Summary

Description

This is a report on vegetation restoration and management at Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Vegetation management is often straightforward: control weeds, amend soils, seedplant natives, maintain things during establishment, and then some longterm maintenance to ensure the community stabilizes as intended. However in habitats adjacent to San Francisco Bay these tactics have not meet with success, forcing managers to reconsider dominant paradigms and test novel tactics. One of those paradigms is the bunchgrass hypothesis, which proposes a grassdominated herbaceous community for much of Coastal Californias valleys. Minnich 2008 found this was due to an inappropriate baseline set after the influences of European activities, but our aesthetics may also play some part in what appears to be a bias against forblands. For three years we have attempted to restore grasslands to preclude invasive forbs during habitat creation, as recommended in a management plan, but found grasses difficult to establish onsite and ineffectual against invasive forbs. Further background research and the casual introduction of a native forb have led us to reconsider that plan.