While reconstructing an earthquake damaged roadway which feeds traffic into and out of San Francisco the need arose to dig up a bush. Or cut it down. Or burn it. It had to go. So they moved it.
Moved it? Yep, plucked that sucker right out of the ground like a daisy and moved it.
Wait. It gets better.
It took the collaboration of four Federal Agencies and two California Agencies to figure out how to accomplish the task. (MoA pdf here. Be sure to read it. They actually call it “the Mother Plant”.) All because botanist Dr. Daniel Gluesenkamp determined that this particular bush is wild. A plant which is extensively used, from San Diego to Eureka, in yards and gardens as an ornamental plant. A plant costing $16 in a nursery. A great butterfly and humming-bird attractor. But otherwise “extinct”.
But this particular one is wild. Maybe from a seed dropped in the median by a careless bird. I’ve seen this plant all over California, but I can’t tell a wild one from a tame one. Perhaps the extinct wild ones bite?
The Interior Department stated, “The plant’s location was directly in the footprint of a roadway improvement project designed to upgrade the seismic and structural integrity of the south access to the Golden Gate Bridge. “The translocation of the Arctostaphylos franciscana [Franciscan Manzanita] plant to an active native plant management area of the Presidio was accomplished, apparently successfully and according to plan, on January 23, 2010.”
You know right away, when a spokesman uses words like “footprint” and “translocation”, (that one made smoke come out of my spell and grammar checker), and “according to plan”, there’s gonna be some big numbers coming soon. They did.
This translocation thing came in at the bargain basement cost of $205,075. That figure is just for the moving. It does not include costs associated with guarding, studying, and taking care of the translocated plant at its fenced-in secret location. That bumps it up another $12,525. Making a total of $216,600. To move and settle in a bush. Oh, I forgot. A wild bush.
Steve Irwin used to translocate wild crocodiles. I doubt he spent close to a quarter million on each one, even though the only thing they wanted was to bite his leg off and stuff him under a log, to be eaten later. That must be one ferocious wild bush. Less than a dollar’s worth of California’s highly taxed diesel fuel, squirted through the injectors of a D9 Caterpillar could have “moved the bush” with no danger to human life at all. In a minute or so.
Our budget is uncutable. Not an excess dime in there anywhere. Right.
