Title: Volunteers on the lookout for invasive plants in USA

[MetroWest Daily News - Mar 29, 2010:By Kendall Hatch] USA - Many people have heard of water chestnut, Norway maple and curly-leaf pondweed. These are the established offenders - familiar names that appear every summer in news articles about invasive species with a choke-hold on native plants and their habitats. But what about stinking willie, flowering rush or hydrilla?These are new threats - invasive plants, mostly from Asia, that wildlife officials fear may be creeping into MetroWest. Now, a local coalition is looking for volunteers to help spot new invasive species in area towns to quell any threats to native plants and animals.

"One of the things that jumps to the top of the list with any invasive species work is making sure new species don't come in," said Jeff Collins, director of the Ecological Extension Service at the Massachusetts Audubon Society.

To find and eliminate invasive plant species before they spread and wreak havoc on native wildlife, the Sudbury-Assabet-Concord River Watershed Cooperative Invasive Species Management Association is recruiting volunteers for a yearlong survey encompassing 36 towns to look for new invasive plants. Volunteers do not have to have previous experience.

Ted Elliman, vegetation management coordinator at the New England Wild Flower Society, said volunteers will go through a one-day training session then be assigned to go into specific sites in their hometowns - and other locations, if they choose - to look for 11 specific invasive plants that could be encroaching on the watershed.

During their one-day training, volunteers will view a presentation in the morning describing each of the specific plants, detailing their appearance, habitat and impact on native species. In the afternoon, they will head outside to learn survey and documentation methods as well as how to effectively use a GPS receiver.

The group is holding four different training sessions in May in Southborough, Sudbury, Bedford and Bolton.

Elliman said the organization was working with conservation agents in each of the 36 towns to pinpoint 300-acre swaths that include wetland and upland habitats where the plants could survive.

He expected the project, which begins in May, to last until next summer, with teams spending about eight days in each town.

Elliman said most of the plants that volunteers will look for have not been reported in the watershed, but have been working their way up from southern states and could be in the region by now.

"It's very likely that within the next 10 years they will move in if they have not already," he said.

Volunteers, who will be carrying hand-held computers to document their findings, will be looking for plants like giant hogweed, mile-a-minute vine and Japanese stiltgrass, which can have disastrous effects on native wildlife if they spread.

Mile-a-minute vine "just completely takes over sections of forest," said Collins. "It truly will carpet a forest and completely change the ecology."

Mile-a-minute vine has been documented in areas as close as the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton.

The other up-and-coming invasive plants the volunteers will be looking for are kudzu, reed mannagrass, Brazilian waterweed, great yellowcress and parrot-feather.

Volunteers will also be taking stock of the locations of existing invasive species, but the focus of this study is prevention, said Elliman.

The study is one step of a strategic master plan developed by the association, a coalition of 25 local, state, federal and nonprofit groups, aimed at curbing the spread of invasive species.

The next step, said Elliman, is compiling the findings from the upcoming study and sending crews into the woods to eliminate the species before they spread further.

To volunteer for the survey, contact Ted Elliman at telliman@newenglandwild.org or at 508-877-7630, ext. 3203.

(Kendall Hatch can be reached at 508-626-4429 or khatch@cnc.com.)

From http://www.metrowestdailynews.com, see original source.





Article: WeedsNews362 (permalink)
Categories: :WeedsNews:community engagement
Date: 30 March 2010; 10:28:10 AM AEDT

Author Name: David Low
Author ID: adminDavid