Invasives Strike Force Crew members victoriously hold up a large sycamore maple after a long day of cutting them down to preserve native habitat at Croton Point Park in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.. Photo by Ryan Goolic

There's so much to celebrate in terms of accomplishments so far in 2021 and there's even more to look forward to in the weeks and months ahead. We kick off the month of June with New York Invasive Species Awareness Week (NYISAW) with many of our Lower Hudson PRISM partners and Trail Conference Stewardship Program staff leading engaging events throughout the region. Our seasonal crews and volunteers, despite the alternating oppressive heat and rain, managed some incredible feats in the first few weeks of the field season. 

Keep reading to learn more about upcoming volunteer opportunities and some program updates and success stories from the past month!  

ISF Crew Member Joe Radigan uses the Jaw Saw to take down a large sycamore maple. Photo by Ryan Goolic.

May was a great month to be on the Invasives Strike Force Crew and a very bad month to be an invasive plant.

To kick off the month, we partnered with the Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct and River Sweeper to host I Love My Parks Day near the Croton Dam. Volunteers helped us remove invasive Siebold’s viburnum in a spot with native spring ephemeral Virginia bluebell to help protect this habitat! A lot of work took place behind the scenes to prepare for the rest of the crew’s arrival in mid-May. Once the crew arrived, they hit the ground running getting trained on invasives ecology, plant identification, invasives management, data management, and volunteer management! They put those skills to use at Croton Point Park removing some Tier 2 emerging invasives – Chinese bushclover, paper mulberry, and sycamore maple. The crew was delighted to cut down large sycamore maple trees, and even more so to peek at a family of raccoons living in a dead, hollow tree nearby! The crew also worked at Iona Island to manage cutleaf blackberry and Chinese bushclover. This unique habitat has a number of threatened/rare native species that we worked hard to protect! Wrapping up the month, the crew will be trained in Wilderness First Aid.

Want to come out for a day in the life with the ISF Crew? Check out our events calendar to see when and where we are working in the upcoming weeks in New York and New Jersey so you can come join us. Hope to see you out there!

Terry Cohn and Linda Flynn potting up some ironwood (Carpinus caroliniana) seedlings. Photo credit: Linda Rohleder

The Habitat Helpers Native Growers group has been busy growing native plants, but we need your help!

We are looking for people willing to take a tray of potted plants, keep them outside, and care for them over the summer at their homes or someplace safe.  A tray measures 10 x 20” and would need to be in part-sun and regularly watered. Please email Linda Rohleder ([email protected]) if you can take a tray. We are planning planting days in the fall to get these all in the ground.

So far, the crew has grown and potted over 600 plants and we have a lot more to pot up. You can join us at our next "potting up day" on June 12. An added bonus after the workday is an opportunity to tour Linda’s 13-acre forest restoration project and native plant gardens.

Our Habitat Helpers have also been caring for the native habitat at the Trail Conference headquarters and are currently preparing a new area for the second phase of our fern garden. Doug Morel has been birding every month at the Trail Conference habitat and has now recorded 67 species. The crew workdays are usually on Sunday mornings, but this month we’ll also be having a Thursday morning workday on June 17.  For more information or to sign up for these opportunities and more, click the button below.

Linden viburnum is one of the species on the Invasives Strike Force Intermediate plant survey list that will soon be coming into bloom in our region. Photo credit: Brent Boscarino

The Invasives Strike Force Plant Survey Program is off to a fantastic start with our training season and the best is yet to come: The actual field survey season! In the past month, we have now hosted 5 live-streamed workshop webinars and released an on demand program orientation video to gear up for the Invasives Strike Force invasive plant survey season. In total, we have had over 131 participants tune in for these live-streamed webinars with an additional 256 views on our LH-PRISM YouTube channel!  Make sure to subscribe to our channel to ensure you receive updated content and videos! 

For any returning surveyors or new volunteers who have already attended the Part 1 Species ID webinar (for either the Standard or Intermediate Survey) AND the Part 2 Data Collection Protocol webinar, please ensure that you have filled out this survey assignment request questionnaire, so we can begin preparing an assignment for you. Once you have done that (or if you already have) you can expect an email from us with your trail assignment within the next 2 weeks.

If you have not yet attended our training workshops or have only attended one of them, it is not too late to join our survey team! All you need to do is access our on-demand, taped webinars we've linked to below (in order) and then fill out a survey assignment request questionnaire to let us know you are ready for an assignment! 

1. Invasives Strike Force Program Orientation Video  (required, ~ 0.5 hrs)

2. ISF Standard Survey Training Workshop Webinar - Part 1 (Introduction and Species ID) (required, ~2 hrs)

3. ISF Standard Survey Training Workshop - Part 2 (Data Collection and Protocols) (required, ~1.5 hrs)

We can't wait to have you onboard and for the survey season to begin! Questions? Email us at [email protected].

Dia meets her first turtle! Photo credit: Arden Blumenthal

We’ve been super busy since we finished our spotted lanternfly project with Cornell University and are very excited to tackle our next challenge as a team.  We’re currently training the dogs on a brand new species, but this time it’s not an invasive: It's the native wood turtle! For several years, Lower Hudson-PRISM partner organization, Hudsonia, has conducted critical research to better understand the interactions between agriculture and wood turtles, a species of special concern in New York State. Dia and Fagen are happy to lend their noses to help locate nesting females amongst thick vegetation that otherwise may be missed by humans. 

The goal is to learn as much as we can about where wood turtles are going and where they're nesting in an effort to prevent negative interactions between turtles and farms. This month, we’ll also be back to work on Scotch broom and sticky sage removals in our region and we are also very excited for our very first intern, Nyssa Calkin, to begin working with our team! You can follow along with the Conservation Dogs Program's journey by following them on Instagram @DiaSavesTheForest.

AISF Crew members showing off handfuls of invasive Chinese mystery snails found during a recent survey (left, or above if viewed on mobile device). Crew member Claire conducting a rake toss to assess vegetation composition during the crew’s first survey (right ,or below if viewed on mobile device). Photo credits: Lindsay Yoder

With the field season well underway, the Aquatic Invasives Strike Force Crew has already made incredible strides in their mission to monitor lakes across the region to better understand the current distribution of aquatic invasives. The crew has surveyed 364 acres across 6 lakes, and has recorded 333 observations of presence, absence, and density of aquatic plants and invertebrates. So far, the crew has found some of our more common species, like Eurasian watermilfoil and curly-leaf pondweed, but has also found multiple previously unreported occurrences of the banded mystery snail, currently listed as a Tier 2 species. In addition, the crew has had the opportunity to help with various ongoing research projects, including the NYSDEC’s Hudson River EELS (Eels for Experiencing and Learning Science) Project, scouting European frog-bit for a study on chemical control, and monitoring the efficacy of grass carp as biocontrol (a contracted project awarded to PRISM partner Northeast Aquatic Research).

Memorial Day weekend also kicked off the Watercraft Inspection Steward Program, which will continue through September. Please check out the below Congrats + Thank-You's section for some special shout outs to our incredible partners and volunteers who make this all possible.

The Aquatic Invasives Strike Force Crew would like to show special thanks to the folks that have made their first month run smoothly, including Maureen Galway-Perotti of the Seven Hills Lake Association and April Brun of NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. They would also like to thank Loren Edelson and Erin Thelen of the Lake Sebago ACA group camp in Harriman State Park for their continued dedication toward preventing the introduction and spread of aquatic invasives in their home lake and beyond. Earlier this month, AIS Program Coordinator Lindsay Yoder was invited to present on the importance of monitoring and prevention through a Watercraft Inspection Steward Program as a management tool to the stakeholders of Lake Sebago. This was part of an ongoing effort to develop strategies that can be implemented by the multiple groups housed on the lake. The incredible initiative shown by Loren and Erin is a model example of the effort that is needed in lake communities across the Lower Hudson PRISM to help combat the impacts of AIS.

A huge thanks to Diane Alden, Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct Board Member, for helping organize and recruit volunteers for our invasives removal at the OCA! Her positive energy and passion for habitat restoration, along with the snacks she supplied, kept our volunteers energized and engaged. Also a big thanks to Ed McGowan, Director of Science and Trailside Museums & Zoo with NYS Parks, who met with the crew at Iona Island and talked about the interesting ecology of the island, fueled by historical use and diverse geology. It was such a treat to see the area through his eyes and hear about the massive phragmites removal efforts ongoing in the marshes nearby.

We would also like to thank Alec Malyon, Stephanie Shih, and M. Lisa Liu for all of their help with data entry in preparation for the upcoming survey and data analysis season. Also, a big shoutout to Tom Hobbick for his persistence and dedication int he ArcGIS server upgrade. The rollout of assignments will go much smoother as a result of their incredible efforts. 

Last, but not least, a special shout out also goes to the Turtle Conservancy and the Trevor Zoo in Millbrook, N.Y. for letting Dia and Fagen train with their wood turtles!

The primary diagnostic symptoms of beech leaf disease (BLD) include tissue thickening and striping of beech leaves between leaf veins; these striped bands tend to start as dark green but may eventually turn brown and withered as they lose their ability to photosynthesize.This photo is from Granite Mountain preserve in Putnam County, N.Y. where BLD was only recently discovered in May 2021. Photo credit: Brent Boscarino

Last year, we received numerous reports and concerns about stressed and diseased beech trees in our region. We responded with a thorough investigation into what may be causing these symptoms by featuring beech health in last September’s Beech Leaf Investigation EcoQuest and by consulting with regional forestry and pathology experts and laboratories to get to the bottom of the issue. We learned that some of the stress symptoms were caused by a frost event in May of 2020 which left beech leaves darkened and withered while other symptoms were the result of beech leaf disease, or BLD. We promised to continue our efforts to monitor the spread of BLD and the recovery of beech trees from that frost event by following up with another EcoQuest survey after spring leaf out in 2021: That time is now!

BLD remains an ominous threat to beech trees in our area and early reports in 2021 suggest it continues to spread throughout our region. The disease is caused by a nonnative nematode worm associated with the buds and leaves of beech trees of all age classes. The presence of these nematodes can lead to aborted leaf development, premature leaf drop, and ultimate mortality usually within 2-7 years (disease progression is typically more rapid in younger beeches). The main priority right now is on early detection and reporting in our area to better understand BLD’s current distribution and the mechanisms and rate at which it is spreading. These monitoring efforts will better enable us to make more informed, strategic management decisions on how best to curtail BLD’s impacts on our forests and to promote recovery and rehabilitation.

Check out this informational video by Invasive Species Citizen Science Coordinator Brent Boscarino that discusses how to ID beech trees and detect the hallmark features of beech leaf disease. For more information on how to join our monthly scavenger hunt, please contact us at [email protected] and/or visit our Invasives Strike Force EcoQuest Challenge website by clicking the button below.