Invasives

It's difficult for me to write about invasive species control on conservation properties since one of my biggest failures at the NRT was my inability to convince the Board, Executive Director, and Property Manager to take a serious approach to this issue. If you want to see any of the ten most common invasive plant species in Massachusetts go to Sheep Pasture. Wait til next year, and you'll be able to see more. A state listed endangered orchid is on the verge of being swamped by a small patch of glossy buckthorn on an NRT property. By the time I left in June nothing had been done about this despite having had a rescue plan developed by the New England Wildflower Society available for several years.

Man-made landscapes and farm land are most prone to invasion so neglect control efforts for a few years or a few decades and you are bound to have a problem. Undisturbed, unfragmented natural environments are less likely to be invaded, but we don't have many of those environments here in Easton where our "forests" are farms and estates reverting to woods.

Luckily, the Ames family seem to have done a very good job of controlling invasive species on the Governor Ames Estate which has now become the property of the Trustees of Reservations. With 25,000 acres to manage the Trustees have thought long and hard about invasive species. A little searching through their website will lead you to a 22 page PDF file on the issue. This document explains what an invasive species is and how they damage the environment. It then lays out the reasons to attempt to control invasives. One reason is to protect biodiversity, another is to set a good example of best land management policies, and a third is to protect cultural landscapes (gardens, landscaped estates) and agricultural productivity that are most prone to attack from invasives.

The next section of the document outlines best practices beginning with removing invasive species from designed landscapes before they invade minimally managed environments. When prevention fails or on new properties early detection becomes key. All properties are monitored especially along roads, property boundaries and in areas of human or physical disturbance. You can help by learning the major invasives and reporting any you see on the Ames Estate. After early detection the Trustees would use the least disruptive methods to remove and dispose of the new invasive.

In acquiring a property the Trustees do an inventory of both invasive and harmless species already present. This includes searching for rare or at risk plants. Once the inventory is completed, a management plan is developed. This is a much more complex task than preventing the introduction of an invasive species. Unless carefully implemented invasive species control of an established plant can become a Sisyphean task of annual removal. The Trustees recognize this and make restoration of native plant communities part of their control efforts. Ultimately, the Trustees have developed two control methods that they call weed-led and site-led. I'll talk about these strategies in a blog next week.