IPANE in the Evening - Day 1

The rest of the day's talks were all about sources of funding for invasive species control...and most of it went right over my head. Too many acronyms: BASF, USFWS, EQIP, GRP, CSP, LIP. Rather than a summary, I'm just going to post a few links so those of you who are interested can start deciphering things for yourselves:

• EQIP
• LIP CT
• LIP MA
• Schedule of webcasts from BASF, many of which relate to invasive species. The speaker, Jason Bean, noted that there would be a webcast about funding resources on October 10th. A couple of attendees noted that past webcasts were very helpful, but I have to admit the role of BASF as a facilitator for funding to fight invasives creeps me out a little, since the unspoken implication here is "so that you can buy our herbicides."

IPANE in the Afternoon - Day 1, Part 5

To end Friday's session of scientific talks, Seth Wilkinson spoke about his company's efforts at restoration on Pochet Island and Wings Island, off of Cape Cod. The goal on Pochet Island is to rescue the sandplain grassland there, especially important since it is a globally rare habitat type. They've been employing several different management techniques to rid the island of invasive plants like Asiatic bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) and shrub honeysuckle (Lonicera spp.). The machines in the slideshow were big enough to hold a person, but not so big as their weight would do serious damage to the land. Plus they got to burn lots of stuff, good fun all around.

"You got your invasive species in my habitat!"..."You got your habitat all over my invasive species!"

Did you miss the latest edition of the Tangled Bank, hosted over at milkriverblog? I almost did. It's filled with candy and a dash of invasive species goodness. Please enjoy some ISW M&M's, but save me some blue ones.

IPANE in the Afternoon - Day 1, Part 4

Next up was Chris Zimmerman, talking about "Invasive plant species inventory and assessment of the Beaverkill Forest Matrix Block in the Catskill Mountains in southeast New York." This was an extensive mapping project looking at the distribution of a dozen different invasive plants. An analysis of road classes in the surveyed region found that they were a good predictor of whether invasive plants would be present or not, with transects by trails having relatively few invaders and true roads having more. Another interesting finding was that land with a home density of even just one house per km had more invasive species richness than land with no houses at all.

I noticed that the "Acknowledgements" slide at the end of the talk listed an Anonymous Donor...note to self: acquire anonymous donor!

IPANE in the Afternoon - Day 1, Part 3

Nava Tabak gave a very interesting talk about the potential of Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) invading New England. The ISW has posted about this species several times before, but always in the context of it invading Europe. Turns out it's already naturalized in parts of New England. Nava noted that Himalayan balsam has very similar habitat requirements to our two local native species of Impatiens, I. capensis and I. pallida, but grows taller and faster, and its seeds are more tolerant of dry conditions. Luckily it's easy an annual species, and easy to pull out, so they've already started control projects to get rid of patches in Farmington, Maine.

Bonus points to Nava for color-coding her graphs using the flower color of each species :-).

IPANE in the Afternoon - Day 1, Part 2

Randy Westbrooks from the USGS was supposed to give a talk this afternoon, but was held up by Hurricane Ophelia. But they already had his talk on a disk, so Les Mehrhoff gave his talk for him. The talk was about efforts to develop a national early detection and rapid response (ED/RR) network for the U.S. Some benefits of ED/RR over traditional management of invasive species are that ED/RR typically has minimal and brief impacts on a habitat, and theoretically should be cheaper than dealing with any species that has ealready become established. There are a lot of components that must come into play between the ED and the RR to have an effective system: detection, identification, vouchering, record verification, rapid assessment, etc. I say we buy every citizen scientist a camera and a GPS unit :-).

Interested? Then check out this draft plan (Word doc) on the subject.

IPANE in the Afternoon

Charlotte Pyle’s talk, "Let's get precise about what a "native" plant is" started off with a lot of basic introductory invasive species fodder, so I started reviewing my notes from the previous session. My mistake – because I suddenly realized she was talking about some pretty cool stuff. Charlotte works in Connecticut, and has been thinking a lot about what the term “native” means and how it’s important from an ecological perspective. She listed several reasons why people typically want to grow native plants: for ecological restoration, as habitat for wildlife, because of the belief that they won’t grow out of control, and because they believe native are better adapted to the environment. Of course, we know that often it is easier to grow a hearty non-native plant than to cultivate non-native species.

Charlotte also pointed out that labeling a plant as native can indicate many different things. Subspecies may be native to a very specific region, or cultivars of native species may no longer have the characteristics that made their wild counterparts a valuable part of the ecosystem (I loved her example of plants bred to have huge berries – too huge to fit in any local bird’s mouth!). The fact is, we really don’t know what we’re doing to wild native plant populations by mixing in horticulturally grown plants.

After Charlotte, Jonathan Lehrer spoke about Japanese barberry, but I’m going wait to talk about that until I cover the talk that was given on Saturday by another member of his lab.