I most often work with land managers in Southern California and one thing that surprises me is the size of restoration and management projects. One survey of land managers in Orange County found the average size of a restoration treatment is 6 ac. with the largest restoration project in the survey being just over 30 ac. (Dickens 2011).
Often our wildland restoration treatments are treating weeds with herbicides and then planting plants or seeding seeds. This sounds awfully similar to another type of land management. In agriculture this is standard operating procedure nearly every single planting season, and in some cases, several times a year on the same field.
For inspiration, I am looking towards agriculture, and I hope I can convince you to as well. There are significant differences but the similarities are too great to ignore. Much of our weed science comes from studying agricultural systems, our herbicides come from agricultural systems, and many of our management techniques were adapted from agricultural systems. And for all these similarities we can only muster enough firepower to grow native “crops” on a little more than two-dozen acres. The average farm in California is over 300 ac.
I know wildland mangers do not earn a cash profit when we succeed and grow a “crop.” And we often work on land that is neither flat nor has good soil, but the latter also applies to avacado growers in San Diego and Riverside Counties or wineries along the rolling hills of the central coast.
In Southern California weeds are nearly everywhere and in many of our preserves and open spaces they are the dominant vegetation form. I argue that restoring 6 ac. is great, and our next step is figuring out how to manage 60 ac. of weeds and replace them with native plants, and then maybe we can work up to 300 ac.