From tsmith@usa1.com Mon Aug 7 17:12:56 1995 Return-Path: Received: from mx4.u.washington.edu by lists.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.07/UW-NDC Revision: 2.33 ) id AA15669; Mon, 7 Aug 95 17:12:56 -0700 Received: from spider.usa1.com by mx4.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.07/UW-NDC Revision: 2.33 ) id AA18608; Mon, 7 Aug 95 17:12:53 -0700 Received: from [199.183.158.120] (dmd120.usa1.com [199.183.158.120]) by spider.usa1.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id UAA18119 for ; Mon, 7 Aug 1995 20:12:47 -0400 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 7 Aug 1995 20:16:46 +1100 To: consbio@u.washington.edu From: tsmith@usa1.com (Tim Smith) Subject: Re: FW: Fwd: Exotic plant removal Daniel DeJoode wrote: >Thanks for your post to the Consbio listserve. Exotic plant control and >removal is something that I have an interest in. I, and I think others, >would appreciate the more precise references you mentioned. Thanks. Sorry for the delay in posting. Biological Pollution, MacKnight, ed., proceedings from a conference on exotic species control, is available from Patricia Ledlie Booksellers, Buckfield, Maine. Copendium on Exotic Species Control is published by the Natural Areas Assc. As a land manager for the Mass Audubon Society, dealing with exotic species, mostly plants, is a major part of my job. We have recently undertaken a project to attempt to eradicate exotic plants from a 22ha forested island surrounded by freshwater marsh. The major non-native plant is _Rhamnus frangula_, European Buckthorn. We have cleared all buckthorn from about 150 circular plots, 10m in diameter. This year we pulled 4500 stems of buckthorn. These plots will be monitored yearly to assess how this plant responds to hand-pulling. A few plots were cleared last year and we counted 67% regrowth rate this year. It is early to judge, but this seems discouraging. Fortunately, the actual removal of these plants is not difficult. Even large plants 3-4 meters high can be pulled out to the roots by one or two hearty workers. We have also just completed the third year of a project to eradicate a non-native grass, _Glyceria maxima_ from one of our sanctuaries. For this, we used herbicide, since no other techniques would be effective. This is a very aggressive plant, though this population was the first recorded in New England and only the third in the US. Experience in Canada, and even in its natural range in Europe, has shown that the risk of not controlling the the plant was far worse than the risk of applying an herbicide. A note on this project was published in a recent _Rhodora_, The Journal of the New England Botanical Club by J. Anderson and A. Reznicek. I would be extremely interested to hear of other's experiences with non-native species control and I'm happy to share more of my experience. We all need to know more about these species' life history and ecology and apply that to our management. I also want to know more about how others actually proceed with the work. Interns?, volunteers?, .....where does the funding come from, etc. *************************************** Tim Smith Gloucester, Mass e-mail: tsmith@USA1.com *************************************** .