Once we have removed invasive trees, shrubs and plants from our restoration work sites, we often must follow up to ensure these plants don’t come back.
We do this in three ways:
- We try restoring the natural ecosystem processes to the site. In most cases, this means adding fire to the site and restoring the natural hydrology (how water moves) to the site. Prescribed burns are used across Deer Grove to keep down invasives and restore health to the ecosystem. If possible, we restore the natural hydrology to the site as well. This usually means removing drainage tiles that were use to move water more quickly off of the land. Drainage tiles allowed farmers to plant crops earlier in the season, and keep the fields drier throughout the season.
2. We seed the areas that we have cleared with native plants in order to provide competition to the invasive plants.
3. We herbicide the invasive plants—to make it harder for the invasive plants to recover.
The use of systemic herbicides—chemicals that kill plants at their roots—is a necessary and important tool in our restoration activities. Many of the invasive plants that destroy native ecosystems have no natural enemies in their new home (insects, fungi, animals) that keep them in check. They will often overwhelm an ecosystem and create a monoculture—a single species in a area that should have many native plants.