Herbiciding "non-native" Smooth Cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) in salt water marshes in Alameda, California with Imazapyr.

To the Editor:

Your recent story, "Alameda marshes project to kill non-native cordgrass" (The Oakland Tribune, September 29) was disturbing. The poison herbicide being used is called "Imazapyr." Its actual chemical name is (+)-2-[4,5-dihydro-4-methyl-4-(1-methylethyl]-5-oxo-1H-1midazol-2-yl]-3-pyridine carboxylic acid. Sounds quite tasty, huh? The target of this chemical attack is the Smooth Cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), a native to the salt-water marshes in northeastern United States. There it acts as a pioneering plant that helps create suitable habitat for other plants and animals to live along salt water coastlines. These include another Cordgrass, Spartina patens, the Ribbed Mussel, Geukenzia demissa, and the Fiddler Crab, Uca pugnax.

Along the California coast, the use of the herbicide Imazapyr may actually end up killing the growth of the native plants that are supposedly being threatened by the spreading of the Smooth Cordgrass. The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service has identified one hundred counties in twenty-four states east of the Mississippi where endangered species may be jeopardized by the use of Imazapyr. [Journal of Pesticide Reform, Fall 1996, Vol. 16, No. 3].

Supposedly, these California native plants (Pickleweed, Grindelia and Cordgrass (Spartina foliosa)) will grow in areas where the Smooth Cordgrass has been killed off. Actually, there is no guarentee of this secession happening at all; Cordgrass may grow back too. So are the powers that be going to be endlessly spraying toxic herbicides into our coastal marshlands? Must we really being spraying toxic herbicide into our Bay waters to try to stop hybrids forming between the Smooth Cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) and the local Cordgrass (Spartina foliosa)?

How about letting Mother Nature be. May be it is time for humans to stop playing God with artificial herbicides and to remove some of our overdevelopment on coastal lands and the land then revert to the forces of nature.

Yours truly,

James K. Sayre

1 October 2005

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