The River

I went down to the river, though I know the river is dry

riparian restoration..now there's a funny bunch of monkey business...I always read things like this...apparently led by UCSB forever students...grown-ups who can't thrive in the real world...these folks are on a mission to get rid of Arundo in the Santa Clara River bed..this story blurb was in the Independent...the UCSB guys are using high school kids to poison the river bed with glyphosate.....the reasoning is the arundo "chokes out" the native plants which is a catch phrase for the native cult..they got tons of little phrases for demonizing non-natives...alien organisms, invaders, bioinvasions, gnawing away at ecosystems, and so on...Invasion Biology is a pseudoscience, a reactionary movement rooted in the psychologies of racism and xenophobia..Invasion Biology-A Critique of a Pseudoscience exposes these frauds

and of course the restorations are supported by the big chemical companies...

they ignore dispersal by the birds! it's the same mindset that people have about their lawns...if they see a dandelion, they go crazy and have to kill it

it gets to the point of absurd these fools chasing their tails trying to beat Mother Nature...that castor bean plant keeps popping up for a reason!

arundo is simply a fast growing plant...if it's a problem. remove it once a year with bull dozers..but no matter what they do, it's gonna grow again...I've gone down to the river a few times to harvest the reeds..the bamboo shoots are long and I use them for my patented "Arundo Duster"...it's the only thing that lets me dust my ceilings! so buy one today: Mick's Arundo Duster..only $29.95!



Arundo Duster-only $29.95!

 "The reed removers are taking down the plant either by spraying it with a federally approved herbicide, glyphosate"... federally approved, oh that's reassuring

basically, it's Round-Up..it's poison and it's not selective..and the more they use, the more resistance the invasives build up..there's plenty of info online about the harm it does to people amd animals...I stopped using Round-Up years ago..

some years ago they tried this approach at the Carpinteria Creek on a much smaller scale..some insipid nativists thought they'd plant natives, remove invasives and put up a sign telling me not to fish for steelhead or I'd end up in jail..well I was I jail once and once is enough...

this creek used to have a cool old wooden bridge, but today it's got the big iron arch..talk about over- kill!! city over-engineered it...but it's still a nice creek so I went down to check it out...looks like they gave up!

the natives ain't doing so hot...the weeds, the clovers are nice and green thanks to the rains...there's water in the creek but the only thing choking anything is the sycamore leaves in the creekbed....the native sycamores here are lovely, but they shed their leaves in winter..and there's lots of big sycamores here..there's some ivy..looks pretty but someone with a native dunce hat on thinks it's evil...

but it's clear that natives don't do well just because someone calls them native...survival of the fittest...adaptabilty is the key to survival...a simple concept lost on the Blue Oyster native cult

didn't see any fish..saw some litter from people..

litter is the biggest threat to riparian habitat..not species of "nonnatives"...

litter..plastic...junk that people throw into the creek for kicks..people screw up these creeks...nature brings all types of plants in from the wind and the willows..the animals transport seeds to the creeks..

but only man brings litter..and poison to the river