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  Drapes of invasive kudzu envelop native trees at Colonial National Historical Park (top). Staff of the National Park Service collaborated with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in 2001 and treated two jointly managed areas with herbicide (above). Once the kudzu is eradicated, crews will work to restore the site’s biodiversity.
Kathleen Kodish Reeder
Back to Chapter 5: Managing Risks Articles Preserving endangered night skies By Dan Duriscoe and Chadwick A. Moore Protecting American ginseng By Janet Rock Incident management team develops foot-and-mouth disease plans By Peter Dratch and Kris Fister Eradicating rats from Anacapa Island By Kate Faulkner, Gregg Howald, and Steve Ortega Other Developments Focus on toxic airborne pollutants Mosquito surveillance in the National Capital Region Battling alien fish in Yellowstone Lake Award-winner Profile - Hawaii Volcanoes resource manager honored |
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 By Kathleen Kodish Reeder National Park Service managers nationwide are aware that invasive vegetation cannot be ignored without endangering the biodiversity of our national parks and, indeed, of whole geographical regions. They also realize that they may never eradicate all of the “invaders.” However, during 2001, managers in the National Park Service’s Northeast Region developed and refined several strategies for suppressing exotic plants enough to greatly reduce the risk they pose. The most prevalent strategy has been collaboration among parks or with conservation organizations, whether they are within the same geographic area or share the same concern about a specific invasive species. One of these team efforts in the Northeast was formally funded in Virginia where eight national parks cooperated to address high-priority, invasive vegetation issues. None of them had sufficient funding to provide the required expertise, staffing, equipment, or supplies on their own. Their proposal to form the Virginia Invasive Vegetation Management Team was funded by the Natural Resource Preservation Program (NRPP) for a two-year period (2000–2001). In the first year, the parks designed strategic plans to reduce targeted species to manageable levels, and trained their team’s field staff to recognize and control invasive exotics, restore native habitat, and install monitoring plots. During 2001, in addition to creating public information pamphlets and setting up tool caches at each park to continue the fieldwork, the Virginia team established the infrastructure for practical support and sustainability after the NRPP funding expires. Essentially, the latter entailed forming collaborative partnerships not only among themselves, but also with other agencies that share their concern about controlling invasives. According to James Åkerson, forest ecologist at Shenandoah National Park, an excellent example of this collaborative approach occurred when the Virginia team joined the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (a private, nonprofit organization) to eradicate kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata) in an area that is mutually overseen and operated by the National Park Service and the foundation at Colonial National Historical Park. The treated parcel occupies two acres along a parkway that is heavily used by the public. In 2001, preplanning occurred in April and May and an herbicide was applied during July; follow-up treatments were applied in the fall. Additional monitoring and treatment are scheduled for 2002. Once they have eradicated the kudzu, the crews will work to restore the biodiversity of the site’s pond and stream, as well as their respective banks. A different type of collaboration was illustrated at the Johnstown Flood National Memorial and Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site in Pennsylvania where Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum Siebold and Zucc) and giant knotweed (Polygonum sachalinense F.W. Schmidt ex Maxim) have threatened natural resources. Before 2001, these parks had funded two research projects designed to identify the most effective treatment against both species of knotweed and reveal their reproductive ecology. Knowing that suppressing knotweed within the two parks was not sufficient to eliminate the threat when knotweed was also growing on neighboring land, NPS staff began persuading those who were developing the Kiski-Conemaugh Rivers Conservation Plan, as well as members of the Conemaugh Valley Conservancy and the Southern Alleghenies Conservancy, to target knotweed in their regional control plans. After receiving a grant in October 2000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, these parks were able to greatly expand control measures of knotweed and other noxious plants within their borders; to increase their support of control efforts by other groups; and to develop more public outreach activities, including a formal education program about invasive plants. By continuing to facilitate the education of landowners and the public throughout the watershed, the National Park Service leveraged its resources in 2001 to preserve or restore the native habitat of an area far larger than the land encompassed by the parks themselves. Several best management practices were also illustrated at Assateague Island National Seashore, Maryland, where park staff showed ingenuity in procuring funds, conducting their own research, and developing outreach activities to share vital information resulting from that research. When park personnel realized that an invasive exotic, the dune-building plant called Asiatic sand sedge (Carex kobomugi), seemed capable of overwhelming two more beneficial, native beach plants, they also learned that little information was available about how to suppress the invasive species. The park staff were able to conduct their own research by combining funding from several sources, including the Natural Resource Preservation Program and the Endangered Species Conservation Fund, because their investigation proposed satisfying two interrelated goals: suppressing an invasive exotic plant and protecting a plant on the federal list of threatened species, seabeach amaranth (Amaranthus pumilus), one of the native plants. The work done by Chris Lea, ecologist at the national seashore, revealed the practicality of suppressing the invasive plant during the early stages of its incursion. Lea notes that, although suppressing Asiatic sand sedge after the plant has become abundant in an area is probably possible, the cost and effort to do so would be prohibitive for most parks. Knowing that this information was not widely available and learning that dunes formed by Asiatic sand sedge in other parks also exist, Lea began collaborating with the Office of Natural Lands Management in the New Jersey Division of Parks and Forestry to develop a fact sheet. The information source explains that Asiatic sand sedge is an impending threat to native beach grasses, and describes effective control or eradication treatments (depending on the extent of the “invasion” by the sand sedge). Assateague Island’s extensive educational efforts culminated in the submission of the newly developed fact sheet to the “Weeds Gone Wild” Web page, which is maintained by the Alien Plant Working Group of the Plant Conservation Alliance, a national consortium of 10 federal agencies and 145 other organizations interested in ecology and conservation. As this overview reveals, during 2001, national parks in the Northeast Region formed partnerships at many levels and used several tactics to raise awareness and fund research that will protect the native plants and natural resources under their stewardship. Whether they have collaborated with others to develop a treatment strategy or developed their own and then shared their discoveries, NPS staff members have been pooling all available resources to control exotic vegetation. |
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This material is from Natural Resource Year in Review--2001, published by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, in May 2001 (publication D-2255) /YearInReview/yir/yir2001/05_risks/05_4_reeder.html Last Updated: |
