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Fairfax County is expanding the Early Detection, Rapid Response (EDRR) Program

Photo: Courtesy of Fairfax County Park Authority, Wavyleaf Basket Grass

In an effort to combat newly arriving and not yet established invasive species, Fairfax is hoping to find
people willing to survey parks and map certain invasive species (and when practical remove them).
Surveyors would begin by joining workdays led by FCPA staff and experienced EDRR volunteers before
having the opportunity to go out on their own or in small groups to their local parks. Some of the species
currently being actively hunted are Wavyleaf Basket Grass, Incised Fumewort, Two horned water
chestnut and Leatherleaf Mahonia to name a few. The whole list is here:
https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/parks/invasive-management-area/early-detection

You don’t need to be able to recognize all of them, generally a park survey just involves looking for 1 or
2 species that have been reported in an area and recording their presence on EDDMaps or iNaturalist.
Several work dates have been scheduled: From 1:00 to 3:00 on April 10, 11, 17 & 18 at locations to be
determined.

Contact: Jas Darby: [email protected] for more information.

To sign up for one of the dates use this link:
https://volunteer.fairfaxcounty.gov/custom/1380/opp_details/179794

FMN’s can log hours under Citizen Science programs for FCPA [C109] if your time is spent mapping or under Invasive Plant Management [S108] for time spent removing invasive plants.

Volunteer Days: Invasive species removal, Saturdays in October

Image/photo: Courtesy The Clifton Institute

Please click the date and time links below for more details and sign-up information.

Saturday, October 1, 9 – 12 am

Saturday, October 8, 9 – 12 am

Saturday, October 22, 9 – 12 am

The Clifton Institute
6712 Blantyre Road, Warrenton, VA
38.775154, -77.798197

Date and time subject to change dependent on weather. Please check your email for updates on the morning of the event.

National Invasive Species Information Center (NISIC) and The InvasivespeciesInfo.gov Website

Photo: Autumn olive, twigs/shoots with thorns and leaves in April, James H. Miller; USDA, Forest Service

The National Invasive Species Information Center (NISIC) was established in 2005 at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA’s) National Agricultural Library (NAL) to meet the information needs of users, including the National Invasive Species Council (Council).

The website, InvasivespeciesInfo.gov is managed by NISIC. This website serves as a reference and educational gateway to information, organizations, and services about invasive species.

Below is an outline overview of National Invasive Species Information Center (NISIC)’s site content. This overview is not exhaustive.  Please take some time to explore and navigate through the various sections. The Species Profile List section includes both common and scientific species names.  It also provides users with links to photos and other information.

Invasive Species Intro:

  • About Invasive Species
  • What are invasive species
  • Federal Government’s Response (Including National Management Plan)

Species Information:

  • What are Species Profiles?
  • Terrestrial Invasives
  • Aquatic Invasives
  • Species Profiles List
  • Species Not Established in U.S.

Resources:

  • Resources by Location
  • Resources by Subject or Type
  • Resource Search

News:

  • All News and Events
  • Emerging Issues
  • Conferences and Events
  • Federal Register Notices
  • Newsmedia

What’s New

Blue Ridge PRISM Summer Invasive Plant Workshops (Virtual)

Dates to choose from: Saturday, June 12, 2021 (1:00 – 4:00 pm) OR
Thursday, June 24, 2021 (9:00 am – 12:00 pm)
Registration required.

Blue Ridge PRISM’s Summer Invasive Plant Workshop will enable you to learn how to confidently identify and manage invasive plants best identified and controlled during the summer months. Blue Ridge PRISM’s workshops are being conducted virtually and contain the same content as in-person workshops except that the outdoor elements will be conducted when it is safe to do so.

Topics covered in this session include:
Identifying invasive plants
Which invasives you can best kill now
Which invasives you should treat later
Best seasonal practices for each invasive
Using manual & mechanical control methods
Methods for controlling invasives with herbicides
Choosing the right herbicide and equipment, and using it properly
Planning a work schedule with best timings for multiple plants

FMN Annual Chapter Meeting includes Lanternfly Training, December 14th

Photo from nps.gov

Monday, December 14, 2020
7 – 8:30 pm
Request Zoom link by emailing [email protected]

Rachel Griesmer will talk about spotted lanternfly, an invasive planthopper new to Virginia. Rachel is an urban forester with Fairfax County Forest Pest Management Branch. She earned a Bachelor of Science in environmental biology and botany from Michigan State University and a Master of Science in forest ecology and management from Michigan Technological University. She holds certifications from the International Society of Arboriculture as a Certified Arborist as wells as a Qualified Tree Risk Assessor and has participated in suppression programs for invasive insects.

The meeting will also include the graduation of our Spring 2020 Basic Training class and an election for some key board positions.

Invasive Water Chestnut Presentation, by Dr. Nancy Rybicki

Photo by N. Rybicki

Posted with permission of the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS)

At the virtual Fairfax Master Naturalists Quarterly Chapter Meeting in May, Dr. Nancy Rybicki introduced us to a recently discovered non-native, invasive water chestnut species that is overrunning lakes and ponds in Fairfax County. She is seeking help organizing mechanisms to locate and eradicate this culprit before it becomes widespread.

Her presentation may be found here.

Fairfax Master Naturalists receive one hour of continuing education credit for reading the presentation if they missed it in person.

As an added bonus, there is a recent article in Chesapeake Bay Magazine about this water chestnut problem. 

Help Science Fight Wavyleaf Basketgrass

Can you help University of Richmond biologist Dr. Carrie Wu collect samples of invasive wavyleaf basketgrass (Oplismenus undulatifolius) in your area? Dr. Wu is conducting a research project to help understand the genetic structure of this invasive plant in order to help control its spread across the Mid-Atlantic region. She is the recipient of two previous Virginia Native Plant Society Research Grants to study wavyleaf basketgrass.

Would you be able to collect several basketgrass samples as described below and send them to Dr. Wu by postal mail? Please contact her directly with any questions.

This summer, Dr. Wu is seeking additional collections from as many locations as possible across the introduced range. The goal is to have 10-15 individual plants collected from large populations when possible (with individual plants at least 3 feet apart from one another). Smaller populations would have a reduced number of plants sampled. Observations from several folks suggest that wavyleaf seems to be setting seed earlier than several years ago, so if you encounter seeds later this summer, those would be greatly appreciated too.
Tissue sampling is pretty straight forward, especially if the plants aren’t too wet. Dr. Wu can send a detailed protocol if requested. In brief, record collector and site information, including GPS coordinates. Collect at least 5-8 fully expanded leaves (or entire stalks!) per plant into coin envelopes/regular envelopes/paper bags. Please keep leaves from each individual plant in separate bags/wrappings. If storing for an extended time, place filled envelopes in a plastic bag with a little silica drying gel (or the “Do Not Eat” packets that come in lots of items). When sampling multiple plants in population, try to separate collections by at least 1 meter. Mail them to Dr. Wu. She is happy to offset shipping costs as needed.

If you are able to collect tissue, or would be willing to have Dr. Wu access sites where you know the plants are growing, please let her know. She can provide more detailed sampling instructions as needed.
And of course, please share this request widely with colleagues who you think might also be able to help!

Carrie Wu, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Biology
Coordinator, Environmental Studies Program
University of Richmond
138 UR Drive
Richmond, VA 23173
[email protected]
Office: A114 Gottwald Science Center
Phone: (804) 289-8712

Invasive Management Workdays at Lake Accotink

Lake Accotink Park
7500 Accotink Park Rd., Springfield VA
Saturdays, 15, 22 and 29 February 2020
9 – 11 am

Invasive plants prevent us from enjoying our forests. They degrade our natural ecosystems. Ever get stopped in the woods by climbing vines or shrubs with thorns? They may have been invasive species. Some of them, like multiflora rose, can completely swarm over a section of woods and block out everything else. However, invasive can be thwarted.

Join Fairfax Master Naturalists Elaine and Beverly as they combat invasives at Lake Accotink. No experience is necessary, this is a great opportunity to learn and everyone is welcome.

They have work gloves and equipment but please bring your own drinking water as the park’s drinking fountains have been winterized – the restrooms are still open.

If you can join them – even for an hour or so it would be greatly appreciated.

Lastly, the weather at this time of year is so unpredictable, please call or text Beverly at (571) 314-2107 if you are not sure.

Directions: There are several entrances to Lake Accotink Park, but it is easiest to take the Accotink Park Road entrance that comes off Highland Street in Springfield. Once you enter the park, follow the road all the way to the end and you will see the marina, mini golf course and a children’s carousel. There is ample parking. They are working in the area directly behind the children’s carousel but please call or text Beverly if you can’t find them.

Some natural observations and a shout-out to the work of master naturalists

Article by Lisa Bright, Co-founder and Executive Director of Earth Sangha

In my line of work, I engage in extensive, if casual, surveying of native flora in the wild areas of Northern Virginia. For nearly twenty years, I’ve made it my job checking on the general conditions of our region’s wild areas, or rather the remnants of once wild areas, in every season. Mind you, my kind of survey is a non-scientific activity. Just a visual survey with the understanding of a hobby-naturalist.

Yet, you get to learn a lot from this repeated observations over the same areas. I take the trouble visiting all the nooks and crannies of our public and non-public lands where native plants are growing. And repeatedly over the years. I’ve noticed how the topography change over time and how plants interact with both natural and artificial physical changes. The overall picture I’ve gotten from my observations is not that pretty. Here is one fact that I cannot ignore: In our increasingly urbanized and suburbanized region, driven largely by human convenience and immediate economic returns, the native plants are the ones who are losing ground. Literally, that is.

I am sad to note that once common native plant species such as White Wood Aster (Eurybia divaricata) and Blue-stemmed Goldenrod (Solidago caesia) and Cornel-leaf Whitetop Aster (Doellingeria infirma), to just name a few, have become harder and harder to find in our woodlands. They are still there but not in any sizable quantities. They barely hang on. I name these species because of the simple fact that they are the foundation species in healthy woodlands and that they were once widely represented. Even ten short years ago, they were commonly found in any woodlands nearby. They are now in serious decline. Their habitats are degraded, and in many instances they lost outright the entire habitats by development. I’m not going to name other native plants who were once abundant but are now in decline.

This comes at a time when our wild areas and native flora are finally getting the recognition they deserve from the general public. There are growing number of people and organizations who band together to protect the wild habitats for native flora and fauna. I believe that if we work together, harder and smarter, we can reverse the trend. It’s not too late.

The habitats once lost are gone forever. You can’t recreate natural areas. If anyone claims that it can be done is either ignorant or plain kidding himself. Our hope then lies in rehabilitating the habitats in decline.

Then it is all the more useful to see how the natural habitats are being destroyed and what we could do about it. I’m no expert on this, but I think there are several immediate and specific issues that can be addressed:

 

1. An issue of poor management. The land owners, public or private, rely too much on the judgment or discretion of hired contractors who understand next to nothing about wild habitats or plants in general. They were told to go kill trees that might interfere with the power lines, and they damn kill everything in sight. Who could blame their diligence? I’ve witnessed countless times how these contractors steadily shrink the forest edges by chopping off indiscriminately any living woody plants. In their wake, a long line of dead Mountain Laurels (Kalmia latifolia) along the forest edges. These contractors desperately need the qualified and quantified instructions and tighter supervision by the land owners.

Take look at the two photos above. The plot is about 4 acres of narrow but long neighborhood woodlands (presumably belonged to a nearby HOA community) in Centerville. A contractor hired by either the VDOT or a power company chopped off trees on the edges of Rt. 29, and just dumped all the tree trunks and branches unceremoniously into the woodlands just across the trail and left. The contractors did this every time, and nobody raised an issue. It’s a forgotten place. The forest floor once featured one of the better habitats for White Wood Aster and Blue-stemmed Goldenrod in this acidic Oak-Hickory forest remnant. Now I cannot find a single Aster or Goldenrod. Those numerous Pinxter Bloom Azaleas along the edge were also long gone. In their place invasive Alianthus altissima (Tree of Heaven) and Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) have appeared. This is just one example which repeats itself everywhere. The feature photo heading this article shows what our woodland floor would look like when left alone. It’s taken from a nearby park.

2. An issue of excessive mowing and untimely mowing. When it comes to open meadow areas, mowing is a necessary tool for managing the habitat. The problem is that the heavy tractor mowers with low deck not just cut the plants but they cut into the ground, thereby making it easy for weedy invasive plants entering. I’ve noticed that the Manassas Battlefield National Park contractors do a far better job at just cutting the plants without necessarily disturbing the ground, compared to power line easement meadows. One reason is that at Manassas Battlefield the contractors are harvesting hays, and the best way to continue harvesting good-quality hays is not to disturb the ground. On the other hand, the main reason for mowing in the power line meadow is to destroy plants. That is one reason why the quality of flora is widely different from one power line easement to the next. And from one year to the next.
Still, the best native herbaceous vegetation in our region can be found under these power lines because we’ve essentially lost our edge-of-wood meadows to various human activities and development.

One of my pet peeves is mowing unnecessarily and at wrong time. It would be better if we let the plants complete its life cycle. If seeds are allowed to form and be dropped and eaten by animals, mowing can be a useful management tool.

3. Let’s limit the recreational use of wild habitats.It is hard to believe that at this critical juncture where the environmental degradation threatens the very systems on which our life is dependent, we regard public parks only as recreational resources. There are some parks that I no longer visit because there is nothing left to discover. These parks are known for deluxe parking lots and luxurious trails, after killing off a group of healthy and mature canopy trees. These parks have become a sad place botanically. Some smaller neighborly parks often suffer from excessive accommodation of exercise equipments. At one of our neighborly parks, a series of them are installed at every 50-feet intervals by well-intentioned but ill-informed Scouts or other volunteer groups. A whole lot of native shrubs and herbaceous plants had to be killed to give the rooms for these exercise equipments. Many Viburnum dentatum (Arrowwood Viburnum) and Deerberry (Vaccinium stamineum) were sacrificed for these installations. They are left unused anyway. If the mountain biker groups ask for building bike trails, we don’t have to give away the pristine section of forests where the Blueberry (Vaccinium pallidum) and Black Huckleberry (Gaylucassia bachata) have formed colonies over several centuries. I don’t think the bikers were asking for a pristine site!

It is high time we view our natural habitats as what they are. It’s a living organism who plays a critical role in the natural ecosystems. To simply put, we are facing an ecological crisis where a lack of healthy native plant communities creates all kinds of problems. Just look at all the damages from stormwater runoff. Only healthy forests could absorb, hold, filter, and regulate the rainfall and rain flow. We’ve effectively destroyed that natural system.
There aren’t enough forests in our region to handle all the water and air pollutions. Also our forests, our parklands, are not in the best form. They need a lot of attention, but our park systems don’t receive enough funding.

4. Controlling invasive plants and early detection of such invasion. Eradicating invasive plants may be impractical given the pervasiveness of the problem. But we can manage to control them by focusing on protecting the best areas first and increase the presence of native plants in targeted spots and then to expand their holdings. I’ve seen many successfully managed habitats where conscientious park managers diligently work and where Master Naturalists adopt certain sites and have kept on working on these sites.

In large public parks, we need some sharp-eyed and knowledgeable naturalist-volunteers to detect a new appearance of invasive plants early on to immediately eradicate them. A season or two later, they take hold and become expensive to control. We need more trained Master Naturalists to help our over-strained park managers. If you are retired or retiring and looking for doing something worthwhile, please be a Master Naturalist!

5. Our parks are seriously underfunded and under-staffed. A lot of people are wondering why park systems and park managers seem to ignore the problems of invasive plants in their neighborhood parks. The park managers are not ignoring them. The Natural Resource Protection teams have been doing extensive work to develop natural resource management plans, but they don’t have the necessary funding to implement these plans. The sad truth is that they are borrowing money to do even the basic maintenance work. In the case of Fairfax County, the Park Authority is the poorest agency whose chronic under-funding is glaringly obvious. If you want the Natural Resource Protection department have more funding so that they can implement their visions, please call your District Supervisors. They are elected officials and have the power to influence the distribution of the County’s general fund.

6. Raising concerns and communicate. Let us become the voice of natural habitats and plant communities. They struggle and quietly suffer. The nature-loving people tend to be solitary types and they don’t always raise their concerns out loud. I think, however, it is changing. We witness now more concerted efforts to protect the wild habitats among different citizen groups. We see more lively debates on best methods, more activism in general. There are also more scientific datas available, and people are busy sharing the information and pressuring the elected officials. This is hugely encouraging. I’d like to think it is not too late to reverse the trend. We can save our forests and improve their qualities.

Cutting edge: Water Chestnut Program (WCP) Meeting, Nov. 15th

Twin Lakes Golf Course, Club House, Ball Room
6209 Union Mill Rd., Clifton VA 20125
Friday, 15 November 2019
10 am – 2 pm

The Fairfax Chapter of Virginia Master Naturalists is facilitating an informational meeting about the invasive water chestnut (Trapa bispinosa).

The water chestnut program (WCP) would be an early detection and rapid response project for naturalists who would like to identify, verify, map and remove this novel species of water chestnut before it becomes established. The focus area is within the Potomac River watershed in Virginia.

This type of water chestnut, discovered by Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries (VGIF) in the tidal Potomac River at Pohick Bay in 2014, is not known to be established elsewhere in the USA. Scientists at the US Geological Survey (USGS) have found that it is spreading, but it is not yet considered widespread, or outside the Potomac Watershed. This is an opportune time to take measures to remove it before it becomes a huge menace in the Potomac River and watershed. Species of water chestnut (Genus, Trapa) are known to spread extensively and be invasive in Virginia and other regions of similar climate. Trapa can quickly grow over the surface of shallow water, completely shade out native submerged aquatic plants, impede water flow, clog irrigation pipes, alter biodiversity, and obstruct recreational boating and swimming.

Come to learn about this water chestnut species and explore options for eradicating it.  Virginia Master Naturalists, natural resource managers, pond owners, gardeners, naturalists, invasive species managers, pond management companies, and other interested parties are welcome to attend.

Program is free and open to the public. Please see the agenda and register here.  Questions? Email [email protected].

Fairfax Master Naturalists:  This program qualifies for Continuing Education credit.