Glendale Narrows chainsaw clearcutting update

As promised by L.A. City Councilman Eric Garcetti’s deputy Mitch O’Farrell, the clearcutting by chainsaw has indeed continued…

Large foot-wide tree limbs have been severed…

Meanwhile, as predicted, the bamboo-like arundo is already growing back strong in the areas where it was chainsawed last week.

You cannot remove arundo from an area without removing the underlying root mass, which requires herbicides… and that’s in the best case scenario, where you have a limited infestation. We do not have a limited infestation of arundo in the Narrows — it’s massive. To get rid of the root mass would likely require removing the islands altogether.

To summarize: if the goal is to curtail the infestation, a half-measure like clear-cutting stalks

a) is doomed to fail
b) causes inadvertent damage and disruption to the rest of the environment and its inhabitants
c) may actually make the arundo distribution in the environment wider, as roots, plant detritus and so on enter the air and water and find new places in the River to grow

This is a fatally flawed plan. Apparently the chainsawing work crews are part of a “Clean and Green” program the City is doing. Whoever organized and approved this plan should know better. They should also cease this counter-productive work immediately.