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Invasive species are a blight on U.S. landscape By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY America is under siege — not by a foreign power, but by invasive species slowly working their way across the nation, leaving a sometimes-devastated and often-changed landscape in their wake. Just as Dutch elm disease from Asia removed an iconic tree from the American landscape beginning in the 1940s, the emerald ash borer may conquer the ash tree in coming years. West Nile virus from Africa killed 57 Americans last year. And work crews often encounter giant Burmese pythons in South Florida. The latest addition to the list of non-native creepy-crawlies is the hairy crazy ant. The tiny foragers are believed to have come from South America. They first got to the Caribbean in the late 19th century and are working their way through Florida and the Southeast... Read the full story at link . ------------------------------------------------------

Invasive plants endanger fragile ecosystem By Joe Roetz, NBC2 Reporter COLLIER COUNTY - One of Florida's most dangerous predators doesn't have teeth, claws or the ability to attack people. At the same time, it's strangling native plants and driving away native animals. Michael Knight and Jonathan Nash are scientists from the Audubon Society who spend their days in the Everglades hunting invasive, non-native plants... Watch the video here . ---------------------------------------------------------

Ecologist honored for creating Weed Warriors program to fight invasive species By Associated Press, Published: November 19 ROCKVILLE, Md. — A Montgomery County ecologist is a weed warrior, and she wants you to be one as well. The U.S. Forest Service and the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay have honored ecologist Carole Bergmann for creating the Weed Warrior program, which trains volunteers to eliminate invasive plant species. County officials say the program has trained more than 700 volunteers, who assist park staff in finding and removing invasive plants. Volunteers receive two hours of field training with a forest ecologist and complete an online course. The training consists of plant identification, removal and control techniques... Online: Montgomery County Weed Warrior Program Read the full story at link . ------------------------------------------------------- Canadians push back against NY ballast rules Invasive species: Critics say regulations will hurt Seaway traffi c By MARC ...

The Norway Maple: New York's Ultimate Weed Peak season for most foliage may be past but now it's time to take notice of this invasive tree, writes environmentalist David Bedell. November is leaf season in New York state, and we are all understandably busy with the leaves at our feet. With peak foliage long past, this isn't normally time to take stock of the leaves still in the trees. This week in particular, though, is just right for looking up: What you see will illustrate very clearly how much one invasive tree is impacting our community. The Norway maple is one of New York's ultimate weeds. Imported from Europe, it is a large tree whose leaves are very similar to the native sugar maple. The Norway maple has, unfortunately, a few characteristics which make it invasive -- destroying native ecosystems, causing trouble in yards and gardens, and creating visual blight. The tree's dense canopy shades out virtually all other plants and its roots secrete chemicals that i...

The pollinator crisis: What's best for bees Pollinating insects are in crisis. Understanding bees' relationships with introduced species could help. By Sharon Levy www.nature.com Bees thrum among bright red blossoms on a spring day on Mount Diablo, near San Francisco Bay. Alexandra Harmon-Threatt, a young ecologist just finishing her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, lovingly identifies an array of native pollinators. She points out three species of bumblebee, each with a unique pattern of black and yellow stripes. There are bee-flies, members of the fly family covered in soft brown fur, which look and act like bees. Among the native insects are plenty of honeybees (Apis mellifera), the species raised by beekeepers worldwide and introduced to the Americas by English settlers in the seventeenth century. All these insects are drawn to a clump of red vetch (Vicia villosa), an invasive weed. Just down the road is a patch of native lupins, laden with purple blosso...

Integrated Management of Nonnative Plants in Natural Areas of Florida by K. A. Langeland, J. A. Ferrell, B. Sellers, G. E. MacDonald, and R. K. Stocker Available here . --------------------------------------------------------- Let them eat carp: Illinois to feed pest fish to the poor By JIM GALLAGHER What do you do with a bony, ugly, jumpy, fat, fugitive fish that's taken over the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and threatens the ecology of the Great Lakes? Grind them into fish sticks and feed them to the poor. That's the latest strategy from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources in its tussle with the Asian carp. The department plans to process tons of the fish and donate it to food banks, including the St. Louis Area Food Bank. "We'll filet them and pull the bones out and turn them into fish sticks, or the equivalent of canned tuna," says Tom Main, acting deputy director at the DNR. "The fish actually taste pretty good." Main has a lot of dead f...

Ballast standard up for vote BY JOHN FLESHER AP environmental writer TRAVERSE CITY --Environmentalists tried to rally opposition Thursday to a proposed national policy for cleansing ship ballast water to kill invasive species, contending it is too weak and would pre-empt stronger state and federal rules. The U.S. House was expected to vote as early as today on the measure, which comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to release its own regulations of ship ballast — a leading culprit in the spread of invaders such as zebra and quagga mussels in the Great Lakes and ocean coastal waters. Sponsored by Rep. Frank LoBiondo, a New Jersey Republican, the bill would adopt a standard proposed by the International Maritime Organization limiting the number of live organisms that would be permitted in ballast water. Vessel operators would have to install technology to meet the standard. The shipping industry has pushed for a single nationwide policy, saying the current patchwork ...

Bug Battle: An Invasive Plant Now Faces Its Own Attacker Insects From Asia Munch on Kudzu, a Vine That Has Grown on Some By VALERIE BAUERLEIN The Wall Street Journal GRIFFIN, Ga.—Patti Bennett was looking out the window of her home office one morning two years ago when a swarm of green bugs flew out of the neighboring kudzu patch. "I thought, 'What the hell is that headed at my house?' It was like a horror movie," says Ms. Bennett, a 53-year-old insurance underwriter who lives about an hour from Atlanta. She killed hundreds of bugs with spray, while thousands more released a musty, bittersweet odor in defense. She scooped some bugs into a Tupperware container of alcohol and handed them to the local Home Depot specialist, an exterminator and a county agricultural agent. Ms. Bennett was one of the first people in the South to report seeing Megacopta cribraria, an insect native to Asia that likely stowed away on a flight in 2009 and entered the U.S. through Atlanta's...

Atlantic Salmon returning to central New York’s Salmon River Associated Press PULASKI, N.Y. (AP) — Native Atlantic salmon are once again reproducing in the wild in central New York’s renowned Salmon River, where anglers travel from across North America and overseas every autumn to reel in hatchery-bred Atlantics as well as non-native chinooks, cohos, brown trout and feisty steelheads that swim upstream from Lake Ontario. After more than a century without a wild-breeding population, this is the third year in a row that researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey have found young Atlantic salmon in the river, said USGS scientist Jim Johnson. When the young mature, eggs will be taken from some to propagate at the USGS research lab in Cortland, he said... Lake Ontario once supported the world’s largest freshwater population of Atlantic salmon. But the fish vanished in the late 1800s as a result of overfishing and habitat destruction. Government agencies in the U.S. and Canada have maintai...