Chickens are so last year — Brooklyn is all about the goats now. In fact, the Prospect Park Alliance just coughed up $15,000 to bring a heard of hungry goats to Prospect Park, where they will eat their way across the aptly named Vale of Cashmere.
The goats are part of a scheme to help undo some of the damage done by Hurricane Sandy and other storms that have battered the park in...
Tackling Invasive Plant Control in Vermont
Seed catalogs have long been abandoned, as many of us are grabbing onto our shovels and rakes, waiting for the weather to warm and the ground to thaw. If invasive plant control is on your “to-do” this spring, here are some recommendations for useful tools, and resources for how to use them.
Ever tried to grub up a...
Snow lined fields, seed catalogs in the mailbox, and Punxsutawney not seeing his shadow bring thoughts of spring. A popular pastime in Vermont is to plan a walk through the woods just after snowmelt, and catch the brilliance of our spring ephemerals (short-lived wildflowers).
More detailed information about the results that were featured in a News item in mid-January, link to previous news item: http://vtinvasives.org/news/big-picture-view-invasive-plant-problem
"U.S. Forest Service...
Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica), native to Eastern Asia, was introduced to North America in the late 1800s as an ornamental plant. This plant is found in most U.S. states, and many countries worldwide, exhibiting invasive behavior outside of Asia*.
Japanese knotweed was identified in Vermont as early as the 1920s**. In the wake of Tropical Storm Irene, Vermont...
"BOISE, Idaho —
Finding a way to stop fire-prone cheatgrass and other invasive species is unavoidable if sagebrush ecosystems in the West are to remain viable for native plants and animals, experts say.
More than 200 federal and state land managers and scientists trying to figure out how to do that took part in the three-day 2015 Western Invasive Weed Summit that wrapped up...
"Going for a walk the other day along a public trail I was struck by the number of invasive shrubs I saw. Most trees and shrubs have shed their leaves, but burning bush (Euonymus alatus), Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) and honeysuckle (Lonicera spp.) still have leaves on their branches. Holding leaves and producing food by photosynthesis gives them extra energy to take over the world...
"STERLING - There is a swath of grass cut on the edge of a field at Michael Pineo's farm about one-and-a-half highway lanes wide, but even that does not protect the field from one of Central Massachusetts' most challenging invaders.
"It still spreads everywhere," he said, pointing to tree-sized bushes of autumn olive - plants once used for roadside stabilization but now are an invasive...
"Most readers are familiar with monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus). The striking orange and black species has historically been widespread throughout North America.
Its life history makes it an attractive tool for lessons about insect ecology. Monarch caterpillars forage exclusively on milkweed (Asclepias). Foul-tasting chemicals they acquire from the plants render monarch...
"The tiny seedling was brought over from Eastern Europe and parts of Asia nearly 200 years ago and planted along riverbanks across the United States, mostly in the Southwest, to prevent erosion. It grew fast, its thick branches and oily leaves spreading across five states. As years passed, it became obvious that the introduction of salt cedar, or Tamarisk trees was a mistake. The invasive tree...