Roadside parks and herbicides

          Roadside parks (see vocabulary words below, if needed) have been an important part of my life.  Why would something as simple as a roadside park be important?  I’m old enough to remember life without roadside parks.  In addition, as a child my family often moved across the U. S. from California to Arkansas or Florida or North Carolina.  My parents relocated our home 12 times between two of those states when I was a child.

          In the 1960s some states did not provide roadside parks.  Travelers would simply stop along the road at any open area to stop and eat, rest, use the restroom, or walk around and get a little exercise for a few minutes.  Parks varied from non-existent to fairly well supplied.  Today, some roadside parks even have convenience stores.  Many U. S. states want travelers to think well of their state, so they provide clean restrooms, picnic tables, vending machines for snacks, and a nice wooded area to pull off the road and take a break.  But the purpose of this blog is not to describe roadside parks.

         My thoughts are centered on the management of roadside parks.  On U. S. Highway 62/412 in Lawrence County, Arkansas a nice roadside park has been turned into an ecological disaster area.  At least, that is the opinion of this ecologist and environmentalist.  Please let me explain.

          I first visited the Lawrence County roadside park on US Hwy. 62/412 the park was small and functioning.  The restroom building that is still used today had already been built.  What was special about the park was a beautiful little spring with watercress growing in it.  The hillside of the park with the picnic tables was poorly designed and managed in that the soils cannot tolerate the foot traffic.  As a result, the land has always been poorly vegetated.  Nevertheless, the natural spring made the site very beautiful.

          The site has been totally destroyed.  Some people cannot tolerate weeds, snakes, and wild animals.  Two disasters have been caused by people.

          First, the wonderful little spring did attract snakes, birds, and other wildlife.  Some people cannot stand snakes and I have to admit that two species of snakes at the site are poisonous.  On the other hand, so many people hate snakes that most poisonous snakes in the area had probably been killed.  Also, most poisonous snakes in Arkansas are not aggressive and usually only bite people if people try to catch them or if they step on them accidently.  That is, the risk of snakebite is minimal.

          To control the wildlife, someone in the state highway department, in their infinite wisdom, decided to eliminate the weeds which the water caused to grow.  Instead of a nice spring area, they filled in the stream with huge rocks about 10-30 inches (25-75 mm) in diameter.  A wonderful ecological site has been ruined.  A wonderful site to show children a beautiful wetland with cattails and red-winged blackbirds, and even the occasional snake had been there previously.  Instead, you can show your children how stupid people destroy wetlands by filling them in with riprap.

          Secondly, someone from the state highway department in their infinite wisdom decided the park did not need any wildflowers.  They used herbicides to kill the weeds, but sprayed it so heavily they even killed most of the grass.  Now, where it is hard to get plants to grow because of the foot traffic, they’ve killed the grass and everything.  They don’t have any weeds, but they don’t have any plants at all.

          As an ecologist, I consider this unreasonable and crazy.  Rather than eliminate wetlands to keep people from seeing snakes, an interpretive sign explaining the benefits of wetland habitats would have been wonderful.  The state could have explained how we have laws which prevent people from filling in wetlands, they probably violated the national laws and filled in a nice ecological site with riprap.  Instead of natural habitat which could be capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) and cooling the climate, we have rocks that produce no oxygen (O2) and reflect the sun’s heat adding to global warming.  The state could have had wildflowers growing in the park, but someone didn’t like “weeds” so instead they killed both the weeds and grass with herbicides.  Now they have eroded and bare soil, which was poor soil to start with.

          As an ecologist, I decided long ago I’m not in charge of everything.  Someone else made the decision to destroy the habitat of that park and they are probably happy with the results.  Until we can educate the world, we will continue to have these types of problems.  Calling them idiots probably doesn’t help.  But, that’s my opinion and I’ve tired of people who, as adults, have no sense of the fact the environment supports us.  The more we tear things up, cover them with rocks, and spray herbicides, the fewer people can live on the planet.  Right now, we need as much habitat as we can get.  We should not be actively destroying because a few snakes also happen to live there.

Vocabulary:

Carbon dioxide (CO2) - what we and other animals (and plants) breath out, an invisible, colorless, tasteless gas.

Cattails - a wetland plant

County （县）- land area in size between a state (or province) and city.  All areas of Arkansas belong to one of 75 counties.  Cities are parts of counties but rarely include entire counties.

Ecologist / ecological / ecology - a scientific term referring to the “house” (ecos - a Greek word for house), meaning the house where a plant or animal lives

     Ecology - with the -ology ending (meaning “the study of), it means the study of the houses of animals and plants (ecology)

     Ecologist - me!  Someone who studies ecology. The -ist ending indicates the word means someone who studies something.

     Ecological - the adverb form of the word

Eliminate - do away with or destroy

Foot traffic - the compression of the soil caused by people walking on it.

“In their infinite wisdom” - an idiom meaning “they thought they were smart and doing the right thing, but I think they are idiots.”

Herbicides - chemicals which disrupt the growth of plants, killing them.

Interpretive sign - a sign, usually in a park, describing or interpreting what the person can see.

Oxygen (O2) - what we and other animals (and plants) breathe in, an invisible, colorless, tasteless gas.  Plants and animals use O2 in what is called “cellular respiration” and release CO2. The reverse process, photosynthesis, is used by plants which use CO2 and water to produce O2 and sugar.

Picnic table - outdoor table set up for eating.

Red-winged blackbird - a common wild bird in the blackbird family which has a stripe of red and yellow on its wings.

Riprap - huge rocks about 10-30 inches (25-75 mm) in diameter, recently mined and dumped into wetlands and streamsides to preventing erosion.

Roadside parks - a small park along a road where one can stop for any reason.  A simple roadside park might only have a picnic table.

Soil - dirt and ground

Spring - location where water flows from underground to the surface

Vegetated - covered with vegetation (plants)

Vending machine - a machine which accepts money in exchange for a product such as cigarettes, snacks, and sometimes other types of things such as magazines, newspapers, etc.