sacwmp news vine - bugwoodcloud · the great smoky mountain sacwmp’s new weed-free quarry program...
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JULY 2013 VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1
SACWMP News Vine Biannual Newsletter of the Southern Appalachian
Cooperative Weed Management Partnership
The winter months are a time when significant preventative gains can be made against the spread of invasive species. Field preparations such as cutting standing dead invasives or path-way-clearing in dense infesta-tions can aid next season's work. Equally as important are the different initiatives that are co-ordinated among stakeholders during these months. An exam-ple of one such initiative is SACWMP’s recently established Gravel Quarry Recognition Program (GQRP), the newest component of our “Forest Friendly Campaign” - the pro-gram aims to seek out and rec-ognize regional suppliers of weed-free gravel.
Quarries and gravel pits are perennially disturbed areas which make them prime habitat for many invasive plants. Inva-sive seeds may land on and contaminate recently mined sand and gravel (aggregate). When the contaminated aggre-gate is transported to a project site, these seeds are also distrib-uted, allowing the plants to become established and to
flourish at the new location. Since January, SACWMP has been compiling a list of gravel suppliers in the region and working to establish an opera-tional framework for the GQRP .
The next step in the process was to identify areas in the region that are suspected of having IE plant infestations due, in part, to the introduction of contaminat-ed gravel. In coordination with SACWMP partners, Georgia Department of Transportation, North Carolina Department of Transportation, and the Tennes-see Eastman Hiking Club, sev-eral such areas were identified, along with a list of gravel suppli-ers contracted for nearby pro-jects.
Finally, a series of forms and protocols were drafted for the process of surveying and recog-nizing gravel quarries as “weed-free”. An inspection form, list of survey protocols, pit rating key, and list of recommended restorative seed mixes were adapted from similar efforts in the Great Smoky Mountain
SACWMP’s New Weed-Free Quarry Program ‘Rocking’ Along Nicely
SuperStar Volunteer—Glenn Court
Drumroll, please! SACWMP would like to recognize Asheville’s own Glenn Court as our 2012 SuperStar Volunteer!
Glenn is a freelance manuscript edi-tor and cat collector from Tidewater, Virginia. She came to Asheville just over two years ago and subsequently fell in love with the mountains.
She participated in several 2012 SACWMP events, pulling loads of invasive exotic plants like garlic mus-tard and Japanese spiraea along the
A.T. at our Lemon Gap, Mill Ridge, and Chestoa project areas. She also served as an organizer for the Ashe-ville Hiking Meetup Group, where she recruited many other hardwork-ing volunteers for SACWMP pro-jects.
An avid amateur gardener, Glenn has a long history of battling privet and nonnative wisteria at home, and has learned about many other invasive plants through working with SACWMP. She is truly an invasive plant SuperStar!
Inside this issue:
SACWMP SUCCESS 2
KUDZU BUGS! 2
FEATURED WEED 3
ANNOUNCEMENTS 3
EXOTICS: ECO-
LOGICAL TRAPS
4
Upcoming Work Days:
July 15th—Hot Springs/Mill Ridge
July 25th—Sam’s Gap
August 10th—Stecoah Gap
August 17th—Hot Springs/Mill
Ridge
September 2nd—Lemon Gap
SACWMP Partners:
Appalachian Trail Conservancy
Western North Carolina Alliance
Equinox Environmental
NC Forest Service
US Forest Service
US Fish & Wildlife Service
National Park Service
TN Natural Areas
National Park (GRSM) to aid SACWMP partners in this pro-cess. Following the establish-ment of these standards, SACWMP’s first quarry survey was scheduled, in coordination with GRSM for late March .
While the GQRP is still in its early stages, it has great poten-tial to be successful in reducing the spread of IE species in the region. SACWMP hopes to bring together as many of the regions' stakeholders as possible to maximize our resources in an effort to identify and recognize suppliers of weed-free gravel. Another aim of this initiative is to increase awareness among agency partners and the general public of how invasive plants are spread. The hope is that increased awareness will lead to greater demand for weed-free material affecting industry-wide change.
-Shawn Garrett, AmeriCorps ATC Intern
*SACWMP would like to give a special thanks to Lisa Huff (Tennessee Department of Environment and Conser-vation) and Kristine Johnson (Great Smoky Mountains National Park) for their assistance and guidance through-out the process of establishing this program. Your help is greatly appreciated!
“Working cooperatively to protect and restore the significant
natural heritage of the Southern Appalachians by preventing,
detecting, and controlling invasive exotic plants.”
Glenn is all smiles while
hiking the Smokies.
SACWMP volunteers have won the bat-
tle against Chinese Silvergrass invading
the Appalachian Trail at Sam’s Gap on
the border of North Carolina and Ten-
nessee!
A May 2010 inventory of invasive plants
along the trail in this area had listed Chi-
nese Silvergrass, Miscanthus sinensis, as the
major threat to native plants there. In
late summer of that year, we scheduled a
volunteer project to treat the plant, first
removing flowering heads that had just
begun to produce seeds, followed by
“cut-and-paint” treatment immediately
adjacent to the trail and backpack foliar
spray treatment farther from the path.
Miscanthus had, by this time, colonized
several clearings in the area and was
sprouting extensively beneath the forest
canopy up and down slope from the
trail.
The task appeared daunting during the
first year: the grass had grown into dense
five foot tall clumps of dense, saw-
toothed blades—flower and seed heads
reached over 6 feet and our volunteers
SACWMP Volunteers Turn Back Invasive Grass at Sam’s Gap!
feeding on small kudzu patches in Fall 2012. And in Asheville in late January of this year, I noticed one staying warm in the corner of my back windshield. Ento-mologists have indicated that the bug does utilize vehicles for protection from the elements and could very well be
In the fall of 2009, the Kudzu bug (Megacopta cribraria), an Asiatic insect, was observed in the Atlanta metropolitan area. At the time of the initial sightings, the insect was seen feeding on kudzu vines – could it possibly be an agent of biological control? The following spring and summer would reveal the true nature of these strange insects – they began feeding voraciously on not only kudzu, but all other available plants in the Leg-ume family, including highly important agricultural crops such as the soybean as well as native trees like black locust. So despite it’s enticing common name, the bug falls far short of what some scien-tists hoped could be a biological control agent in the suppression of kudzu.
Here in southwestern North Carolina, the insect has become increasingly preva-lent – I’ve personally observed it in sev-eral places in Brevard, clustering and
spreading via ‘hitchhiking’. In fact, a soy pest expert in Mississippi has tracked the bug’s journey along major east-west in-terstates, finding healthy populations in adjacent soy fields and kudzu patches. And at the westernmost confirmed infes-tation, a busy rest and truck stop with an adjoining kudzu patch, he sees license plates from Oklahoma, Texas and even further west, indications of where we might see the next infestation pop up.
Despite growing concerns, there are lessons we can learn from exotic pests such as the kudzu bug. Remembering to perform simple tasks like checking our vehicles for bugs, removal and eradica-tion upon discovery in the landscape, and, perhaps most importantly, not transporting potentially infected plants or their materials across borders; all of these can help to stop the spread of the inaccurately-named kudzu bug.
The Bug That Eats The Plant That Ate the South? — Owen Carson, Plant Ecologist
few re-sprouts remained. We decided
to venture deeper into forest and dis-
covered a front edge of the invasion in
the form of sparsely scattered young
sprouts from the previous years’ wind-
blown seeds. We spent the day trying
to track down and treat every one of
them and came away convinced that
our coverage was thorough and esti-
mated that 95% of the original Silver-
grass infestation had been eliminated.
It is difficult to totally eradicate inva-
sive exotic plants in most settings, and
there are many Miscanthus plants visible
on private property and roadsides away
from the general vicinity of the AT at
Sam’s Gap. We will re-visit this area
one more time later in 2013 to nip any
new plants in the bud, but should only
go back every few years to insure that
the trail there remains weed free.
SACWMP’s goal for a level of success-
ful treatment is 80% reduction of inva-
sive exotic species. So by every meas-
urement, our Sam’s Gap project has
been a huge success!
literally disappeared into areas within
these thickets. After a good day’s
work, there were still many plants that
remained untouched, but we felt good
at what we had treated.
This being our first attempt at focusing
on such a large silvergrass infestation,
we had no basis upon which to predict
a level of success. When we returned
to the site in 2011, we were pleased to
see that much of the infestation had
been set back. But there were still
many clumps left with re-sprouting at
the base of some of these, as well as
widely scattered new sprouts. So we
attacked them again, earlier this time,
before they went to seed, and felt we
had treated most of those that re-
mained.
During year three (2012), we again
visited the area and were overjoyed to
see “dead soldiers” everywhere
throughout the formerly infested clear-
ings. The brown remnants of Miscan-
thus, though still standing after a mild
winter, had been completely killed and
PAGE 2 VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1 JULY 2013
SACWMP NEWS VINE BIANNUAL NEWSLETTER OF THE
SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN COOPERATIVE WEED MANAGEMENT PARTNERSHIP
PAGE 3 VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1 JULY 2013
It’s nearly summer—the spring ephem-
erals have come and gone and the forest
is alive, blanketed in a verdant, floral
display. Native bellworts, irises, and
orchids are starting to bloom, and trees
and shrubs are finishing their leaf-out;
filtered sunlight dapples the forest floor.
But not all is well with our native ecosys-
tems—a deceptive invasive exotic plant
lurks amidst the lush understory, waiting
to invade.
Japanese spiraea (Spiraea japonica), also
known as Japanese meadowsweet or
maybush, has increasingly become a
serious threat to the integrity of our
Southern Appalachian ecosystems. In-
troduced from Asia in the late 19th cen-
tury as an ornamental landscape plant
and still cultivated and planted today,
this shrub has since made its way deep
into our woods, utilizing Forest Service
roads and hiking trails as inroads. It is
usually observed in very dense infesta-
tions, commonly occurring along road-
sides and adjacent hillslopes but also
colonizing riparian areas when given the
opportunity. With its multiple-stemmed
arching habit, it creates thick entangle-
ments that shade out native vegetation
and provide poor quality habitat for
wildlife.
Featured Weed: Japanese Spiraea by Owen Carson, Plant Ecologist
In mid to late May (think: ‘maybush’),
Japanese spiraea begins to bloom, show-
ing off its bright pink corymbs (flower
clusters) all the way up until August.
Such a display is what tempted horticul-
turalists to import the plant to begin
with. After successful pollination, seeds
set from August through November
then spread via gravity, water, and soil
movement (most commonly during
roadside maintenance). The result: dense
monocultures in the understory, an eco-
logically-depauperate environment.
So what’s the plan? How do we combat
such a ferocious invader? Well,
SACWMP has spent a great deal of time
trying to manage the spread of this spe-
cies, most notably at Lemon Gap, a
high-traffic area along the Appalachian
Trail. We’ve organized hordes of volun-
teers to come out and clip or hand-pull
the plants, which have colonized acres of
nearby roadsides and adjacent hills.
We’ve made significant progress, but
each year that we don’t eradicate the
infestation means another year of seeds
in the soil bank and more opportunity
for the plant to spread into our forests.
We need your help! Many hands make
light work, and with your volunteer ef-
fort we could help rid the woods of this
scourge. Come join us on a control day
this coming summer: you’ll learn a ton
about identification, control, and moni-
toring of Japanese spiraea and other
invasive exotic plants, plus you’ll feel
great about helping to restore ecosystem
integrity within our forested lands!
SACWMP NEWS VINE BIANNUAL NEWSLETTER OF THE
SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN COOPERATIVE WEED MANAGEMENT PARTNERSHIP
In mid to late May, a roadside infestation of Spiraea stands out
like a sore thumb with its showy, pink corymbs.
WNCA’s Bob Gale Recognized by Warren Wilson College
SACWMP is pleased to announce that Bob Gale, Public Lands Director
with the Western North Carolina Alliance and an integral member of the
SACWMP team, has been recognized by Warren Wilson College as the
2013 recipient of the Grace Lee Peace Award.
Bob was selected by the Warren Wilson College Service Program Staff and
the Service Program Advisory Committee as a community partner working
with Warren Wilson students to make a contribution to an important com-
munity issue. The award was established “to recognize outstanding accom-
plishments in engaging students in meaningful learning and service based in
the community.”
Vivian Williamson, a student who has worked with Bob and who presented
him with the award, described him as “an exceptional community servant
[whose] dedication to the eradication of invasive species and the preserva-
tion of our incredible natural land is remarkable and tireless”. Congratula-
tions to Bob, who exemplifies our commitment to preserving the natural
heritage of the Southern Appalachians!
Bob received the Grace Lee Peace Award in a ceremony at the college on
May 17.
EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENTS
Equinox Environmental Receives ATC’s License Plate Grant Award
SACWMP is also pleased to announce that Equinox Environmental Con-
sultation & Design, Inc., has been awarded a grant through the Appalachi-
an Trail Conservancy’s 2013 License Plate Grant Award Program!
In 2012, the same grant was used by SACWMP to design, build, and pro-
mote the use of two boot brushes. Placed at major intersections along the
Appalachian Trail, the brushes are designed to increase awareness about the
spread of invasive exotic plants via human vectors; users can read interpre-
tive signage, then brush their boots clean before and after hiking.
Equinox plans to use this year’s award to focus on education. Specifically,
they plan to work with local educators in 4th through 12th grade to develop
invasive exotic plant lesson plans that can be applied in public schools.
They also plan on extending interactive invasive plant workshops to inter-
est groups that haven’t been a big part of SACWMP in the past, such as
master gardener’s clubs, homeowner’s associations, and local recreation
groups. The idea is to educate holistically, to reach out to those people
who don’t know a whole lot about invasive plants but would benefit from
learning about them.
Please contact Equinox or SACWMP if you are a member of a interest
group that wants to learn more about invasive plants!
160A Zillicoa St.
Asheville, NC 28801
828-254-3708
http://www.appalachiantrail.org
Western North Carolina Alliance
29 North Market St., Suite 610
Asheville, NC 28801
828-258-8737
37 Haywood St., Suite 100
Asheville, NC 28801
828-253-6856
http://www.equinoxenvironmental.com
Mountain Valleys RC&D Council
4388 Hwy 25-70, Suite 3
Marshall, NC 28753
828-649-3313 ext 5
http://www.mountainvalleysrcd.org
National Forests in North Carolina
160A Zillicoa St.
Asheville, NC 28801
828-257-4200
http://www.cs.unca.edu/nfsnc
220 Sardis Road
Asheville NC 28806
828-667-5211
http://www.dfr.state.nc.us
160 Zillicoa St.
Asheville, NC 28801
828-258-3939 http://
www.fws.gov/asheville
67 Ranger Drive
Asheville, NC 28805
828-296-0850
W E ’RE ON THE W EB !
H T T P: / / W W W . S A C W M P . O R G
Southern Appalachian Cooperative Weed Management Partnership
SACWMP’s Partners
PAGE 4 VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1 JULY 2013
SACWMP NEWS VINE BIANNUAL NEWSLETTER OF THE
SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN COOPERATIVE WEED MANAGEMENT PARTNERSHIP
Here at SACWMP, we’ve taken great steps to ensure that the
public makes well-informed decisions when it comes to their
landscapes, producing thousands of Do Not Plant/Do Not
Buy Pocket guides, holding numerous workshops, and have
recognizing several local nurseries for their commitment to the
sale of solely native plants. And it’s all part of our fight to
empower our citizens with the knowledge of why invasive
plants are so detrimental. That’s why we’re highlighting two
recent studies have sought to show the ecological ramifications
of a landscape planted with invasive exotics, both to wildlife
and potentially to ourselves.
The first study comes out of Georgia, where in 2009 dozens
of Cedar waxwings were inexplicably found dead. Upon
closer investigation, it became apparent that they had eaten
toxic doses of the berries of sacred bamboo (Nandina domesti-
ca), a commonly planted invasive-exotic shrub. The berries,
which contain cyanide, were the most available food source,
and so the birds gorged themselves to the point of poisoning
and death.
The second study illustrates how invasives can negatively
affect human health. Ecologists in Connecticut have shown a
direct correlation between the density of infestations of Japa-
nese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) and black-legged ticks, a
primary vector of the bacteria that causes Lyme disease
(Borrelia burgdorferi). A common landscape plant, barberry’s
dense, arching foliage creates a near-perfect humid condition
for the ticks, which require consistent moisture to avoid
desiccation. Thus, dense infestations of Japanese barberry
support dense populations of black-legged ticks, which in
turn host a greater amount of the Lyme disease-causing bac-
teria.
These are just two small examples of the detriment to our
ecosystem that is spurred by invasive exotic plants that we
have placed in our landscapes. Let’s try and learn from situa-
tions like these, plant native so we can avoid the inadvertent
destruction of our natural communities and preserve the
flora and fauna which call these mountains home!
Invasives in the Landscape—Ecological Traps
A dense infestation of Japanese barberry dominates the understo-
ry of a forest, crowding out native plants and animals.