Park Service Declares War on Imported Killer Plant

A broom from Spain is sweeping through the Santa Monica Mountains, and it’s leaving an environmental mess.

But the National Park Service is striking back, attacking Spanish broom, an exotic plant that is killing off native flora, at the roots. Earlier this month, seven inmates from a juvenile probation camp took up hatchets and “weed wrenches” to chop, hack and yank the plants from a rugged hillside a few miles south of Agoura Hills.

It was the first government-sponsored attack on Spanish broom, so named because it resembles a dried broom shoved handle first into the earth.

“It’s displacing the natives,” said Rose Rumball-Petre, a park resource management specialist with the park service. As tall as it is resilient, Spanish broom crowds out such plants as yucca and also blocks out the sun, killing off surrounding--and shorter--natives. “In other words, it’s smothering the other plants,” she said.

Spanish broom, or Spartium juceum , was introduced to the region’s mountain ranges by Spanish settlers in the 1700s to control erosion.

Many California native grasslands in the region, Rumball-Petre said, are slowly disappearing in the 150,000-square-acre Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area that extends from Pt. Mugu in the north to Griffith Park in the south.

“We’re here to preserve and protect the plants by removing the Spanish broom,” Rumball-Petre told a crew from Camp Miller, a Los Angeles County Probation Camp for juveniles in Malibu, who gathered on a cold, bright morning. “I think it’s important to know why you are here,” she added, concluding her pep talk.

She then showed the young men, who were wearing yellow hard hats, sweat shirts and jeans, how to use the weed wrench, a long pole with a clamp on its curved end that relies on leverage to pull the plant from the ground, often with the roots intact.

“Why can’t we just chop them down?” asked Raul, a 17-year-old crew member. She explained that chopping would take too long and was too tiring. And the roots must be removed to prevent the plant from growing back.

Then the teen-agers got to work.

The day before the inmates arrived, probation officer Frank Miller explained what their task would be. “Some of them complained, asking ‘Why do we have to do this?’ ” he said.

Most of the crew did not show much enthusiasm, but one said he would like to come back as a volunteer after he completes his sentence at Camp Miller.

About 200 square feet of park land shrouded by Spanish broom were cleared in three days. “For the trained eye, to see native grasses poking out again, I can’t tell you how wonderful that is,” Rumball-Petre said.

She conceded that although the work crew removed mounds of the plant, new ones will sprout up as seeds are scattered by animals or the wind.

Some non-native plants can be burned or poisoned, but those options were rejected for Spanish broom, said David Gackenbach, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. It was feared that herbicides would harm other plants, and fire was ruled out because the location, near Kanan Road and Mulholland Highway, is not far from some houses.

Carlos, 17, had never been to the Santa Monica Mountains before his stint with the work crew. “I like working out here, cleaning up,” he said. On his second day pulling up Spanish broom, he said he had mastered the technique.

“You gotta look for the right way to do it. If you do it any old way, you could be here all day long,” he said, looking over at fellow crew members struggling to pull the plant out with their hands. “I learned fast.”