Carrillo-February

“Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man nor for us to reap from it the esthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.” (Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, viii)

February 26, 2014

Blunn Creek Nature Preservation

Temperature: 39˚

Real feel: 30˚

Probability of rain: 80%

Time started: 5:11 pm

Time Ended: 6:18 pm

Looking at the history behind Blunn Creek, it wasn’t always a preserve. It was part of a volcano which you could tell if you look closely enough by the soil that has mixtures of ash.  The Preserve was once covered by volcanic ash from an eruption over 80 million years ago. In the more recent years around the 40s or 50s it was used as a dairy farm but the city bought the land in 1982 later putting 38 acres of it aside for the preserve. Looking at it today, it’s nowhere near 38 acres anymore. It is a small area surrounded by neighborhoods, schools, highways, etc. Why have we kept decreasing the size of this preserve if biodiversity is needed?

Looking at the weather in the past couple of weeks has been in the mid-60s and 70s. It is pretty refreshing compared to the freezing temperature in the earlier days of the month. One of the most recent topics in class was biodiversity meaning the variety of all species on earth or in this case Blunn Creek. When walking through I wanted to count all the china berry and lugustrum plants considering those are two of the most common invasive species. When looking for china berry it wasn’t hard to spot their bright red berries in the midst of the green. I counted a total of 20 and I only stayed in a small area of the preserve, lugustrum on the other hand was so common. Every other tree I saw was a lugustrum. I stopped my count at 47 when I came across an area that was fully invaded by them. Then I continued walking and again another huge area full. I went back to the area they cleared trying to imagine all of the trees that were once there. My guess was most of them being lugustrum considering all the trunks piles up on the sides. So my question was, why do invasive species flourish more than native species? This question was later answered in class. The reasons behind this mystery was because the invasive species out compete native species when it comes to resources and also less predation occurs with the animals in the area.

Invasive species list at Blunn Creek)

(Cleared invasive species)

(Tree trunks piled up)