Get Rid of Spartina

Basic Elements:

Character: Lincoln Elementary students.

Setting: Mount Vernon, Washington, East Coast, West coast.

Plot: Spartina is growing but even though they usually help they are destroying the area and changing the habitat of the natural animals / They are trying to get rid of spartina.

Genre: Non-Fiction

Spartina is a kind of plant taking over Washington at the west coast, plants are attacking! The students of Lincoln Elementary are thinking of a way to get rid of them. Some of it may be good on the East Coast, helping the soil grow together and providing a wetland habitat, but it doesn't help here on the west coast. There isn't anything good here. After some poking around, they found out that these plants are only here because when people from the East come back, they bring some Spartina seeds to the West and it spreads after they are grown.

Spartina is getting to be a big problem. It first clogs up the mud and provides too much wetland habitat, so now it crowds out the plants, which are the food for many animals. After it was difficult to find food, the animals started to leave the place. One by one, almost all the animals left or either died from hunger. Worse, no animals want to eat it, so they spread away and soon might take over all the other plants in that area. It is also really hard to get rid of, their roots are stuck in the dry, hard mud and half of it gets pulled out while the other half gets stuck inside when getting it out.

Spartina can be described as contagious, when there is one on the ground, a bunch of them will spread around making  more and more Spartina to sprout. But, where did it come from in the first place? It started at the East Coast where they live. Some people on the West came to the East Coast for a visit. They must have thought that Spartina is a good thing so he or she made the mistake of taking a few Spartina seeds back to the West and planted them somewhere. Animals have not seen this plant yet so they won’t eat it because they don’t know if it will poison them or not so Spartina can grow freely. It has no effect on the East because animals there eat it.

Spartina is bad, but we can fix that. We just need to destroy it or pull them out. But it took a long, long time for it to grow, so it will take a long time to “un-grow” them. First, we need as much help as we can get to have town meetings. Next, having official meetings with the state capitals can help get people to help or donate money to help. Then, if we are going to fix this, we need to get moving. So snipping off the Spartina near the coast to stop them from spreading them around is a good idea to help. That is all we can do for now, but who knows, maybe we will solve the problem, but it won’t be easy.

Spartina is a bad thing that spread to the West Coast. It destroyed animal habitats after making too many wetland habitats, forcing animals to either leave their lost homes or starve after the plants were blocking food to survive. Spartina is a bad problem that costs when some people bring some Spartina seeds from the East Coast. Spartina might be good on the East Coast, but it sure isn’t here in the West. It is hard to get rid of because it spreads every day. It just produces more seeds, and more of it will sprout and regrow after being pulled up every day. We need to take action when we can to prevent making problems that can lead to almost impossible solutions. Spartina can’t be here because not everything fits at a certain place, it might lead to a big difference and it did.