News of the Arroyo
Title: | Ecologist says scrub plants don't deserve brushoff |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2004-12-11 |
Summary: | December 11, 2004 - The importance of native plants and understory in fire protection needs to be emphasized more says Escondido-based fire ecologist Richard Halsey. |
Author: | Pat Sherman |
Publication: | San Diego Union-Tribune |
Content: | ESCONDIDO When Richard Halsey moved into his home, he decided to remodel the 1909 structure to resemble an English castle, complete with a mote and drawbridge. For the Escondido-based fire ecologist, the adage that a person\'s home ishis castle goes beyond words and aesthetics. Halsey believes money spent clearing brush in the backcountry for fire prevention would be better used teaching homeowners how to create their own metaphorical motes, or \"defensible spaces.\" A defensible space is a natural or man-made area around a home where vegetation and other material that could fuel a fire has been treated or cleared to form a barrier. \"What we can do is create communities and design our homes so that the fire burns around us instead of through us,\" said Halsey, a former biology teacher with San Diego city schools. In his book, \"Fire, Chaparral and Survival in Southern California,\" Halsey examines fire behavior, land management and Californians\' knowledge of the native environment. Halsey hopes readers will not only gain the insight needed to better protect their families but also re-connect with nature. For two decades, Halsey has studied Southern California\'s native chaparral, shrubs that exist in semiarid climates. He is a consultant to many regional law enforcement, environmental and land management agencies and is a natural science instructor at the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. Halsey also coordinates education and research efforts for the Southern California Chaparral Field Institute. Halsey believes residents are alarmingly unfamiliar with the native ecosystem. He labels some of them \"brushphobic\" and says they view chaparral as a threat, defaming patches of shrubbery and undergrowth as \"scrub infested\" wastelands. \"Perhaps they were beaten as small children by manzanita branches,\" Halsey pondered wryly. Most Southern Californians would benefit from an understanding of chaparral\'s relationship to drought and fire, he said. Most people believe chaparral has no value. \"It really provides a lot of watershed for us,\" said Halsey, 49, noting recreational and aesthetic uses for chaparral, such as hiking, birding, hunting and photography. \"We\'ve sort of lost contact with the rhythms of the land,\" he said. Five years ago, Halsey removed all non-native trees and plants from his yard, replacing them with indigenous greenery, such as sycamores, coast live oak, laurel sumac and native grasses. \"In the morning I wake up and I smell sage and know that these plants have been here for thousands of years,\" Halsey said. \"It gives me a sense of place.\" Halsey is concerned that if people don\'t take an interest in the native plant life of the region, it could be lost to development during the next 100 years. He volunteers his services as a science teacher one day a week at Miller School in Escondido, where his 10-year-old son, Jake, is a student. \"The way I do it is not by lecturing them. I get them out there,\" Halsey said. \"At this age, kids have an inherent interest in nature. It\'s when they get older that my book comes in.\" For more information about Halsey\'s work, go to www.californiachaparral.com. |
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