SEPULVEDA BASIN : Funds Sought to Eradicate Arundo Reeds

It sounds like the plot of a rejected film script: a 20-foot-tall killer invading a park and choking every living thing in its path.

But the environmental threat of the Arundo donax reed in the Sepulveda Basin is real, and conservation groups have asked Los Angeles County for $200,000 to literally weed out the problem with help from the Los Angeles Conservation Corps.

“This stuff is almost impossible to kill,” said Melanie Ingalls, who wrote the grant proposal for the Los Angeles office of the National Audubon Society. “It’s like a forest, knocking off natural plants that live in the area, along with most of the insects and birds that rely on the plants.”

Environmentalists are concerned that arundo, which can grow six inches a day, is obliterating the fragile ecosystem of one of the few remaining natural tributaries of the Los Angeles River--Bull Creek in the Sepulveda Basin.

The Audubon Society’s proposal asks the Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District for $200,000 in Proposition A funds to remove the bamboo-like reed along the creek between Victory Boulevard and the Los Angeles River, about a five-acre site.

The work will also require a permit from the Los Angeles city departments of Public Works and Recreation and Parks.

The project has the backing of several Valley environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, California Native Plant Society and the Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the Sepulveda Basin.

“Arundo has no value whatsoever,” said Ted Carr, Army corps project manager. “It’s very prone to fire and soaks up a lot of water. It’s really a problem.”

“This is a very beneficial project to restore the creek and give people a chance to observe native plant and animal populations,” said Jill Swift, 64, a member of the Coalition to Save Sepulveda Basin. “The arundo just keeps them out.”

The funds would also be used to eradicate castor bean and tree tobacco, two poisonous plants that also are not native to the area.

But the bulk of the grant would go to the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, a nonprofit agency that employs at-risk youths, whose task it will be to eradicate the reed.

Arundo is a giant, non-native reed that guzzles up water, eliminating native, water-dependent plants and creating an inhospitable environment for wildlife. Human habitats are threatened when the unchecked reed begins to create fire hazards, drain creeks or alter water flow in flood-control channels such as the Sepulveda Basin.

The plant was brought over from Spain more than 100 years ago primarily for erosion control. Its seeds are easily spread by both wind and water.

Environmentalists believe the basin became inundated with arundo when seeds flowed down the creek and took root, wiping out elderberry bushes, willows, monkey flower, mule fat and even young sycamore trees. Another result: blue herons and white egrets, that would often visit the creek side, cannot even land in the dense foliage.

To restore the creek to its original habitat, the grant would pay for a crew of 12 corps members to comb the creek with clippers for four months, slashing away at the stalks just above the ground.

To prevent regrowth, an herbicide must immediately be sprayed on the shorn areas. Arundo is extremely hardy, secreting a protective gel that can halt the herbicide if it is not applied quickly enough.