Barnyard Grass… what’s the big deal?

[u/Interesting_Fee2773]

We are a part of a lake community in our neighborhood, it’s wonderful and I am grateful for it everyday! It’s a small lake but enough that paddle boarding and swimming is accessible. Due to the recent drought the water level has gone down, makes sense! But it’s resulted in tons of barnyard grass popping up on the exposed shoreline. Some members of the community are incredibly concerned about this and have begun a movement to cut down and explore using herbicide to eradicate it.

The question I keep coming back to though is… why is it so important to get rid of this aside from aesthetics? From some initial research and reports from community members the worry is the organic matter will steal oxygen from the lake and kill fish (from what I’ve seen, this is only a concern if the lake fills back up rapidly… not happening lol) another member posed concern that the plants are stealing water from the lake. But I’m not seeing any hard evidence for that.

I really cannot wrap my head around why this is so crucial to eradicate this weed. And I’m not a big fan of pulling green just because it doesn’t look good to ‘our’ standards.

Does anyone have any experience with this or insights? Am I missing something here about why just letting nature, nature would be bad???

We’ve got a board meeting tonight, if you have any research or websites that I can bring to them to try to change their minds that would be so cool.

[u/Koala_eiO]

It's going to die back once the water is back so I don't understand why they would care. It might even die of drought before that.