talking about invasive plants and animals, i see a lot of the time people get so focused on getting rid of them that they do not see how it will effect the rest of the ecosystem. i talked here a while ago about how i went and volunteered to plant native trees, and i was happy to see a bunch of native grasses and even some wild strawberries growing.

then to my sadness i learn that all of that is going to be mowed because there is a couple of chinese tallow saplings there and they think it is better to leave the ground bare so they can put toxic herbicides on the tallow whenever it pops up while waiting 30 years for the trees we planted to grow big enough to shade them out, instead of leaving the native grasses there.

it makes even less sense because the reason they are planting the trees is to give food to the birds, in the guy running its words “no bugs land on the chinese tallow so the birds have no food” but doesn’t mowing all of that grass and leaving just a few small saplings destroy the bug habitat as well?

also, applying roundup over and over again to invasive trees in a place where you want to encourage birds to land doesn’t seem like it will cause the birds and other wildlife any health issues! (sarcastic)

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Exlurker wrote on March 21, 2023 at 8:13 AM

#271,625

This is part of the reason I stopped volunteering at a planting near my house, it seemed that ultimately the plan was to tear every single non-native tree(excluding the few that are found to be native bat habitats).

NoPoint wrote on March 21, 2023 at 3:49 PM

#271,634

Wow I guess I git lucky with my the org I volunteer with. We mostly just pull invasives by hand to make sure we don't disturb any native plants. It is very surgical. Herbicide is rarely used, and even when it is they try to use non-glyphosate herbicides when possible.

roanoke9 wrote on March 21, 2023 at 6:15 PM

#271,640

At what point does an invasive become native? Idk, but if the removal causes more damage than leaving it alone- the person doing the removal IS invasive. Basically seems like the height of hypocrisy for members of the most harmful species ever to exist to get all set in stone over what constitutes invasive.

I hand remove invasives, sometimes, mostly leave em alone and take the term invasive with a grain of salt. Unlike the term weed (plants a person dislikes) invasive has some utility but can still cause harm in situations like OP describes. Considering climate change, the native/invasive question might be secondary to drought tolerant, adaptable to what future conditions are, numerous other traits. A healthy amount of "i don't know what is best but will try to make improvements and do limited harm as best I can" helps, as opposed to "this is on invasive species list so I will salt the earth".