Evaluation of Promoting Roadside Revegetation: An Integrated Approach to Establishing Native Plants

Appendix B. Telephone Interview Guide

This appendix presents the interview guide used when contacting respondents to the online survey.

B.1 General Introduction

• What is your job and your level of involvement with roadside revegetation at your organization?
• How long have you been with your organization/doing roadside revegetation work?
• Can you describe what policies or guidelines, if any, your organization has on the use of native plants?
• Does your organization use the recommended practices from the Roadside Revegetation Technical Guide as part of your standard practice, or are the techniques selectively used? Why? What types of transportation projects? How often are these practices used?
• Generally, what are your organization’s primary reasons for using natives (e.g., required as a permit condition; fix a trouble site (i.e., repeat erosion); reduce maintenance; erosion prone area; aesthetics)?

B.2 Revegetation Practice

• You mentioned in the survey that you modified [x, y, z] revegetation practices based on the Roadside Revegetation materials. Can you describe the type of materials used?

  – Follow-up: seed, live plants, bare root trees, container stock? Mulch: none, straw, blankets, hydro, other? Temporary cover crop used? (If applicable), what type of hard armor or erosion material was used (e.g., mechanically stabilized earth (mse) walls, soil encapsulated lifts, gabion baskets, coir logs, erosion blankets)?

• Does your organization have standard design specifications for the installation of native plants?

  – Follow-up: Did it change any specifications based on Roadside Revegetation (e.g., regarding minimum compaction, topsoil, timing, watering, and mulch)?

• In your experience, does the cost of native plant material prove to be comparable to traditional vegetation methods?

  – Follow-up: Can you provide any cost information?

• What maintenance or long-term monitoring will/did take place?

  – Follow-up: Did the contract specify maintenance or monitoring? If so, was this part of a permit condition?

• What hurdles or obstacles were there during implementation? Lessons learned?

  – Follow-up: E.g., timing (i.e., strict installation dates), costs, access to material, contractor experience/knowledge; agency information (e.g., did you need more/different information)?

B.3 Outcomes

• Did the Roadside Revegetation materials provide effective information related to maintenance of projects using native plants?
• Did the use of native plants meet the projects’ goal(s)? If so, how do you know? If no, why not?
• Can you compare the overall effectiveness of native plants compared with traditional non- native grasses used in revegetation?
• In the survey, you agreed that the roadside revegetation practices your agency adopted as a result of the Roadside Revegetation Technical Guide were useful in achieving [x] outcome.

  – Follow-up: In what ways did your agency observe these benefits, or did your agency or another organization quantify these benefits?

• Will native plants be incorporated in future projects? Why or why not?
• If you wanted to further promote the use of native plants within your agency, is there any additional information or knowledge you would need?