April 13, 2000
DON'T TREAD ON ME! Tiger Salamanders and Yuppie MomsWhat do tiger salamanders and yuppie moms with cell phones have in common?
They can both spell trouble for growers, especially grape growers right now.
The tiger salamander, as the headline in the March 28 Santa Maria Times reads--". . . has agriculture by the tail."
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has put the tiger salamander on the endangered species list. The little animal lives underground most of the time, but surfaces two months a year, to mate in vernal ponds. These vernal ponds are what have the agriculturalists in a quandry, because the area around these ponds cannot be farmed, and so far, government officials can't give straight answers on the matter with new vineyard development.
The Monday, April 3 edition of The New York Times has a front page piece on Santa Barbara County with a Los Alamos dateline and a headline that reads, "California Wine Region Torn by Debate Over Use of Land." The well written piece, as you would expect, is fair of course and almost seems to be bittersweet in tone because the growers who waited and wanted to do everything right, as the Times piece chronicled, are the ones being shackled by Endangered Species Act.
A good friend and neighbor quipped tiger salamanders are attracted to the sound of chain saws cutting down Magestic Oaks, not to vernal pools in the vineyards.
But what has locals most concerned is the national attention. If the New York Times writes about it and deems it important enough to put on its front page, then, through the trickle-down effect, it makes it real news for other newspapers, the TV networks, National Public Radio and the CNNs and Fox News's of the world.
Having it as a front page story in the Santa Maria Times keeps it almost local-a backyard issue-but when it hits the front page of that Times, then somehow it becomes a national issue-giving local growers the sort of publicity they neither want nor need.
Looking at the positive side, some have argued that such coverage in The New York Times will tell the readership about a premier grape producing region in California they might have otherwise not known about.
True, but if you ask the locals of Los Alamos, the odds are good they'd prefer not to have the publcity, even if all of the names are spelled right.
If you ask me, I'm of the school that thinks getting the publicity, even if it's bad publicity, is good. For Los Alamos to get national attention over the tiger salamander will put the region on the map for future generations of wine drinkers.
Then, there's yuppie moms with cell phones!
Yuppie moms are concerned about pesticides. Ten years ago, it seems that consumers were concerned that most wines contained sulfites, and had to be so labeled.
Now it seems that yuppie moms, urban transplants, are bothered by sulfur--sulfur in the vineyard. And they are concerned that the sulfur, among other things, tarnishes their silver and flatware.
In a more extreme form, moms are concerned about pesticide used by growers-whether it's put on broccoli, beans or winegrapes.
There is an all out frontal attack on agriculture in northern Santa Barbara County.
Urbanites who dream of living in the bucolic countryside get here, and then suddenly decide they don't like the sound of the cannon firing off in the vineyards to scare off birds, or the sound of the tractor at 7 on a Saturday morning, and they don't like the sulfuring of the fruit or the use of pesticides in the fields.
My position: If you're concerned about radio waves don't move near an antenna farm. If you don't like amplified rock music, don't buy a house adjacent to the County Bowl. If you don't like the sound of jets in the middle of the night, don't buy a house near the airport in Goleta or Santa Maria. If pesticides and farm machinery bother you, don't move to the country.
Other land use issues involve noise. Neighbors to wineries in the Santa Ynez Valley will fight a winegrower tooth-and-nail over presenting concerts and the consequent decibel levels. While the property rights position might take the attitude "it's my property and I'll do with it what I damn well please," the neighbor who has gotten away from the hubbub of Los Angeles and wants serenity and privacy in a traffic-free, congestion-free place has some rights too.
I believe it's a very specious argument for a winegrower to foist the notion that rock concerts (or any kind of concert) have anything to do with the agri-business of growing grapes and the making of wine.
On the other hand, food and wine events such as winemaker dinners have everything to do with the business of wine and the marketing of wine--but staging concerts does not. For growers, housing development spells trouble. Where agriculture abounds, urban transplants and yuppie moms are not a welcome sight. The reason I pick on yuppie moms is because I know several who are always asking me about pesticides and spraying in vineyard land.
Bon appetit!
Bob Senn writes The Independent's monthly wine column, "Grapevine," owns a cell phone, by the way, lives in the Los Alamos Valley, thinks more like a local with each passing day, and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium
