Invasive Plant News

On this past Saturday morning, the St. Paul Parks and Recreation

Volunteers with some of the garlic mustard

Department sponsored a garlic mustard pull in Como Park.  The pull was in the area that is in the Como Woodland Outdoor Classroom.  According to the website: “This classroom will provide environmental education and historical interpretation for school children and adults, habitat for native wildlife, and an urban

Jack-in-the-pulpit doing its best to compete with all that garlic mustard; we evened things out a bit.

woodland oasis for the inner-city community where local place-based, hands-on environmental learning opportunities are rare.” It was a little rainy, but the event still attracted over 50 volunteers and several groups such as one from Fedex. It was really encouraging to see native species – such as the jack-in-the-pulpit in the photo – that are hanging on despite the competition from invasives.

This article is part of a series of articles about people who demonstrate exceptional (and often unheralded) commitment to protecting natural areas threatened by invasive plant species.

How does Lisa Brush, Executive Director of the Stewardship Network in Ann Arbor, Michigan, deal with gloomy conservation forecasts?  She goes to work and immerses herself in a world where people are doing something right now to prove those forecasts wrong.

The Stewardship Network works to protect, restore, and manage  natural

Lisa at Barton Park overlooking the Huron River - a place to recharge.

lands and waters of the Great Lakes region by helping individuals, organizations, and businesses manage specific natural areas.  It helps by finding ways to share ideas, resources, and information.  In the same way that wildlife corridors link wildlife habitat, the Stewardship Network links the people trying to protect and restore that habitat.

One of the Stewardship Network’s first projects was assisting a group of residents and teachers and students at Eberwhite Elementary School in Ann Arbor in the early 2000s.  The objective was to protect the Eberwhite Woods, a 29 acre native oak-hickory forest which has never been clear-cut.  The group had the will, but they didn’t necessarily know the way to protect the unique forest ecology.  Lisa and the Stewardship Network helped by bringing in experts such as Bob Grese, the Director of the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum at the University of Michigan.  Today, the woods thrive, and just as importantly, the students and teachers in Eberwhite and the Woods Committee remain deeply engaged.

In 2011, the Stewardship Network partnered with 152 groups and had 10,648

Lisa in earlier days pulling garlic mustard with a little help from her daughter Isabel.

participants at its events.  The Stewardship Network has established local collaborative conservation communities known as “Stewardship Network Clusters.”  For example, the Headwaters Cluster was the first Cluster, established in 2003.  The Michigan Chapter of the Nature Conservancy helped the Stewardship Network bring together people interested in protecting ecosystems in Oakland County, an area home to the headwaters of six different river systems threatened by extreme development pressures.

The Stewardship Network also links interested parties, not just in the Great Lakes Region, but around North America with its free monthly webcasts.  The webcasts can focus on control of specific invasive species such as “Swallow-Wort” (this month’s webcast) or on often neglected topics like organizing volunteer days or handling environmental conflict (the human kind).  I have participated in the webcasts, and they are wonderful– not one-sided presentations but lively exchanges of ideas from participants around the country.

Then, there is the Garlic Mustard Challenge.  People pull garlic mustard and report the number of pounds of garlic mustard pulled to the Challenge website.  This year’s goal is 200,000 pounds.  Anyone, anywhere can participate.  Erin Mittendorf, one of Lisa’s colleagues at the Stewardship Network, observed, Lisa’s most valuable contributions are made amongst us.  What Lisa does best is bring people together.  That is our biggest challenge.  As Arne Witt said in an earlier article on Lantana, “the problem is not managing invasive species, it is managing people to manage invasive species.”  And, maybe that is why Lisa doesn’t get bogged down by those gloomy conservation forecasts.  Instead, she sees and further spurs the hope in people that those gloomy forecasts are wrong.

Here’s a link to a really nice article in the New York Times on the Weed Warriors.  They are working to clear Edgewood Park in San Mateo County, California, of various invasives including Yellow Star thistle, teasel, broom, and Italian thistle.

Conservationists are “fighting a losing battle” against invasive plant species such as Lantana (Lantana camara L.).  That is the conclusion of  a team of researchers

Lantana camara Forest & Kim Starr, U.S. Geological Survey, Bugwood.org

from the University of Oxford and the University of Bergen in their article entitled: “A Battle Lost?  Report on Two Centuries of Invasion and Management of Lantana camara L. in Australia, India and South Africa.”  According to the authors this means the “established paradigm” of eradication of invasive species must be abandoned in favor of “adaptive management.”

I discussed the article with two people who have been working for years on invasive plant species in Australia and Africa.  Rod Randall and Arne Witt.  Rod Randall works for the Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia.  Arne Witt works for CABI based in Nairobi, Kenya.  (See biographies below.) 

The very first thing that Randall and Witt questioned about the Lantana article was the existence of any “established paradigm of eradication” for entrenched invasive species such as Lantana.  As Randall observes, “it shows a certain naivety on the part of the authors that anyone would consider control attempts in Australia, India or South Africa as eradication efforts.”  Lantana first invaded in the 19^th century.  Back then, control efforts only occurred after invasive plants had become massive problems.  It is now so well established that eradication of an established invasive such as Lantana is out-of-the-question – at least with current means.

Both Randall and Witt argue that control is the key with well-established invasives like lantana.  And both agree that control is not a lost cause.  Interestingly, they contend the problem is not so much the invasive species as it is the people in charge.  As Witt says, “a wise man once told me that the problem is not managing invasive species but managing people to manage invasive species. This is so true if you look at past efforts that have been made to manage infestations around the world.”  

As Witt relates, “I was personally involved in a project in Zambia where the government made $450,000 (U.S. dollars) available to clear Mimosa pigra from a floodplain in a National Park.” The national implementing agencies had no real structured plan or strategy for follow-up activities, but the government promised to make more funding available when current funds were depleted, so, as Witt notes, “nobody was too concerned.”  After more than 900 ha. of a 3,000 ha. infestation were cleared, funds dried up and the area is being re-invaded.  “Without knowing the details someone may say that the management of Mimosa pigra in Zambia has been an absolute failure,” and “the weed is impossible to control.”  According to Witt, however, “this is far from the truth – it was a failure of management/people, but important lessons have been learned in this process.  There are many examples where we can effectively control weeds if we develop long-term control strategies coupled to long-term sustainable funding – it is not a lost cause.”

Randall describes just such a success: involving Kochia (Bassia scoparia (L.) A.J.Scott).  This effort worked “because the critical people, the landholders . . . were right behind the program and worked well with our agency to remove Kochia from over 2700 acres and hundreds of widespread sites.” (Note this eradication program cost less than $500,000 (Australian dollars) and was deemed successful after 10 years of monitoring with no finds.) 

In short, there really is no “established paradigm” of eradication according to Witt and Randall for established invasives like lantana.  It is a straw man that distracts and discourages decision-makers such as government agencies.

And what do the Oxford and Bergen researchers mean by “adaptive management” of invasive plant species?  In a future article, Invasive Plant News will address this topic.

Arne Witt: Arne has been working on the management of invasive plants, particularly biocontrol, for the past 18 years. He has worked for CSIRO (Australia), Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines (now Biosecurity Queensland), the Plant Protection Research Institute of the Agricultural Research Council (South Africa), and is currently the Regional Coordinator (Africa and Asia) for IAS for CABI. He has been the International Project Coordinator and/or Technical Advisor for GEF-UNEP IAS Projects in Africa, SE Asia and the Caribbean assisting in the strengthening/development of IAS policy, creating awareness, building IAS capacity and the development and implementation of control programmes for IAS.

Rod Randall: A biologist by training, Rod started his career with the Western Australian Agriculture Protection Board in 1985 moving to the Department of Agriculture’s Weed Science group in 1987.  In 2002 he published A Global Compendium of Weeds the most comprehensive document on the status of the worlds weed flora.  Rod has worked extensively on weed biology and ecology for a quarter century and for the past 16 years has assessed all plant introductions into Western Australia for their weed potential.  In that time he has assessed over 10,000 species and extensively reviewed the weed status of many hundreds of others.