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Posts Tagged → invasive

Are Alien Invasives Driving You Nuts, Too?

“Alien invasives” is an ecological term or phrase for plants and animals that have parasitically invaded a favorable host environment, where they are unchecked by natural predators or forces. Examples exist in the Florida Everglades, where monitor lizards and giant pythons are rapidly becoming the dominant predators, in the Great Lakes, where round gobies and Asian carp are displacing walleyes, bass, salmon, and trout, and along the East Coast, where Asian mosquitoes are now fully entrenched.

It is this last species that really aggravates me, although the 15-20 million invasive non-native tax money-hungry and public services-gobbling humans presently here also bother me, too.

Asian mosquitoes come in several Latin names, which I won’t bother Dear Reader with here, but suffice it to say that they are the Samurai warrior in the world of mosquitoes. Where our native brown mosquitoes are relatively slow, lumbering, hovering, whining, nocturnal wall-hugging louts, the Asian mosquitoes are surreptitious, incredibly fast and dextrous, ankle-biting, and active 24/7, even in bright sunlight. If you swat at one, it won’t fly away and hide, it will Judo-fast avoid your hand, and immediately counter-attack.

One Asian mosquito is called the “tiger mosquito” because it has long camouflaging stripes which render it nearly invisible to the human eye, even up close. Almost like a shape-shifter, the tiger mosquito dodges your swat, and deftly, fearlessly moves in for the kill.

Asian mosquitoes have taken up residence in our back yard over the past five years. Each year they get worse, more dense, more aggressive, far beyond pesky. They have rendered our entire property nearly unusable during the months best suited to being outside. Gardening is now a run through a mine field, a gantlet that must be mastered quickly with a return to home base before too many painful bites are felt.

One fine Saturday in early August, in a shady spot in our back yard, reclining on a comfy chaise-lounge chair next to my wife and daughter, I soon discovered a black cloud horde of Asian mosquitoes around me. Welts were rising all over every area of exposed skin. I went and got the fly swatter and a can of bug spray, and returned to my reclining position, but with the swatter ready for action. After twenty minutes of battle and little reading, I had covered every part of my body with so much toxic bug dope that it began to make me feel ill. And yet the mosquitoes still found places they could land for the brief one or two seconds they require to extract my blood.

Unable to withstand the assault any more, I went inside and sat at the big picture window, watching my wife and child swat at the insects, the humans determined to enjoy the outdoors and the insects determined to suck blood.

Although my political nature dominates my writing, I really intend no metaphor here. This is really just waving the flag, an SOS, a warning, that America has become a breeding ground for alien invasives that are ruining our outdoor lifestyle. Now that the Ebola and Zika viruses have arrived with Obama’s foreign minions, more and more Americans are becoming aware of the costs of these invasive insects. It is not just about a little discomfort anymore, like with our friendly old native mosquito, but rather any time outdoors could cost you your health, even your life.

And what is the cost of lost happiness over twelve weekends, for tens of millions of people?

Forget sexy issues like “climate change,” let’s solve real environmental threats

By Josh First

Pennsylvania’s forests are suffering from a one-two punch-out by both invasive bugs and pathogens that kill our native and very valuable trees, and then by a following host of invasive vines, shrubs, trees, and other plants that are filling the void left after the big natives are gone.

Today yet another bulletin arrived from PSU plant pathology / forestry researchers, noting that ‘sudden-oak-death disease’ was detected on a shipment of rhododendron from Oregon.

Oregon got it from Asia.

Pennsylvania’s forests are becoming full of non-native, invasive plants, bugs, and pathogens. Each of our valuable tree species now has its own specific attackers. God knows what our native forests will look like in ten years.

The Asian emerald ash borer is literally making ash trees go extinct as a species. I see whole stands of forest, hundreds of acres, where not one ash tree is healthy. Dutch Elm disease killed off most of our elms in the 1980s. An Asian fungus killed off the once incredible and mighty American chestnut tree. Forget pathogens and bugs, because lots of aggressive, fast-growing invasive plants are taking up room on the forest floor, pushing out and overwhelming needed native plants. Few if any animals eat the invasives, which are often toxic and low value.

Human-caused climate change?  It is a sexy political issue, and it is highly debatable. But forest destruction from non-native invasives is a real, tangible, non-debatable, non-politicized issue we need to address immediately. So many people and wild animals depend upon our native forests, that without them, our rural economies could dramatically fall and our wildlife could disappear.

Forester Scott Cary had this to say, tongue somewhat in cheek: “With the 1000 cankers disease in Walnut now in southeast Pennsylvania, that area is quarantined…maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on black birch and red maple [low-value native species long observed to be acting like aggressive, non-native invasives, and therefore harvested aggressively by responsible forest managers], that may be all we have left to choose from. Of course, Asian long-horned beetle may get the maple, so that leaves us black birch, the tree of the future.”

That is a sad place to be, folks.  And to think that so much money is wasted selling the phony issue of human-caused climate change, while real environmental disasters are actually happening…it shows you just how dedicated the environmental Left is to political dominance, not useful solutions to environmental problems.

Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight; bring goats

It is a fact that forest owners and land managers are increasingly engaged in a gunfight of sorts with noxious invasive weeds.  Ailanthus, mile-a-minute, multiflora rose, barberry, Japanese honeysuckle, Russian olive, Asian bittersweet, Angelica, and new non-native invasives are in many ways taking over and altering Pennsylvania’s native forest.

If you think this sounds like a bunch of environmental hooey, then stop using paper goods right now.  No more toilet paper for you!

Paper is a product of pulp trees like black birch and red maple.  Once upon a time, these two aforementioned tree species were the scourge of well managed forests.  With little seed to feed wildlife, and little valuable wood to make furniture or flooring, these trees displaced the oaks, hickories, hard maples, poplars and cherries landowners have historically relied on to pay for their land and which consumers have relied upon for everything wooden they take for granted.

Now, the formerly “junk” trees we waged war against seem positively benign when compared to the newcomers.  Foreign invasive weeds and trees not only bring nothing of nutritional value, nor anything of economic value, they rapidly displace those native trees we rely upon to feed deer, turkeys, bears, and on which America depends for furniture.

Herbicides like Glyphosate 41 have worked for me for many years.  But I am now finding myself running around playing catch up with these pesty plants in too many places, more than anyone can keep up with.  Like many others in my role, I feel like I am losing the battle.  When I see yet another thicket of ailanthus and mile-a-minute, I feel like the guy who showed up at the gunfight with a knife – outgunned, helpless.

It is time to trot out the goats.

Goats eat pretty much everything, including the invasive plants we abhor, with relish.  Goats are not cheap initially, but a $100 goat can earn its keep in displaced herbicide expenses in about three or four days.

Goats take more time to maintain than a spray pack and wand.  At night they must be penned up, or they will be eaten by a bear or coyotes.  They must be tethered in one place and then moved every few hours, or they can quickly damage the native trees and shrubs we want.

The big benefit of goats is that they can be eaten at the end of the project.

I will report back to you on the success of the goats at the gunfight.

Invasive plants, your new job

Invasive plants like Tree of Heaven (ailanthus, a tree with orange seed pods that just seem to pop up around your property), Asian bittersweet (little vines that quickly become Tarzan-big vines), mile-a-minute, Japanese honeysuckle, Russian olive, barberry, multiflora rose, parasitic ornamental grape vines, and so on, are all becoming a huge problem in our forests.

Each of these plants displaces and suppresses native, helpful plants.

Out west, there are entire regions where it is actually illegal to have invasive weeds on your property.  If the county conservation staff find those weeds on your land, you can be fined a lot of money.  Why would property rights-driven Westerners embrace a law like that?  Wouldn’t they pooh-pooh plants?

Because invasive weeds carry a substantial financial cost, people who make their living off the land have a healthy abhorrence of these bad plants.  They are so quick to take over the landscape, and provide few to no benefits to people or animals.

Pennsylvania’s native forests are an important source of wildlife habitat, clean air, clean water, scenic beauty, recreation, and income.  Yet, our forests are becoming increasingly overrun by non-native invasive plants and trees.  Ailanthus is especially egregious.  It got its start and continues to spread from public roadsides, where PennDot and the PA Turnpike Commission have failed to control it.  The impact of ailanthus on our forests is becoming a real cost consideration.

It is time to have a public policy and a public agency work more seriously on the challenge posed by invasive weeds.