LANGLADE COUNTY — A local invasive species management organization is utilizing a federal grant it received in 2022 to reduce invasive plant species on local landowners’ properties.
Timberland Invasives Partnership (TIP), a nonprofit cooperative group based in Keshena, was awarded a $135,000 Landscape Scale Restoration Grant along with two other organizations from the U.S. Forest Service to remove invasive terrestrial plants from local landowners’ properties.
TIP Coordinator Abby Vogt estimated her organization currently works with around 30 Langlade County residents as part of the project, mainly by removing the plants from their forests.
“Right now, we’re doing a little bit of a push since it is the beginning of the field season to reach any land owners who have specifically garlic mustard,” Vogt said.
“We’re interested in any invasive species, but garlic mustard is the first one that comes up in the spring, so that is one of the ones we’re trying to tackle right now.”
According to Vogt, garlic mustard, which was brought to America in the 1800s by Europeans unaware of its potential to stifle local plant life, also often goes unrecognized by many today.
“I think for a lot of people, there’s so many plants out there, and you just see a plant and you think, ‘Oh, it’s a plant,’” she said. “Garlic mustard is one of the most well-known plants out there, but there are still many people that don’t know about it and what it can do.”
A biennial, garlic mustard takes over many forests — and, in turn, can transform native habitats to the point that they are inhospitable to wildlife as well — for a variety of reasons.
“A big thing with invasive plants is they don’t have a lot of predators here as well, so they are able to grow a lot quicker and a lot of animals often don’t eat them. Garlic mustard also actually over-winters, so it stays throughout the winter in a more dormant state and will be able to grow much quicker once the snow is gone in the spring,” Vogt said. “It often shades out the ground, which makes it difficult for a lot of our native plants to then grow up…They don’t have the sunlight necessary for them to grow and garlic mustard can exude chemicals into the soil which doesn’t allow other plants to grow, so what will happen is it will become fully garlic mustard and there will be no regeneration of native plants, shrubs, and trees.”
TIP also removes woody invasives like buckthorn, exotic bush honeysuckle, and roundleaf bittersweet, a kind of vine native to Asia. One of the most difficult local invasives Vogt’s organization removes is a perennial called Japanese knotweed.
“You sometimes find it in forested environments, but also in wetter environments,” she said. “That’s a really difficult one — in my opinion, it’s one of the more difficult plants to remove because of how strong it can be, and its ability to grow back.”
Vogt said while fighting invasives is often a tall task for her organization, she believes confined areas are preserved through the efforts.
“I try to think about it on the small scale like individual properties,” Vogt said. “We’re able to get some areas and some properties controlled. It can be a losing battle, but we’re just working to keep as many areas uninfested with invasive species as we can.”
For a comprehensive guide to the services TIP is providing via the Landscape Scale Restoration Grant, Vogt encouraged those in and out of Langlade County (TIP works with landowners in eight surrounding counties as well) to visit yourforests.com.
“We have a lot of information about managing forests, reducing invasive species, improving wildlife habitat, and then ways to get in contact with us, as well as different workshops and events we have going on in the future,” she said. “We also have something called demonstration sites. In each one of our counties, we are developing sites for people to come out and look at things that we’re doing to reduce invasive species.
“We’re more than happy to help any landowners who may have any questions. If they think they might have invasive species but are not positive, we are more than happy to come out and take a look at their property and let them know what they may have and then the ways that we’re able to work to control that.”
For more information, contact Vogt at 715-799-5710 ext. 3.
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