03/31/2025
Here is the result of not controlling invasive plants until too late.
In this public forest with heavy foot traffic, invasive plants, especially glossy buckthorn, have taken over areas from 0.1 to 20 acres! As you can see, these noxious shrubs formed a monoculture in the understory, preventing the growth of most other plants.
An area like this has:
- Ticks thrive in the moist microclimate.
- Many animals can’t make their way through the dense twigs.
- Less good browse (food) for deer and other animals.
- Less biodiversity of both plants and animals.
- Few young trees to take over the forest when large ones die. The future of the forest is in jeopardy.
Options are limited
- Containing the infestations where they are and eliminating satellite populations is usually the best option.
- Hundreds of hours of herbicide spraying over many years will stop the infestation from spreading and reduce its size. Eliminating the invasive plants is practically impossible at this stage.
- Timber harvesting without spreading the invasive plants is difficult.
If the property had been inventoried years earlier, the infestations would have been caught when they were smaller and easier to control.
Please do not put off inventorying your property for invasives. They multiply exponentially, and controlling populations when small is simple and often doesn’t require pesticide usage.
