Some 400 miles south, and very much on the ground, the young members of
the California Conservation Corps recognize that changing the world often begins with less
dramatic actions--as humble, sometimes, as pulling weeds. The crews look like tiny dots
down the beach, completely dwarfed by the jaw-dropping drama of the Mendocino coastline.
Ahead, the Ten Mile Dunes shiver and undulate toward the mountains and redwoods in the
distance. The Pacific Ocean crashes onto the sand, creating a salty, almost imperceptible
mist. Grass sways in the steady spring wind. It's a perfect day, except for one thing: The
grass shouldn't be there.
In the late 1800s, gardeners at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park
introduced European beach grass (Ammophila arenaria) to the West Coast. They thought the
smooth, graceful plant was an ideal way to stabilize the dunes that edged the Pacific, but
they didn't anticipate the consequences: Beach grass diminished the open pockets of sand
that the endangered western snowy plover needs to build its nests. It also turned out to
be highly invasive, not just accenting the landscape, but conquering it.
Howell's
spineflower (a delicate, low-growing, endangered flower unique to the area), the
endangered Menzies' wallflower, and round-headed Chinese houses, their blooms like tiny,
purple pagodas, all disappeared under the relentlessly advancing phalanxes of grass.
"The dunes should look like a beautiful garden," sighs Renee Pasquinelli, the
California State Parks ecologist who planned the corps' project at Ten Mile Dunes.
"But with beach grass, all you get is beach grass."
The plant is tough to stamp out because it develops a system of roots and
rhizomes, horizontal underground stems that descend as far as six feet into the sand. All
along the coast, different agencies have tried several methods of removing the grass:
ripping it out with bulldozers in Oregon, dosing it with herbicides like Roundup and Rodeo
in California. But the most effective and least ecologically damaging method may be the
most difficult: pulling the grass out by hand. That's where the Conservation Corps crews
come in.
The California Conservation Corps, the oldest and largest of the dozens of youth corps in
the nation, was formed in 1976 by then-governor Jerry Brown, who modeled it after the
Civilian Conservation Corps created by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Roosevelt's
corps provided work and vocational training for almost 3.5 million young men during the
Depression. It also resulted in thousands of conservation and public-works projects. In
modern California, nearly two thousand young people aged 18 to 23 join the state's corps
each year. They receive training in ecology and trades such as carpentry and
heavy-equipment operation, then work for minimum wage building trails, restoring habitat,
and fighting fires. The corps' motto: "Hard work, low pay, miserable conditions . . .
and more!"
"We have roll call at 8 a.m.," says Joseph Martin, 32, who leads
a crew at Ten Mile Dunes. "Then we check our gear, drive out to the site, unload the
tools." Joseph started as a corps member in 1985 and returned after attending
college. "I signed on for six months and that turned into three years," he says.
"The CCC developed an interest I had in science and the environment. I enjoy the
outdoors, the restoration of endangered species."
I hunker down in the beach grass with Joseph's crew, sitting on my heels.
"Here," says Brandi Parker, a young woman from Sacramento wearing her regulation
helmet and khakis. "You can borrow my gloves. I don't like to use them. I think it's
easier to get ahold of the grass with bare hands." I gratefully accept the gloves,
then watch as the youth around me twist bunches of stems around their hands and pull. I
try to do the same. The grass does not move. I pull again. The grass does not move. They
weren't kidding about those rhizomes and root systems.
A year ago, Brandi says, she was in trouble. She was doing all sorts of
drugs-alcohol, crank, coke, ecstasy, mushrooms, pot. She dropped out of school, and was
taught at home for a while. When she stopped showing up for her home-school appointments,
her mother, exasperated and ill with cancer, kicked her out of the house. Looking for a
job and a place to live, Brandi came across a CCC ad in the paper.
"Believe me, the environment was not on my radar; I used to eat in
the car and throw the trash out the window," she laughs. "Now I know a lot more.
Some of my old friends laugh at me, 'Miss CCC girl thinks she knows it all now.' It's
hard, but I know that one day, they will wake up and realize that it's not a joke."
The grass I'm trying to pull still isn't moving. "Here," says
Mike Grindell, a 23-year-old with a hint of blond stubble. "It's easier if someone
gets the roots first." Mike thrusts a shovel blade beneath the clump I'm holding. I
feel the roots release, a miracle. Mike and I get into a rhythm. I wrap a clump of grass
around my hand. He drives the shovel deep into the sand. I feel the roots release, then
pull and toss. The repetition becomes meditative: Wrap, thrust, release, pull, toss. Wrap,
thrust, release, pull, toss. Nothing else in the world exists, just the rasping of the
shovel going into the dark brown sand, the ripping of the roots.
Mike works with studied concentration. His father, a policeman, no doubt
taught him old-fashioned values: work hard, respect authority. Mike likes to scuba dive,
play darts, down a few beers with friends. "I'm not a tree-hugger type," he
says. "But I am worried about the planet. I have little nephews. I'll have kids
someday. I don't want them to see the aftermath of what we've done. I want them to see a
cleaner world."
Mike and I work for about 45 minutes, moving about ten yards north. The
vastness of the job stuns me: Removing the 70 acres of grass will take hundreds of hours,
weeks and weeks of weeding. I can't believe that next year, a new crew will have to do
this job all over again, since it usually takes several weedings before the rhizomes die.
My fingers are starting to blister; my forearms ache. I glance at my watch every few
minutes, hoping for quitting time. I don't want to chicken out, but finally I say,
"Man, this is hard work."
Ricky Arzdorf, a rail-thin 20-year-old with a wisp of a beard, blond
dreadlocks, and a hemp hair-tie, pipes up, "I'm glad this grass is hard to pull out.
This European beach grass is supposed to be an invasive species? Well, humans are an
invasive species." The difficulty of the work emphasizes the magnitude of the task
these young environmentalists see before them: not just removing beach grass, but
repairing all the damage people have done to the planet.
