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So these lands are recently purchased as Department of the Interior lands. The Otay watershed
itself has
been pretty severly burned. The area we're standing
in was burned in 2003 and now it's burned again in 2007.
We're concerned about that multiple burn and its effect
on the plants abilities to grow, on invasives taking over.
Over here you can see the Arundo which is an invasive
raparian species and it's already aggressively coming
back in this site and its probably benefiting a lot from
the ash that's here. And the concern is that it was
more localized. There was a patch here, a patch there,
some other patches down the creek but as it comes back
it'll probably spread much quicker than the rapairan habitat
will recover in and may replace a lot of the raparian
habitat that was here. And we're very concerned about
that because its got a lower biodiversity. It serves as
less habitat for species, native species, then the
natural raparian habitat does. It's got less structural
components to it and it's got dense matts that are
impenetrable to a lot of species so it takes a lot of
effort and funding to try and remove it and control it
in Southern California. Yet is seems like it's going to
be at a preferential benefit from this fire in the
short term at least.