. We don't have elephants. You know, if North America
had elephants, maybe the fucking buffal wouldn't be so bad. But Jesus Christ,
I mean it's again, well, it's the whole. It's the whole
super myopic, narrow frame of reference that you know humans have, which is
I, you know, I don't really grasp the concept of how something evolves
in an ecosystem, or that this length of time that's exponentially larger than my
own lifespan is required for these things to kind of reach a balance for more
or less, you know. And then an ecosystem is always shifting and changing,
but not like this, not this fast, not overnight where you take
one plant that evolved six thousand miles away and overnight bring it to a new
ecosystem it's never been in before, where none of the checks and balances or
quote unquote bio controls that it has exists there. And you're you're basically just
you know, taking that fifty million years it's spent evolving in a different ecosystem
that was separated by this huge ocean and throwing it out the window. Fuck
it it doesn't matter, you know, And that's what that's what people don't
seem to get. God I get. I don't hear it too much anymore
except for maybe some of the permaculture nutjobs. No offense to any permaculture nut
jobs who might be listening to this podcast, But you know there's and not
every not every hashtag, not every permaculture, not every perme, but it's
within that community I often find I often find one or two people who are
like invasive is it doesn't mean anything? Or they'll say some really whacked out
ship like oh it's xenophobic. It's like a you know, they try to
make this anthropomorphize and make this comparison, and it's like, how can you
argue with it? I mean, you've never That just shows the ignorance you've
never experienced an ecosystem that's just wrecked, you know, and the whole shifting
baselines theory, like you have no concept of what was here before and how
all these puzzle pieces, you know, different organisms fit together, and how
long it took to get that to where it is now, you know,
And so anyway, but so, okay, so I've never seen in Arizona.
I've never seen like a really wrecked buffalo grass monoculture like I have in
South Texas. It's really bad here. I mean you could see it everywhere.
But but in aria time out here I can show it to you.
Yeah, so what so you'll see it. I mean, it'll just be
out there growing because I know it's it's shade intolerant. The buffalo needs full
sun. The guinea grass can take shade. But but I mean it's just
out there like, oh, sorrows and shit or what. Yeah, it's
totally growing in suarrows and Sawara National Park has a ton of it. One
of the things that makes it so challenging here is we have mountains. We
have hill slopes that naturally road and cause that disturbance, and buffalograss loves disturbed
sites. So you have a new disturbance occur from a landslide, it can
be one of the primary invaders to that area. So primarily you see it
in roadsides where there's been disturbances along the roadside. And then you have that
little pseudo riparian area as the water runs off the roads and has a little
bit extra moisture for it, so it's able to grow unchecked and it's open
to the sun. But that same sort of thing is happening up on hillsides
where you have that that erosion occurring and it fills in that space. So
it's a it's definitely a problem in our foothills throughout the Santa Catalinas and the
Ringcon Mountains of Sawara National Park East. Uh, my crews are doing a
ton of work, and the Tucson Mountains also. It's primarily on southern facing
slopes because it wants that that full sun exposure, and it definitely takes a
lot of work to to kick it back. But so I didn't know the
first group that's kind of doing it in a whole scale attack of multiple different
land owners. But go ahead, oh, I was gonna say, I
didn't know it was that. By the way, I feel free to talk
over me, interrupt me at any point. I will not be offended.
That's that's a good cover. That's what I call a good conversation, you
know, where it's like the fucking thoughts are coming to you, some of
you can't hold them in. But I didn't know it was that drought taler
because I mean, I live where where I live is so weird. It's
where the Gulf Coast transitions to desert, so it's it's more humid. You
know, they pay gardens are like thirty minutes away from me, and you
know it's a really you know, you go to West Texas, the Payota
grows and really dry habitats. Here, it's like it grows under under the
cover of mist, gait and these like fine silty you know, fine silt,
fine particles, you know, silt, loam, soils, and it's
it's you know, it's really humid. We get I mean, we can
have months without rain, but generally we get more annual rain. Then you
know, when you start to go further west, it's kind of starts to
dry out. So but here we get you know, pretty decent moisture,
so it gets pretty big. It's I, for whatever reason, I always
imagined like Sonoran Desert with how dry I can get there, Buffalo grass woulden
wouldn't thrive. But it obviously up here in the Sonoran Desert uplands where some
people want to argue that it's not the Sonoran Desert because we get so much
rain. You know, our average can be ten to twelve inches of rain.
But some years we get more than that, and we have our our
wet winters and wet summers, So this plant's able to have these eruptive growths
in both years. And this year, I've already had over six inches of
rain since December twenty second, so it's it's growing. I mean, it's
good, but that's really bad for the for the you know, an invasive
parcel. Yeah, yeah, that's that's the problem. It's like, you
see all the good stuff growing, It's like, oh man, what a
beautiful year. But then you go and see some of the invasive areas and
like, man, you're gonna you're gonna expand some more. But the other
other good part about it is it allows the plant to be green and actively
growing, so we can go out and treat it with glyco sate and knock
it back be able to be able to do that work. Yeah, we've
got to get back on topic. You know, we're gonna we're gonna get
We're going to talk about I talk about the fucking permes. This whole podcast
is gonna be me shitting on permaculture. I'm sorry, I'm you know,
it's a good idea. I believe in permaculture. If you're gonna do it
agriculture thing, but which we need to. But I'm just saying, I'm
just saying I've noticed cultural trends within the permaculture community. They hear the fucking
word glyph is saying they just ship their pants. But really quick, let's
going back to the I just want to throw this in there really quick before
I forget. I was driving west of Heal of Bend, coming east and
I saw this uh mustard that I had seen I'd seen in Baha. And
I haven't been in California doing botany. I was there for a little bit
when we were filming Killer Law, but I haven't been there like, you
know, rolling around the back of my truck, you know, actively every
day going out and taking the thousand photos and you know, recording shit.
Haven't been doing that in five years or so. So I had kind of
fallen out of the loop. You know, I've forgotten species names, only
remembering you know, genus, namest cetera, that kind of shit. So
I saw this brassica, you know, the typical you know, four petals,
four sepals, six stamens, and it smelled good and I was like
it kind of threw me off because it wasn't super hairy. I know,
Braska Turn of forty, it's a really fucking awful one. Sahara mustard,
that's a really really bad one. But you know that thick root that it
forms, that Cole Robbie like root, which just means it's sucking up that
much more moisture from the surrounding soil horizon. But this one was a ruka
of vessecaria, which uh, common names are generally shit. But they you
know, they call it rocket, but to me, it's just the rugula.
It tastes like arugula, looks like arugula. It's fucking arugula. I
can imagine the plants that you were driving by on it. Yeah. Yeah.
And I and I saw, you know, it smell good. I
was like, I gotta figure what the fuck this is. And I looked,
and I'm like, I figured out what it is. I'm like Jesus
Christ. Then I looked and it was fucking everywhere and it was like going
up mountain sides and shit, I'm like Jesus Christ. That can't be good.
That's if I can see it from like five miles away, which is
what I was seeing. You're growing up a mountainside like this must be.
I mean, imagine all the natives that it's squelching, you know. And
of course you know, I posted something on the shitty Facebook page that you
know, I with Facebook. I just try to get in and get out.
Just don't fucking because you know they're always trying to hold your attention.
I don't. I don't use my own personal Facebook accounting more. I've just
got the crime pace pace. But I posted it there and like all the
comments were like ms edible, you can eat it, and it's like,
you know, it's not really the point start harvesting it. Then, yeah,
it's not really the point that you can eat it. All right,
that's fucking great that you can eat it, but that's not really the point.
The point is that it's, you know, wrecking an ecosystem. Think
of all if that thing's growing, think of all the other things that can't
be growing, because this is taking all the not to mention moisture, but
all the space. You know. Anyway, but have you are you familiar
with that one? Has that gotten bad? It seems like I probably escape
from agriculture or what I've only seen it pretty much along High eight as you're
leaving Yuma and heading to the east, but then it kind of stops right
around he Will Bend area. The first time I saw it, it was
like right after all the loopings were blooming on the side of the road.
It's like, oh, what the hell is this thing? It kind of
is like a yellow white colors. It's an odd ball looping And then I
got out and yeah, I realized it was a mustard and god damn it,
this is probably from the ag fields. Yeah, it's wild. I
hadn't I hadn't seen it expanding like so far beyond the roadsides. Hopefully,
hopefully it was actually Less Guerrellia cordonii that was out into the hillsides, because
that's like the first mustard that really pops off at this time year. I
know that one super yellow. Yeah, I know, No it was.
It was not and that that that Pisaria or less Corolla whatever they're yea what
we're calling it now. I guess that's a I mean that that it looks
so different. I mean, this thing was fucking in this you know,
Eruka is so much more robust, and it was everywhere. It was like
christ, yeah, we'll get all the the other the other good plant that
it that it could look like is uh liar leaf, jewel flower Stryptanthus cardonaeus.
I wish, I wish, brother, I wish. I'm familiar with
the native mustards. I wish this was this was all aaruka optimistic yeah,
and I mean, well also, but it was like the same. It
was in the understory of the desert, you know, right across the freeway
too, you know, with I mean it was, this was, it
was, This is totally what it was. I was. I was shocked.
I was, and I saw it. I saw it in Baja too,
but it wasn't as abundant like this, you know. But yeah,
funk, it was a it was a drag, but uh, at least
it's edible. So anyway, Okay, so moving on, So let's talk
about glyphosate. So so uh so, you guys, when you guys go
out and you treat buffalo, I mean, first off, have you had
a lot of You've had a lot of success. I guess I would take
it, yeah, because I've heard buffling it. Buffalo takes a kick in
the dick when you spray it with with glyph estate. It just it falls
pretty easily effort, right. Yeah, Typically once you treat it, it
can take anywhere from one week to three weeks to actually show it fully die
off. So it's not like super fast burning it down like naypalm sort of
thing. It's a slow death that it sends it to. That's an enjoyable
one to watch, and usually in about two weeks when you're in the warmer
season, that'll kill it off. In the cooler seasons, we typically are
spraying it when temperatures overnight are above forty so that the plants are actually metabolizing
it properly and able to uptake it and kill so the success we do see
tons of great success in treating it, and especially when you go back year
after year. It's not one of those things where you can just say,
oh, we sprayed this one acre. That's done. We don't have to
come back. The seeds are typically viable for up to five years. So
yeah, if you if you just spray it once and walk away, then
you just wasted your time. You need to spray it and then follow up
on it. Make sure any new ceilings that are coming back. You know,
you just do a quick little spot spray much less germination the year after
you've treated it. It's not like it just erupts back into life after after
you've treated it. Not all the seeds Germany, and especially when you're doing
herbicide treatments, it still has that canopy of its dead parents hanging around and
creating that that shade canopy. So it's not getting that that photoblastic response to
the seed that's not germinating as readily so and even thicker stands of buffalo grass.
It's own better suppression of that next cohort of individuals growing up. Yeah,
so let's talk about that, because it's I think a lot of people
don't really understand how glyphisate works, and I'm certainly not an expert in it.
I just know that it does, and that you want it to be
warmer, you want it to be like a hot, a hot, bright
day for it to really get absorbed by the plant and kill it. And
to be clear, especially for anyone who's you know, having a panic attack
right now and is so disappointed that we're talking about this, we're not talking
about you know, we're not advocating using glyphisate with GMO crops in large scale
agriculture. We're talking about using it to control invasive species. Those are two
completely different things. I mean, I think a lot of people forget that.
They're like glyphisate monsanta, what do you at shell for monsantos? Well,
well, no, we're not using it on crops is fucking insane.
We're talking about using it for invasive species, you know, for targeted invasive
species removal, to prevent you know that the wholesale destruction of ecosystems and the
reduction of plant diversity. But but but how it worked. I mean,
so when you're spraying it, you want it to be like basically like that
a warm, bright day, right, Yeah, that's right, so that
it gets absorbed by plant to be able to metabolizing, doing its photosynthetic activity,
absorbing it and taking it down into its roots so that it can start
to break down its processes and eventually cause it to become susceptible to dying.
And it seems like in a bunch of different studies that part of how it's
dying is it's becoming susceptible to pathogens in the soil that are able to invade
it and finally kill it off. Amazing, So it's kind of like a
one two punch. Oh, it's amazing. So it's because I haven't actually
read any in depth any of the papers on it. But but you know,
obviously if it's if it's cool outside, then the plant's not really especially
these these grasses that are adapted to really hot arid zones, they're they're kind
of shutting down. They're kind of not dormant, but they're not as photosynthetically
active as they would be when it's hotter, especially since they're you know,
C four plants not C three plants. They you know, they're kind of
evolved for the heat. Yeah, and in that case, it usually does
take a little bit longer for them to actually fully die. So you'll have
to wait about twenty one days generally when it's in the cooler winter months before
it fully dies off. Whereas you spray it in ninety to one hundred degree
temperatures and that thing is showing death in seven days. So someone someone who's
got a parcel of land, a small parcel, and they're trying to get
rid of buffalo grass, and they want to go in and weed whack at
first, and spray it. That doesn't that's not really advisable. Is it.
So I've I'm big into integrated pest management and trying to become creative and
treating these plants. It is a strategy that I've implemented. Just weed whacking
it is not going to do anything. If you just go out and weed
whack it, that's just like a big herb before coming and grazing it.
It's going to grow right back. But if you're in a stand that's waist
high, chest high, you know that sucks to have to try and spray
that. So if you come in, do a weed whacking, chop it
down so that it's like three or four inches tall, and then know this
plant is going to re sprout because the sun's baking it again. It has
a bunch of soil moisture. Now it's going to regrow. So it's just
like simulating its its habitat and kenya. You cut it down now it starts
sending up really active, lively growth. Then you can come back and spot
spray all of that and you use ten percent the herbicide that would be required
if you're spraying plants that are waist high, you know, right, but
you want you want some surface there. I mean, obviously you don't want
to whack it. You need to let it regrow a little bit so that
there's actual leaf blade to get doused the herbicide and absorb it right right,
And it has to be green, actively growing. You can't go and spray
some cinessed plants that are tan. If you spray them, it's just wasting
chemical, putting unnecessary chemical into the environment, and it's doing nothing. That
plant's not going to uptake it. You get that bright lmey green buffalo grass
leaves. Those are what you want to look for, and that's what you
want to spray. Yeah, And so what is your what's your opinion then
on glyphisa and what's the other one that frequently gets used, tricloperiman. What's
your opinion on these things? And obviously they're there, they are toxic,
but I don't think glyphussate is a kin to depleted uranium. You know,
like so many people in the comment section tend to say it is. I
mean, they really treat it like it's you know, it's agent orange here.
It's kind of wild, but none of them really seem to understand how
it works. What's your opinion on their toxicity? I mean, obviously it's
not ideal, but having these plants here in the first place isn't ideal,
That's right. H So GLCA sate. I address it like any other chemical.
It's a you better protect yourself, so wearing all the ppe that's necessary,
wearing nitrial gloves. You know, if you're in a big stand in
you're spraying it, wearing like a N ninety five mask or something so that
you're minimizing. So you'resure, right, yeah, So when you get back
to the car or the attrition, if you're huffing nitrous in a car,
that's fine, But then if you're just kidding. I've only ever taken nitrous
in the fucking tennis office and I didn't like it. Okay, I felt
like being drunk. But do you wear a taivex suit when you go out
there? No, bo, you could, you could if you want.
You know what I've always wanted to do. We're going on a fucking tangent
here. You need to you know what, Tony emmerlying on you to fucking
rain me. And if I get too wild, all right, if I
get it, you know, if I really get too annoying, you rain
me and I won't be offended. Right, we're friends already, but but
uh uh consider you a friend already even though we just met. But I'd
love to wear a TIEVEX suit and go out in like a fucking take in
fest that area and just see how many I can pick up and then just
you know, come back to the car and have like a friend spray me
with permeterron or something, you know, And they sounds nice. I just
want to I just saw it sounds pretty sweaty. Yeah, I just want
to tieax suit. So anyway, so you guys, so you put the
full ppe on. You're wearing a backpack sprayer. Uh, and you guys
wear masks, I mean you wearing N ninety five's or what. And for
spraying in a big crazy uh waist high infestation. Yes, but again it's
not necessary. It's just recommended so that you're not breathing in any of it
and smelling it. If you look at the literature, there's been absurd amount
of studies on glyphosate on what its toxicity is, what's the exposure for people
that are working in fields and in ag fields, And then they have all
of their mouse and rat studies where they give them like absurd quantities and have
them drink it and all this stuff, and the carcinogenic effect of glyphosate is
almost nonexistent or extremely low. So it's pretty well accepted by all of the
agencies of the world, So Canadian Pesticide Management Regulatory Agency, the European Commission,
the who you know, all of these different groups have done all of
their own studies. So it's not just the US that's doing the study and
saying, oh, it's safe. It's been studied just to the ends of
the earth and people have come back with the same conclusion that it's very unlikely
to have carcinogenic effects. It's it's so I'm not I'm not just going to
be selling my soul to Monsanto. We also you fucking when how did they
buy you out? Yeah, it's it's always the same ship anyway. I
wish I wish they would fund our work so that we can go I fucking
take you know, should pay me. I'm I'm advocatingly to use and fucking
uh they should help us purchase this fucking land parcel we're trying to get,
uh for uh, you know, cactus restoration down here in South Texas.
I'm always advocatingly to say for you know, specific use, the targeted use.
But but I mean that's the thing that's so frustrating some of some of
the concerns, like the critical thinking portion of this. You know, it's
like, I'm I'm going to read this stuff. I'm going to accept what
they've shown in their studies, but I'm still going to protect my ass.
Do not just be like, oh, okay, not going to be carc
doing yourself right. How many times in the age of experimentation, right,
how many times have we heard that that it's not going to be carcinogenic.
I mean, look at all this ship with the pea face, you know,
forever chemicals that are everywhere. That's the other depressing part of it is
is how much glyphosate is in all of the ship that we consume and use.
So anything that has canola oil, you know, all of these these
round up ready plants that they've frankenstein together, and uh, they douse in
glyphosate because glyphosate doesn't kill those plants around them. That's insane. And now
it's like it's in your canola oil, it's in your your soybean, it's
detective many things are those detectable. And I've keep you. I get all
these news articles that suggested to met it and from especially on, you know,
I got to get papers suggested to me because of my history and you
know internet history, and uh, I mean, yeah, glyphosate is detected
in everybody. It is because one of the one of the concerns that I
have about it, based on the way that its chemistry works, is it's
a it's a key lator, which means that it's it's binding up to positive
minerals. It's uh, if you look at the molecule of glyphosate, it
has three negatively charged polar areas. So originally it was developed in the fifties
as a water softening agent. You could run it through your pipes and and
it's going to remove your your coppers and your magnesiums or manganese and all of
these. Yeah, it's going to clean your tubes. So they were like,
okay, well it does that. And then there's also some some microbial
interaction that it has, and that's that's the part that I have concerned about.
And then you know, it's like we're consuming all of these products that
have glyphasate in it, and it could be screwing up our gut microbiome.
It may not be causing like carcinogenic effects from glyphasate itself and using the product,
but it could be disrupting the balance of your guts micro flora especially.
But we're taking it, We're we're taking it. It's such we're being exposed
to. It's such large doses when we don't even have a choice about it.
That's what's fucking nuts. Like, unless you're unless you're eating organic,
you know, which is exponentially more expensive. I mean you're, yeah,
you're you're basically just taking whatever they give you. That's what's nuts. I
mean, it's I don't think using it in you know, in a in
invasive species removal or in a yard they get rid of permutagrass. I gotta
go spray my friend's yard actually because it's I just redid there. They watched
Jack, my old dog for me sometimes when I go out of town,
because he's really getting old. And so I was like, I'm going to
put a native plant garden in. Let me kill your fucking law and they
were like, ohka, sure, So we did it. And I gotta
go spray with Bermuda because it's coming back from we didn't cut deep enough.
But uh, but you know, I don't think those small applications are what's
bad. I think it's I think it's when you're like dousing millions of square
miles with this ship. Yeah, and and the round up ready crops.
I mean it's I'm I'm sure on their own the genetic mind, whatever genetic
modifications is probably not that bad. I don't know, maybe it is,
but it's it's the fact that you're you're genetically modifying them fork life or saying
when you see you know, seeing that says no GMO in there, that
basically means this shit got doused with fucking roundup and you're eating it, you
know, And it's like, I don't really want to eat it. I
don't, I don't. I don't mind using it, but I don't really
want to eat it, you know. And that's what sucks too, is
that you can't really find you know, You've got to parse through so much
bad info out there to get anything. That's because everything you know is either
oh no, it's fine, it's totally fine, there's nothing wrong with it
at all, or it's you know, this ship is the devil and it's
going to kill you. And how dare you even mention its name? You
know from you know permes or you know new age or hippie whatever the fuck.
I don't know. I'm just putting these stupid labels on there. But
you know, it's so hard to get good info. And that's what's really
frustrating about all this is you can't really like I just I just want like
stable, neutral information on this. So that's why I'm having this talk with
you. Yeah, boys can dream, but but you look at you look
at the most the majority of the studies, and what their conclusions are is
that this stuff is not really absorbed by mammals. It passes through you.
You urinate back out life estate when you do absorb it so or when you
ingest it. So it's not something that is building up inside of people.
It pretty much passes through you and you piss it out. It's the concern
of what is it potentially doing to the microbiota. That's a that's a real
concern, and that's what people, you know, maybe we need to take
more some probiotics, you need a fecal transplant, take a manganese They got
to stick a tube up your tube and put put poop into That's what the
fecal transplant I would do. I would I'll take a ship. I'll take
someone else's ship. That's the that's the gem if you could do that,
because then you're not just getting you know, one or two species of probiotic.
You're getting all the good stuff. But you got to make sure I
want like that pristine human feces, like the stuff that hasn't been adulterated in
the first world. You know, if you would get like tribal indigenous ship
or something, because that's not going to have any antibiotics. You know,
that's like the intact human microbiome, Like that is you know, I mean,
that's wasted opportunities by the hippies in the in the permaculture. They need
to go, I could go cultivate their microbiomes. Yeah, they go former
commune somewhere, you know, and and and just totally live off the grid,
and then their ship will become priceless. You know. Sounds like a
great startup. No, but seriously, if I can go to a clinic
and get like a shit transplant for uh, you know, just like pay
ten bucks, and be like all right, cool, you know I'd do
it. I mean, well, we live in a broken healthcare system,
so it wouldn't be ten bucks and'd be like twelve hundred, but you know
what I mean, yeah, if you're lucky, Yeah, god man,
I would. Man. I was in Mexico with Uh and my friend Surgery.
I was talking to him like, what's the healthcare like down here?
It's probably way better than way more affordable and easier than you know, it's
in the US, and and he's like, oh, yeah, it's it's
it's it's way better than the United States. I was like, god damn,
how the fuck? But how do you really And he's like, yeah,
it's I go to the doctor. It's cheap. There's no way.
Doctor just you know, really easy. You know, isn't trying to like
upsell me anything. Uh. And then I get a prescription and I go,
I mean, it's done, and you know, and that's what Alan
was saying too, because he's spent the shit ton of time in Mexico.
I was like, fuck, can you imagine, like I have to go
to the ERC. What fake name am I going to use today? Like?
What what fake name am I going to use fake birthday and I give
him my real address, so I can I always have something to laugh at
when I get the bill, you know, yeah, but uh yeah,
it's fucking you know. If I ever get a cancer diagnosical, one of
one of the one of the questions or statements you'll get from somebody is well,
why don't you use something that is like vinegar? You know? Oh
yeah, it's not vinegar. So acetic acid is what they're talking about,
and vinegar is like at a five percent, whereas the quote unquote herbicides that
they have that are made of acetic acid are like twenty five to thirty percent.
But they are toxic, like they will have extremely detrimental effects on your
eyes, your spraining acid into the air. There was like true corrosion problems
and applicators for using it. So I love it. Glyphis, by a
comparison, has an incredibly low toxicity. The environs seen all kinds of ship
in the comment section, why don't you use salt? You? When you
use salt them? You want me to pour salt on my fuckings? Do
you realize what you You want me to salinate my fucking soil because you're afraid
of glyphisate because you don't know anything really like that really salt? Do you
want me to use fucking you know any idea what that does. I've had
people tell me that they'd rather use gasoline, and it's like, what are
you talking about, Like that's a known carcinogen, that is a big time
carcinogen, and you're you're totally okay with that. It's just it's the no
critical thought processes and it's like, this is a common use item. I
don't need to be certified to uh to pour gasoline. You know that's fine.
It's like, no, you're just not thinking through this and it's just
crazy. But that's the product that you can use and that has low toxicity.
It's not toxic to the animals and the environment. And it's just it's
crazy. You know, don't use it near water areas if you have certain
surfactants in it. But it's it's the surfactants that are in the the herbicide
mix at that point that are going to be harmful to amphibianacracy. I mean
that people, That's what I tell people. So I'm like, you're exposed
to more carcinogens coming out of the tailpipe of your fucking Subaru than you are
from from you know, using spot applications. That g life essay, like
why are you coming out of that new car smell? Oh? I love
that new car smell. That's the worst. I hate that. That's the
worst. I leave my windows cracked. The two hundred volatile organic compounds that
they've recorded, including frode and all these things like just known class one carcinogens,
and it's what are we okay with being exposed two? Because everybody else
is doing it and you're not thinking about it. But people get triggered when
they hear glypha sate and they're not willing to do any research because their TikTok
told them that it wasn't good for them, so, you know, just
just go with what they said instead of actual research. Yeah, and so
everybody gets dumber. You know. It's it's like the fucking that's the general
decline of Americana. It's gotta be like the work of a foreign entity or
something, I don't know, you don't get right, or just good old
like Reagan defundaitalism. Yeah, I think just like the eighties, like Reagan.
I blame Reagan and Iran, like, just defund the libraries, defund
the mental health hospitals, defund the fucking schools, defund the post office,
and enrich your corporate friends. Yeah, make people dumb. Yeah, well
now they're doing that. But that's I mean. The banning book thing to
me is just it's like the border the border wall thing. I mean,
there's a there's an issue with you know, immigration and whatever the fuck.
You know, that's I get that to an extent by but uh, but
the border wall is obviously performative. The book banning is obviously performative. It's
just a fucking it's a it's a rallying tool for that side, you know.
So, but it's it's just I look around at US society and I'm
just like shaking my head. I'm like, Jesus fucking christ Man, I
got to get out of here. So this is just it's not looking good.
It's not looking good. And then, of course, I mean I
always go on about it, but we've we've built our whole we've ruined our
whole landscape with just complete car dependent, you know, infrastructure that's so bad
for physical health and for fucking metabolic diseases. Not to mention emotional health and
connection and community. You know how you're gonna build a community in a fucking
traffic jam and a freeway interchange. So yeah, and that's that's one of
the that's one of the goals of Tucson Audubon is to try and build community
and make people like bring people out into nature and realize, oh shit,
look at that bird, Like that is crazy. I've never seen that bird
before. You know, It's like, yes, if you you can,
you can build these native habitats within your yard. You know, you can
make these little islands throughout this just human development of destruction and create these little
pockets where you get birds, butterflies, flies, premantus, whatever it may
be, coming to you and you have these little hopping spots. And then
we're out there doing the work in some of our natural resource areas that are
all around us, whether it's and by a City of Tucson, Pima County,
Forest Service, National Park Service, there's so much good natural spaces and
public lands that are yours. You're a taxpayer here maybe you know, but
you have these lands available to you. And that's one of the great things
about Tucson. We are just absolutely so sounded by don't even get me started
on a fucking nice twocent as I went. My friend Leo lives there and
my Frank Curtis, and you know, I've been going there on and off
for the last ten years. It's so pleasant. That's where I would relocate
to if I was ever able to leave Texas. But for the time being,
for family reasons, I'm stuck here on the Mexican border, slowly losing
my mind. But as long as I get out once in a while,
and it's fine, you know. But but yeah, I think, you
know, I don't know. It's it's fucking so you guys go out,
So what is it? You're mostly focusing on Buffalo? What are some other
bad ones? Are they mostly grasses? Do you guys get the brassica turn
of forty eye? That's a harm mustard too. Yeah, I do that
as as some weekend pleasure activities for myself, walking around the neighborhoods pulling out
Sahara mustard and ripping it out. So that's really bad down and uh,
it's down in Cabeza Prieda National Wildlife Refuge, was one of the places I
was introduced to it and it's encroaching on some of the dune have a tat
out there by the pentacotta lava flow and just like consuming those those native ecosystems
and just really rare plants that grow on these sand dunes around volcanic fields,
and it's causing hell down there. So it's it's slowly spreading throughout the area.
We have it here in Tucson and spots. This year it really seemed
to kind of erupt from our winter rains and our dry summer. But one
of the biggest plants are not the biggest plant, but one of the biggest
concerns that we're focused on right now is a plant called stink net onca Siphon
philuiferra. That's a caposite, right that I heard of it. It's this
little aster from from South Africa and it's been slowly spreading from San Diego,
where it was first detected in the eighties up to a Maricopa CA. And
it has just absolutely conquered Maricopa County. If you look at some of the
the publications last year from a High Country News about stink net, it looks
like a slime mold just spreading all over the open desert floor and uh this
plant has human health concerns as well as the invasive ability to just smother out
our annual plants. It's can cause rashes and people. It has a fallen
that causes headaches, irritability has been shown anecdotally to cause uh asthmatic reactions and
people. And the areas of secondary metabolize, the secondary metabolites and some of
those South African composites is fucking nuts. It's I mean, there are a
lot of them are really glandually and I've seen them all on habitat. They're
really cool. They're fucking awesome in South and South Africa. And again it's
probably the coevolution with you know, herbivores or whatever was out there. I
have seen some fucking crazy shit in South Africa. You know, there's like
there's that Iris species that produces truncate leaves that look like they've already been chewed
down, like they brown at the end of it. It's a Bobby Anna
cuney oata. I mean that the things that these plants had to come up
with, which of course is not how evolution works. It's just me anthropomorphizing.
But the things that these plants had to come up with in response to
the grazing pressures they were under. Is fucking nuts. And some of these,
some of these asters, these asteraci are just god damn. I mean,
I think is in Chrysanthemum from I know a lot of the a lot
of these. There's a whole tribe or I think it's a subfamily or what.
But I did a podcast on it with a lady who studies that tribe
down there and astray. It's super species rich. It's like a whole clade
of evolutionary clade of ast racy that produces these glandular Like you touch the plant
and your hands come off oily and those second there's just a little bastard and
it really does stink, like as if you were manually removing it, Like
your leather gloves are just awful smelling, so you like throw them in your
car and you're like, oh, man, I smell like crap. But
it kind of like slaps you on the nose with this pungent smell. Some
people say it smells good, some people say it smells bad. But after
you've been in it for fifteen minutes, it is just a really annoy Could
you convince that, could you convince the etsy, which is to make some
sort of pincture verbal doesn't have any Well, unfortunately, it seems like they
were doing that and spreading it, and they were they were calling it globe
Camo meal and just like selling it was like farmers markets and yeah, and
it's it's like it is like slightly toxic. It's not deadly, but it's
not going to make you feel good. And that was one of the reasons
why it was spreading, because it was it's, oh, it's so pretty.
Look at it. It's like a little little yellow globe. But Tucson
Autubon we created this website called stinknet dot org so we could try and track
the spread of it throughout the guys. They're really good on a pr to
callin its thinking that that's a good because it's got kind of a it's actually
an Afrikaans word, is my understanding. Yeah, so it's like it just
ruins the palatability of meat and like goat milk. So they don't they don't
even like it in South Africa. It's just just a bad little plant.
But when it's not being regulated by any of its natural enemies, it's just
spreading like crazy throughout the Southwest, and Maricopa has just been overtaken by it.
Wow. And my only hopes is that our predominant wind direction of to
the to the northeast just keeps it away from Tucson. And when does it
flower? What's it? Is? It an annual? Yeah, it's an
annual. So it's just starting to bolt right now. And we've only seen
a few plants that have started to go to flour. So we're trying to
get out with a bunch of different groups. We work with the Arizona Sonoran
Desert Museum, and we work with National Park Service and Pima County and really
just trying to get a strangle hold on this. So but we can't do
it all. It requires the community to get involved. So that's why we
created this website so that anybody can go out and do it. It's a
whole hell of a lot easier to pull this plant than buffalo grass. You
know, it's just your little weak annual root and you just need to pluck
it out. But because it's an aster, it produces so many seeds if
you let one go to sea, and we have to be able to follow
up on it. One plant could easily produce you know, five to ten
thousand seeds, depending on how robust it is, you know, because each
one of those old yellow buttons obviously it can produce one hundred seeds. But
yeah, I've seen acosiphins of fruiticosies and I don't know, that's not the
same species, right, same genus, different species. Yeah, I've seen
that in South Africa. But god damn, that's what you know, that's
what So this was intentionally planted to it kind of escaped horticulture. It seems
like it just appeared at a lake west or east of San Diego, and
the people that were working there noticed it on one side of the lake in
the mid eighties, and then the next year it spread to the other side,
and they're like, oh, wow, that's something we should research,
let's let's watch this, let's monitor it. And then it eventually blew up
and it's been spreading. So it was likely brought over by some tourists coming
from South Africa visiting that lake and it was on their their shoe or and
their luggage or something and got seated there and then slowly spread. But then
it's it's probably been then spread Americopa and then people, Yeah, then people
got really happy about it. I've never seen it in like in any horticulture
or nurseries or anything like that other than growing in a pot from some other
plants. Just why we need native plant education, man, I'm serious,
Like people need to be aware of which something like that would be impossible with
Texas because that would trigger a lot of people on the right obviously. You
know, anything, I feel like anything science related, then this natural science
related is you know they've view as politically charged it, but they would you
know, turn it down. But I feel like, especially you know,
Oh West, I mean it's like native plant I mean everywhere native plant education.
People should be aware of what's native there and what evolved there, why
it's there, why it behaves the way it does, what other facets of
that of their ecosystem, the ecosystem that they're a part of now since they
live there, have influenced its evolution, that kind of thing. Because you
know, if people were more excited about that and had a cond text for
it, maybe there'd be less people growing things that can be terribly invasive.
Because I think a lot of people, especially who are into plants, might
you know, might listen. They probably want to do well. They probably
be like, oh, I didn't know, especially if you don't shame them,
if you're just kind of explaining, just try trying and to educate the
people. That's one of the things that ship you fucking you know. That's
one of the things the Tucson Audubon is striving to do. Like we we
have a habitat at Home program where we inform the community about, you know,
the ways that we can conserve our water digging basins using native plants that
use a lot less water. Uh, that are going to attract all of
these cool pollinators and bird species. But uh, you know, just creating
functional and wildlife friendly habitats within a landscape, and it makes your landscape more
resilient to invasion. Like it's it's just so good. And when you do
it in a place like Tucson, you can really see those those impacts so
quickly. I mean, I've been doing this in my yard for like five
years. But i mean I'm a I'm a little bit hardcore because I'm an
in basic plant program manager and I'm obsessed with plants. But I'm pushing like
almost two hundred species in my yard that are regional natives. And it's by
doing simple things like digging a basin to capture the water runoff from the top
of your roof and then just allowing that to soak into your soil instead of
running off into the street. It's it's all sorts of things that can be
done, and it doesn't take a college degree to do it. It just
takes talking to some informed individuals off and then trying. It's like college walks.
People's heads ups at that. But also I think it's just it's soaring
too, because you start to see how all this shit fits together. You
start to see how all these they really are pieces to a puzzle, all
these plants and the insects and the animals they attract. You know, I
have I just have no interest now in planting a lot of non native stuff.
I've got like a sausage tree like Kigelia africana just because it's a you
know, big nonia. Say they're not invasive here at all. They kind
of struggle because it's a little too dry ram But that's like the only thing
I've got that's not from my general region or Mexico. And you know,
as far as I'm willing to go as the Chihuahuan or the Baja yeah eco
types and then bringing them here. But it's like all of our birds and
butterflies know what the hell to do with them when they see it. It's
like, oh, okay, I know how to pollinate that thing. I'm
a humming bird. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. I don't get super
you know, specific with local ecotype. I think it's I understand the importance
and I think it's cool, And that was definitely something we pushed on Killer
Lawn. But the way I view it too, I mean, as long
as it's in the same it's not the same continent in the same general region.
I mean, populations have shifted so much back and forth over time,
with climactic shifts and other you know, other events. It's it's you're generally
okay, the worst invasives, as we've seen, tend to come, or
the very serious invasives tend to come from ecosystems that have been you know,
separated for a long, long long time from here, you know, like
by an ocean or the equator or something. So yeah, when we got
off on the stinknet tangent, you know, you had ask me what other
invasives do we do we work on uh, you know, as a birding
organization, we're focused on ripe Aian habitats. So the areas like our washes
or creeks in our region are being heavily invaded by salt cedars, African sumac,
Siberian elm, tree of heaven? What is africans? What's African sumac?
What is what is that? It's rus lancioleeda. All right, let
me see. Because they changed that genus too. They changed a lot of
these genera because you know, things that were obviously, like I said,
have been separated by that ocean for millions of years were grouped together in the
same genus. So I think they what did they? That's why a lot
of these you know, genus shifts have gone on. Let me see,
Oh, it still is rus lancyleda. Is that it? I think a
series something like that Syria or series is one of the new genuses that it's
going by. Yeah, I saw it. It was really common in a.
Then we just got that one listed on the Arizona noxious weed list,
so hopefully we can stop selling it in nurseries. Now wait, wait,
are you sure, it's ruce, Lancy Aleda because that's a native rus Lancia.
Okay, let's see. Yeah, because Lancy Leda is native. Let
me see russ and that's will tell me what Sersia? Yeah, that's it
Seres after sus Seres is super diverse in South Africa. I saw a lot
of them there. Yeah, Seria lancia. Oh God, was this?
Did this escape horticulture or what was it? Yeah? It was probably brought
here by the U of A back in the thirties and forties, and that's
how a lot of this stuff got brought here. It's like the US Department
of Agriculture and all of these Soil Conservation Service they were trying to find plants
that were drought adapted, and they went all over the world looking for them
because in the late eighteen hundreds we brought all of these cattle and like one
point five million cattle into New Mexico and Arizona because it was really wet during
that late eighteen hundreds period. Then the drought hit, they ate everything on
the land and then eventually about half of them died, so you know,
almost a million cattle dying on the landscape. And then there was no more
vegetation cover, and then the rains came back and just tons of erosion occurred.
That's when a lot of the down cutting of our washes and our and
our creeks occurred because we had these big floods come in and it just the
water sheeted off the landscape. There were no more plants around to stop that
and absorb the water. And then they're like, oh crap, what did
we do, Like we have uh, we have no more cows and we
have no more soil. Let's go search the world for all the most drought
adapted plants. And they did a great job finding all of the best stuff
we need, drouded that we need droaded that good plant. So rather than
look, rather than do it's easiest than look within our region, we're gonna
travel fucking eight thousand miles away. The fucking the arrogance of the European,
the European settlers is just fucking mind. I mean, just just you can
do it faster. If only ecology had been a science in the early eighteen
hundreds, you know, so much shit, so much fucking shit could have
been avoided. I mean, it's just shit for brain. Even if you
don't care about this. Even if you believe that the Earth is only six
thousand years old, everything's been put here for us. You know, there's
a pragmatic there's a pragmatic reason to understand how an ecosystem works, and how
evolution in an ecosystem works, and how vicariance works to separate ecosystems. I
mean, it's yeah, it's it's nuts, man, It's like, yeah,
it's the fucking yeah, I don't know, man. So, but
one of the good things about cutting down trees is takes a lot longer for
a tree to grow than chasing after annuals and stopping their spread, right,
And you can really take take out a lot of invasives in short order.
But you have to be investing in that type of work. You have to
keep going that benefit. Yeah, it's like that with any of this stuff.
It's not just that you hit it once and then anyone who has even
as a garden, those you got to keep going back, man, And
eventually you know, there's less and less every time you go back, and
then eventually there's not any and then you have to go back less. But
you still have to keep going back. It's just the way it is.
It's part of you know, for all the wise guys out there that that
might have some critical thought going on, like oh, well, you're running
a chainsaw. You know, you're huffing gas. Well they're making electric chainsaws
now and we've got a fleet of electric chainsaws. Who's got an issue about
about using a chainsaw? Is that real? Well, I mean, if
you want to talk about like real concerns of using glyc the state or using
a two stroke motor, you know, huffing those fumes like that, that's
a real cause for concern. And it was like something I recognize you're running
you're running a gas chainsaw all day long. It takes a week before you
get that smell out of your nose. Yeah, but I mean it's it's
just one of those things that you have to there. There are better ways
now now we have a lot better electric equipment. So there's that sort of
unnecessary exposure the electric right the day and age we live in, unfortunately,
there's no there's no purity. I mean, we're all gonna get cancer.
We're all breathing poisoned. So that's right, that's my heart. If you
want to if you want to get get going with it, like you don't
have to deal with the carburetor issue. Like we used to have so many
challenges. We got the high temperatures, low temperatures in the morning, and
like your your saws were just getting bogged down. But we've transferred over to
this electric feet fleet and all we have to do is switch out our battery
pack and then keep rolling. Yeah, come so question engine suck for tools,
I gotta it's pretty sweet. I got a weed whacker yesterday that I
got to use for because I still get guinea grass in my yard and in
other places that I manage, and and it's and even just some of the
natives native you know plants I like, but they just get too out of
control cause it's you know, we live in a humid climate. And so
I'll just we whack them too, like maintain a path. It's fucking great.
And I had a combustion one and it sucked. It was a pain
in the ass. Maybe not want to do it. And now I got
I got an electric one. I was like, this is fucking great.
It's so easy, and I can do it at like ten o'clock at night
too. I'm not going to piss off my neighbor. It doesn't make any
like this is why the fuck? Like it's but again, like I feel
like in a place like Texas, there's so much dumb, meat headed ship
around combustion engines despite how how illogical they are. You know, they stink,
they're loud as fuck. They're a pain in the ass to maintain.
If you leave the gas oil mixture in one of those engines for more than
a month, it can fuck up the engine technically, I mean it's yeah.
The so the lithium ion chainsaws aren't that bad. Really, they weren't
great. We've been been rolling less, I'm for almost two years now.
We buy them from this company called GreenWorks, and they've just been kicking ass.
Damn. That's sick. That sounds kind of cool. It's really fun.
And the other great part about it is like, yeah, improves that
sort of safety for the crew. When you stop using it, you don't
have this this machine that's running, like you can hear everything that's going on
a lot better, So if you're screwing up on a cut, you have
a much better chance of hearing one of your teammates yelling at you, like
hey, get the hell out of there than you do. If you're running
a motor right next to you and you can't hear anything, that's fun.
If there's any way to work smarter and better, we're looking into it.
So it's like for anybody who just thinks we're going out there willing nelly,
just killing shit. You know what's nice too, is you can get so
you could get one of those electric chainsaws. Then if you live in an
area where they're playing Bradford Pairs or any other you know, non the CRP
myrtles or anything, you could just go And I'm not saying you, of
course, would not condone this because you're with an organization. I don't have
a Riverosus. But you go out there and just start destroying Bradford Pairs in
the dead of night and no one would really. You know, you're now
running a combustion engine. That's fucking great. I didn't even think that was
the first thing that comes to my mind. Applod Gorilla, Gorilla activities.
Just go down there, just start cutting, just start thirty Bradford paars.
Thirty street trees were damaged in Charlotte, North Carolina, last night play an
unknown vandal that'd be fucking awesome. That's great. That's a fucking great idea.
Anybody listening needs to do that. Go good. How much of these
electric chainsaws? I mean, they're still pretty pricey. They're like three hundred
to five hundred dollars, and then you got to get batteries and whatnot.
But I mean, we're we're working for a full team for a ten hours.
But listen, if you cut down three hundred file fast. Yeah,
if you cut down three hundred or five hundred Bradford pairs, that machine's already
paid for itself. That's a dollar a tree that you've vandalized, so let
me Yeah. And then the other thing. When you have invasive trees,
they re sprout. So most of these trees you do need to treat them
with herbicide on their stumps, but you're just treating, you know, right
on the outer edge of the tree, right where the cambium and floam is.
You don't have to spray the whole thing down. And we use this
little herbicide dabb or thing. It's kind of like a we call it the
bingo bopper, but it looks like a foreign blaster, yeah, or like
a shoe polish. Yeah. It looks like, dab it right around the
cambium and the asylum and kill that plant. And we use like way less
herbicide than we did before when you were paint brushing it on and you're not
walking around with an open container of concentrated herbicide. Yeah, so it looks
like it looks like a little bingo bingo bingo bopper. Yeah, okay,
I'm looking Green Works eighteen inch electric chainsaw. That's the one you like.
That's the one that's the good one. This is what's being recommended by gear
junkie. Yeah, get a commercial grade one, you know, don't get
the one for your back house area. This is nice, man. You
could cut down so many inspired death all throughout the landscape plan, so many
Bradford pairs, so many calorie pairs, anybody on the East coast. Man,
if someone can actually do this, I'll mail you something nice. If
someone could do this and photographic evidence, either in the form of photos of
the damage you've done, and I won't I won't share it with anybody,
of course, or or send me like a copy of an arrest report.
I will send you something nice, something really nice, like shirts, books,
whatever. Shit fucking drawing. I'll do a piece of art for this.
I'll make a peek. That's great, that's really cool. God,
they got to be so they're quiet as hell. Huh. That's so quiet
you can even run them. And sometimes we'll hear birds chirping around in the
trees afterwards, Like that was just something that was never happening when we had
our chainsaws are so loud it's crazy. I remember like hiking out west of
the mountains, you could hear him fucking two ridges over, you know.
Yeah. We have a project coming up with the Forest Service in the National
Forest Foundation in Sabino Canyon here in Tucson, and it's like running a gas
chainsaw in a canyon would just be so obnoxious to terrible. It's bumming out
every living thing within five miles. And then down with an electric motor like
just only has noise when you're cutting and then it's quiet. That's cool to
know. I never took him seriously, I mean the only I just you
know, I heard his story once about some a friend who hired some dude
take down a tree and Humboldt County, California, and the guy came over.
He was some tweaker he was. He had like an electric chainsawn.
He was like dragging a generator around. But that's I just I couldn't you
know, I never really took electric chainsaws seriously, Like it just seemed like
it just seems that seemed like such a job that you need a combustion engine
for, you know. Bute's that's cool, man, they get the job
done. All right, Well you got another ten minutes or because I'm not
done yet, I want to keep certain going on. So so so you
guys when you go out and deal with have you gotten any pushback for using
glyc essate on buffalo grass or what? Oh? Certainly we've had all sorts
of people just talking crap at us, you know. But at the same
time, you also get a bunch of people that are like, damn,
you guys are doing good work, like really impressed with what the hell you
guys are doing. And like you've mentioned it before, like using a scalpel
in this sort of environment. We are training our crews on native and non
native plants, So are not out there spraying the native grasses. We're letting
those things live and just spraying the non native buffle grass. So when people
that are aware of what we're doing. See it's like, holy shit,
you guys are making a big impact. Like we go out and do manual
removal, and we see the work that your crews have done with spray treatments.
It's phenomenal. And you can cover ten times as much ground when you're
doing spray work versus manual removal because these plants aren't easy to take out.
So but you definitely have people who are like, oh, what the hell
you're poisoning the world. And it's like, okay, well you want to
come out here and help me, Like you want to volunteer and come do
some some manual removals. You can't. You can't pull a buffle either.
You can't pull it. It's fucking in there. It's lodged in there.
Yeah, you need tools in order to pull it. You need to like
we go out and do manual removals and areas and you need to bring a
geo pick with you or a rock bar. Your soil too. You pull
up so much soil, anything that's next to it you pull up. Whereas
like if I always if I'm spraying and there's like a a cactus or a
species or something that I want to protect that's next to the buffalo. I'll
hold up like a piece of cardboard, you know, just like as if
I was like spray painting your something. Well block the one thing and then
just spray the buffle whatever, you know, and it generally works. I've
never had any I've never lost anything unintentionally. But even if that happens,
it's like, well, you know, still yes, And you bring up
a great point. That's one of the things that people are also often concerned
about, like, oh, what are you gonna do if you're spraying like
an ocatillo, or you're spraying a solaro, a barrel cactus, whatever it
may be. We have sprayed buffalo grass that's fully surrounding these plants, and
you have a little bit of incidental spray that's getting on the base of these
plants, the native perennials, It doesn't kill them. It's not the same
sort of chemistry that's occurring, you know. And also the solaros they have
thick cuticles where they're not absorbing it the same way that a leafy green annual
or a grass does you know, going to kill your annual plants around a
buffalo grass spray area, but even something like Ambrosia ambrosio eighties canyon ragweed,
Like, I sprayed the hell out of that plant one time, and I
was like, Okay, you're going to be the plant that I'm going to
follow up on because you look like you're going to die now. Yeah.
Came back to that plant a year later, still growing in the same exact
place. That's such a great species too. Man, the Ambrosia man ambrosia
is the ragweeds are super species rich. The whole genus is really species rich
out West, like in Baja there's that's Ambrosia quina potiafolio is one of the
dominant plants and a lot of the northern Cardone deserts. It's crazy. And
there's then there's Ambrosia bryantia, and there's so many as Ambrosia mono gyra.
Yeah, manozira there, it's it's a it's a huge genus. The triangle
leaf burst age that's one of the Ambrosia deltoidia. That's one of the best
nurse plants for swars. That thing can grow for seventy years really, so
yeah, just mind boggling. Only like two feet tall, yeah, and
maybe three feet wide. Oh yeah, I see it. It's a great
little nurse plant for a baby sowarrow, and it's just one of those plants
that is oftentimes overlooked as just another gray green plant of the desert. But
it is such a badass. Wait. I bet allergy seasons are pain in
the ass though, because they're all wind pollinated, or most I think most
of them are. I don't know there are there any ambrosias the insects that
are bee pond I think all of those ambrosias are wind pollinated, at least
all the ones in our area. I've seen bees collecting pollen from, like
I think just feral honey bees. I've never seen anything native bees, but
I've seen them collecting pollen from the staminate flower heads. But yeah, it's
a cool group. How long does this so a somorrow? I mean,
when you've got a little see how long does it take for them to get
to like six feet tall? Have you seen it? Can it happen in
a lifetime or I'm not really familiar with the growth cycle. That's so super
slow, and that is one of the massive challenges of buffalo grass invasions.
So suarrows are really slow growers, and you can actually see it on the
landscape. I was born in nineteen eighty five. In nineteen eighty three,
there was this huge al Nino year and you'll hear all the old timers talking
about how the Pantano Wash broke and the bridges were breaking and there were all
these floods. But it was also a great year for the desert plants and
all of the production that occurred. So when you go on the landscape,
the suarrows that are about thigh to hip height, those are forty year old
souarrows. That's crazy. Holy shit. Wow. Yeah. So it's just
mind boggling how slow it takes for them to grow. So if a place
gets invaded with with non native grasses and they're out competing all the native stuff
and has this fire regime, that plant is never going to get that opportunity
to mature. Yeah, and it takes them about seventy years before they start
putting out fruits and flowers, and that's when they start putting on their arms.
So it's going to take seventy years before you're getting that next generation to
potentially be created. That's yeah, they are slow as fuck. So that's
not like I always figured that was a little embellished when you'd you know,
reading like an informational kiosk. It takes you know, it takes eighty years
for But that's that's legit because I know, like pakisiris prinkly, like the
cardones, they grow a little bit faster. Like you can see them reach
a decent height within a decade, you know, I mean decent like you
know, you can see significant growth. But tomorrow's wow, that's yeah,
soworrow after a decade, it's lucky. If it's a softball to a football
sized Jesus plant. They're tiny and then they die out when they're about two
hundred So most of the suaros in the Tucson area top out around one hundred
and ninety. The swallows out near the Yuma Deserts grow a little bit beyond
two hundred years, but it's not much. So can they date them,
I mean, our bond is able to date them out there, you know?
Or how do they figure that? Not? To my knowledge, I
think it's just mostly from photo sets that have been done. Yeah. Yeah,
well that's fucking that's that's I guess that's the only way. Yeah,
just seeing like, how what's up with some of the ones that have just
been collapsing? Do you know what's up with that? I mean it's uh,
I know the heat. Well, no, you hear all sorts of
things, and it's like some of it is just that is what they do.
They're old, They're gonna die, one of the things. And they
really when you have a lot of soarrow's fallovers during the monsoon season when we
have high wind and huge soil moisture. So somarrows are really shallow rooted plants
where they send out their roots in lateral growth that's only like three inches deep,
maybe six inches deep, because they want to get that little bit of
soil moisture that comes in those rains, and they don't have a deep tap
root, so if it gets really windy sometimes they can just topple over and
that causes a lot of death to them throughout the region. But wasn't there
a part of the natural cycle? Right? But there wasn't I supposedly,
and again I couldn't tell. There's like a clickbait story what. But there
was a bunch of attrition in Phoenix, like the Phoenix area, which I
assume is probably grant that Phoenix is a fucking heat island. Yeah, but
you know, in some of these things, I never know what to say
about those things because it as a hell hole also, and they grow out
in the coofa and all of those deserts where you know, the temperature doesn't
get below one hundred even for the nighttime lows for like one hundred straight days.
So I never know what to say about those things. That Versus if
something's planted like next to a gas station and a bank and it's surrounded by
asphole, I'm sure that's gonna fucking you know. And if you've you've transplanted
it from somewhere else. If you transplant a large sowarow and you didn't take
any of its roots with it, it's pretty much just sitting there in place,
dying. But it's it's a big old battery and it has all this
life within it and it's still able to look like it's okay for four years.
It doesn't have any roots going out. Yeah, so you know,
you'll have some landscape er sell it to you to put a two year guarantee
on it, you know, and it's like, yeah, in four years,
I think it's just gonna crap out and die. Is there's there's still
a lot of sprawl going on in that region. Huh oh yeah. Yeah.
It's something that I've I've seen go in my whole life. It strikes
me. It's so nuts, Like at what point does it stop, especially
I don't know, in a desert, Like how the funk? How is
this? How are you going to do this? You know, like is
this what's the long term forecast for how sustainable all the water for it?
Either? Yeah? So yeah, anyway, well I guess why you gotta
That's why you got to do the things at your house that can conserve some
water, get your water from your roof, you know, do all the
things in your landscape to try and be smarter. But uh, I just
wish, I just wish there was a way to just put just say no
more, Like you can't take any more land that hasn't already been developed for
agriculture or something. I mean, it'll never happen. It's a fucking pipe
pream. But enough is enough. You just can't do this in the US
anymore. It's crazy, especially in some of the areas in the Southwest,
And that's what That's what I meant by stop humanity especially, it's stop humanity
from fucking this cancerous behavior. It's just just stop, you know, just
stop it. Yeah, because it's it's wild. But I don't understand why
no one is, you know, pointing out like this can't go on forever.
This is fucked up, like we're we're shitting where we eat. Everything
is gonna come. Even if you don't care about this stuff and you don't
consider yourself a environmentalist, this can't go on forever. This is you're creating
a heat island. It's a giant heat battery, so the whole area never
cools off. And then also, I mean there's no water, there's no
it's just fucking mind blowing density. You know, you gotta have dense,
dense cities with livable, walkable places in between, and you know, parks
and green and open space, et cetera. And you get rid of all
that parking lot you could create more open space. So anyway, well,
Tony, thank you so much. Is there anything else you'd like to say?
Would you like to do a pitch for your organization or what? Heck,
yeah, thank you for your time also, So yeah, Tucson Auto
bond is the key here. It is the two Sun Audubon. Don't go
donating to the national organization. Where our own independent chapter and where a five
oh one C three organization. So any donations that are given to us really
help us out. And this work takes a lot of time and energy out
of the cruise and you know, any way we can try and fund them
to be able to sustain them through the hot as hell times of the year,
so they don't have to be out there working, but we can keep
them employed doing other things regionally and bringing information to the community that's really appreciated.
So you know, just got to think smarter and plant native get rid
of your lawns, kill your lawns. That's definitely something I can champion and
get out there and do something, you know, like it is a herculean
effort, but you have to start somewhere or you just keep staring at it
and do nothing, like you're gonna end up with nothing in the end.
So get out there, do the work, or if you can't do the
work, donate like we'd really appreciate it. Yeah, excellent, Yeah,
it's I mean, and it's fun too, I mean, and people you
know, for me, I'm never focused on is there hope? Is it?
It's like, no, it's there's probably no hope. It's still fun
to do it. I don't care. You know, it's fine, it's
funny. I mean, there's hope in the long term. You got an
understanding of the geologic time scale, you know, and how catastrophes work,
and how maybe that will influence our behavior, you know, then there's hope.
But that hope should make plenty of cool stuff out there, you know.
Yeah, just kidding. There is a wave of destruction on the way.
What are you doing otherwise? I mean, what are most people doing
otherwise? Right, they're like lurking on TikTok staring into the fucking void of
of you know, futility that is social media. Got it's awful. Do
a TikTok of removing invas species, right you could turn into but uh,
all right, man, Well thanks a lot for your time, and again,
yes, sorry I was late. Just took me. Took me a
minute to get all my shit together, get all my druthers in order and
whatnot. So all right, well thanks a lot and thank you. Yeah,
man, I really appreciate your time, right, everybody. Everybody,
have a good rest of it. They go fu by