Excursion 1

Monday June 6th, was an office day. We drove in and met our agency contact Katie Vinzant, we went over the history of the fire and the areas where we were going to be working. We discussed potential hazards such as steep slops, unstable footing, Poodle Dog Bush, Poison Oak, rattlesnakes and black bears. We met two members of the USFS Weed Crew that we would be working with, Drew and Camille. Afterwards, we went on a hike to a local waterfall where we practiced identifying non native species. Tuesday, we went out to a riparian area known as Ybarra Canyon. We meandered up the stream pulling Tree Tobacco, Prickly Lettuce, and Bull Thistle. After a hard day's work, we had collected a total of eight 30 gallon trash bags full of these invasive plants. The next day we met up with more members of the USFS Weed Crew; Drew, Brock, Paul, and Camille to pull Perennial Pepperweed along an old historic road to nearby Los Angeles. The entire area was completely overgrown with dense patches of this white flowered invasive plant. By the end of the day, we had removed, bagged and tagged around thirty-three 30 gallon trash bags. Thursday, we went to a new area recently purchased by Angeles Forest, which was on the north side of the forest. We set out to start pulling a 40 acre area of Sisymbrium, aka Oriental Mustard. Most of the surrounding fields are filled with this invasive plant, and the amount at this site is a little disheartening to look at. A great reward was to be able to look back and see what we had removed, and how much of an actual change there was. We placed the pulled plants in large piles and then placed black plastic over them in order to dry them out, solarize, and kill them before they seed. By the end of a 10 hour day we had pulled a total of 5 to 7 acres.