The Aquatic Invasives Strike Force (AISF) Crew had an incredibly productive month of July including removing invasive water chestnut plants from various waterbodies across New York State. See the AISF Program Update Section for more details!

This past month's successes exemplify the Ecological Stewardship Program's spirit of collaboration and teamwork in our efforts to preserve our region's natural areas. For example, the Aquatic Invasives Strike Force (AISF)'s education, outreach, and water chestnut removal efforts involved multiple stakeholders and concerned community members across the lower Hudson Valley. The Conservation Dog, Invasives Strike Force (ISF) Crew and ISF Survey teams joined with multiple Lower Hudson PRISM partner organizations, state and local agencies to organize and roll out a response plan to treat spotted lanternfly at known infestation sites in New York State. Our Habitat Helpers volunteers are seeing their efforts to grow native plants pay off as they collaborate with our Invasives Strike Force crews at restoration sites in Harriman State Park and our native gardens have finally become the teaching garden we envisioned with guided tours happening monthly.

Through these and multiple other collaborative initiatives, we are putting forth an impressive show of solidarity and strength to beat back the threat that invasive species pose to native biodiversity. Keep reading to learn more about these specific efforts in the respective program update sections as well as how you can get involved by checking out our upcoming events calendar!   

A collaborative team of Conservation Corps members, LH-PRISM staff, partners, interns, and volunteers have rolled out a monitoring and removal plan for spotted lanternfly (left, or above if viewed on mobile device) in infested areas in the Lower Hudson Valley. Here, Trail Conference Conservation Corps member, Lily Gelfars (pictured right or below if viewed on mobile device), installs a spotted lanternfly circle trap on a tree-of-heaven at an infestation site in Orangeburg, N.Y.

When there is an urgent regional need in the realm of invasive species, our Ecological Stewardship team, together with our amazing partners and volunteers, unite in solidarity to spring into action. In the past few weeks, our team has been very busy organizing and putting into place a long-term monitoring and treatment program for spotted lanternfly (SLF) focused around areas of infestation in the Lower Hudson PRISM region including Orangeburg, Sloatsburg, Port Jervis and Newburgh, N.Y.  In the past few weeks, a collaborative team of Conservation Corps members, LH-PRISM staff, partners, interns, and volunteers have helped to clear brush, mark trees for chemical treatment, and install 63 circle traps on various host trees and locations in Orangeburg, N.Y. with more traps planned for installation at the other sites in the coming weeks. You can click here for a brief demonstration and Q&A on circle trap installation from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture which served as the main installation tutorial for our own work here in our region.

All deployed traps have New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets tags and trap numbers and those traps nearest to the public access points have Tyvek “Have you seen this bug?” signs to help spread awareness and mitigate tampering. With the help of volunteers and LH-PRISM staff and partner coordinators, these traps will be checked every 2 weeks. Any captured SLF will be immediately removed and disposed of following state guidelines. Within 4 days of the installation of the first 11 traps at the Orangeburg site, the traps had already caught over 600 SLF: Just think about what 63 traps will capture and remove over the next few months! LH-PRISM partner Trillium Invasive Species Management has started targeted chemical treatment of host tree-of-heaven trees at each of these sites. We are hopeful that this combination of trap monitoring and chemical treatment will help mitigate the further spread of this species into other natural areas in the Lower Hudson PRISM region.  

If you are interested in volunteering to help with monitoring these circle traps and removing caught SLF at these sites, please contact Invasives Species Citizen Science Coordinator, Brent Boscarino, at [email protected]. We really need a core group of volunteers to help with this project to make it a success!

Crew members Joe Radigan and Christian Cifuentes proudly showing off the waste pile of a huge hardy kiwi at Vassar Farms. Photo by K. Robinson

In July, the ISF crew continued to work hard in the fight against invasive species. We kicked off the month removing Scotch broom at Harriman State Park and the Ralph E. Ogden Foundation headquarters in Mountainville, N.Y. with some help from volunteers. The crew also worked on Chinese silvergrass, swallow-worts, and small carpetgrass at High Tor State Park in Rockland County and Shrub Oak Park in Westchester County, N.Y. Next, the crew was particularly proud to finish managing all the sticky sage found along the Appalachian Trail in Dover, N.Y.! It is essential to manage sticky sage along the trail to prevent the spread of this relatively new invasive to other regions in the Northeast. After the sticky sage removals, the crew worked on removing sapphireberry and linden viburnum from Sachs Park in Westchester County as well as sapphireberry, castor aralia and hardy kiwi at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. As one of the hotspots for emerging invasive castor aralia in the Northeast, thorough management at Vassar is critical in protecting nearby natural areas. Lastly, the ISF had the opportunity to get their feet wet with invasive spotted lanternfly management in Orangeburg, N.Y., working in conjunction with the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets. They removed individual spotted lanternflies and marked trees in the area for future treatment. The ISF was thrilled to do their part on this important assignment. This August, the ISF looks forward to working on sapphireberry at Franklin Fels and at Granite Mountain on a variety of invasives, along with many other exciting projects!

The volunteer-led ISF Crew also completed some great work in New Jersey this past month! Guided by volunteer Crew leader Rich Rockwell, a team of dedicated volunteers helped remove over 200 invasive plants including a huge multiflora rose (photo below) that was climbing more than 20 feet up into a dead tree along the Mashipacong in High Point State Park in Sussex, N.J. Following the removal of dense thickets of multiflora rose, the team discovered more "hidden" invasives including two autumn olive trees and common buckthorn. All those invasives are gone now, and the crew rescued a native grape vine, a nannyberry (Viburnum lentago), a Southern arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum) sapling and many native ferns and wildflowers. The team also removed and treated Japanese barberry, multiflora rose, burning bush and other emerging invasives from the Yellow Trail at Turkey Mountain in Montville, N.J. The crew will be revisiting these sites in August (see the above Stewardship Events Calendar for those dates and times). Please contact Rich Rockwell at [email protected] for more information and to register.

Before and after shots of the removal of multiflora rose along the Mashipacong Trail in High Point State Park in Sussex County, N.J. Photo credit: Rich Rockwell

American Canoe Association Member Loren Edelson (pictured here with a Clean. Drain. Dry. uniform) educates Lake Sebago paddlers about aquatic invasive species during a pilot Watercraft Inspection Steward Program on July 24. Photo: Lindsay Yoder

For the Aquatic Invasives Strike Force (AISF) crew, the month of July has been filled to the brim with water chestnut removals! The AISF crew has removed just over 105,000 plants from 11 sites, with a few more still to go! In total, these plants weighed over 14,000 pounds. With the help of our partners and 40 volunteers, we put in 326 hours of effort. We would like to thank everyone that was involved with this undertaking, including Audubon NY at Constitution Marsh, Westchester Parks Foundation, Three Arrows Cooperative Society, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation at Norrie Point Environmental Center.

The AIS Program has also been heavily involved with multiple stakeholders from Lake Sebago in Harriman State Park to devise a strategic plan for managing aquatic invasive species through early detection and prevention. Earlier this month, AISF Crew Leader Maya Thompson and AIS Program Coordinator Lindsay Yoder led an aquatic survey training session for the three group camps on Lake Sebago: Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK), Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), and the American Canoe Association (ACA). The Lake Sebago ACA camp also spearheaded a pilot Watercraft Inspection Steward Program for a single Saturday at the public launch, where nearly 100 boats were inspected, providing significant support for the creation of a full-season program.

Looking forward, the AISF crew is excited to get back into surveying waterbodies around the region, looking to identify both native and invasive plants. We are surveying many new lakes, including Roaring Brook Lake, Lake Awosting, Queensboro Lake, Silver Lake, Sylvan Lake, and more, as well as returning to some lakes that we already surveyed earlier this season!

ISF Plant Survey volunteer, Thea Landesberg, puts the finishing touches on her survey of Norvin Green's Carris Hill and Hewitt-Butler trails. Photo credit: Claudia Esker

What a start to the ISF Plant Survey season! As of the end of July, 141 trail segments have gone out for assignment to 139 dedicated volunteers. These assignments cover 235 miles of trail in northern New Jersey and the Lower Hudson Valley! Thus far, our volunteers have completed close to a quarter of these assignments which puts the program on a good pace to finish the majority of the surveying by the end of August. What is just as exciting is the steady stream of volunteer interest forms that continue to come in and the number of new assignments going out to new volunteers! Out of the 139 current surveyors with an assignment this year, 42 are new to our survey program in 2021! 

Thus far, our leading ISF Standard and Intermediate surveyors with more than 20 hours dedicated and at least 2 surveys completed (as determined by surveys processed by our team by the end of July) are: Zaw Win Naung (64 hours, 5 assignments complete), the team of Mary and Madeleine Phelan (39 hours, 2 assignments complete), Adrienne Popko (25 hours, 2 assignments complete) and the team of Jackie Skrzynski and Thom Munterich (20 hours, 2 assignments complete). We would also like to recognize Barbara Mistler who has already committed a whopping 37 hours to surveying a long 4+ mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail in Dutchess County, N.Y. and to Christine Raleigh who has surveyed and submitted data for three distinct trail sections. Amazing work guys!

Our ISF Blockbuster surveyors have taken on 34 assignments and already completed more than a dozen. A special shout out goes to Irene Sheldon who is a new Blockbuster surveyor this year. She has already completed 9 blocks and is on track to complete many more before the year is through. All of Dutchess County is nearly complete and we are making great headway on Orange County. Blockbuster surveys involve looking for 27 different invasive plants and recording 3 surveys within a 3x3 mile area. Conducting surveys in this way makes sure we’re not just looking in parks and natural areas but throughout the region for invasive species.

We are excited to introduce intern Nyssa Calkin to our Conservation Dogs team! While this photo includes Nyssa's own pup and not one of our working dogs, he looks pretty proud to have Nyssa on our side helping to protect our region's natural areas from the threat of invasive species.

The Conservation Dogs Program is excited to welcome the newest member to our team, our Conservation Dogs intern, Nyssa Calkin! Nyssa is a student of Zoology at SUNY Oswego with a love for the outdoors and an almost unreasonable love for dogs. In Nyssa's own words, "the internship with the Conservation Dogs Program was everything I could have wished for. With my background in photography, I plan to bring more visual examples of Dia and Fagen's work in the field to all their adoring fans out there. Providing a thorough understanding of how the dogs work is crucial for keeping programs like this running and I'm hoping that I am able to use my experience to provide that transparency." Glad to have you aboard, Nyssa!

Recently, our team has been searching for spotted lanternfly in Rockland and Orange counties, helping to delineate the border of currently known infestations so that our treatment plan can move forward with greater accuracy. While we, as humans, may be able to spot the flies if we take our time and carefully examine the flora around us, the dogs make much quicker work of pinpointing boundaries that we would have struggled to find ourselves. We will be continuing this SLF work in August and helping to detect and remove sticky sage at various locations in the Lower Hudson PRISM region.

Looking to see the dogs at work? Then you are in luck! We are hosting a Conservation Dog Demo at Ramapo Mountain State Forest on August 28, 8:30 a.m.-9:30 a.m. Please register to join us. Space is limited and we'd love to see you out there!

Blue-stem goldenrod (Solidago caesia) is one of the many native plants being grown by our Native Growers volunteers to use in future restoration work. Photo credit: High Line Gardens, highline.org

The Habitat Helpers crew continues to make great strides in creating a model native habitat around Trail Conference headquarters. This year 60 volunteers have dedicated over 470 hours to maintaining the gardens and we’re seeing our efforts pay off for wildlife. Local birder, Doug Morel, has observed over 75 species of birds on the property.  Recently we have prepared a large area behind the building for the second phase of our fern garden planting in the fall. You can learn more about the gardens and the native plants by signing up for one of our monthly garden tours led by volunteer Janelle Heise.

Our native plant growers group of 16 volunteers has carefully nurtured over 1,500 native plants of 20 different species to be used in restoration efforts in our region's natural areas. Many of these plants' seeds were collected with permission from local parks including white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima) grass-leaved goldenrod (Euthamia sp.), woolgrass (Scirpus cyperinus), silverrod (Solidago bicolor) and heath aster (Symphyotrichum sp.).

These programs highlight that maintaining native habitat not only supports the integrity of the local ecosystem under protection, but also helps to build the foundation for restoration and native plant reintroductions in other areas as well.  We are planning many planting workdays in September both at the Trail Conference and at Harriman State Park in N.Y. We hope you’ll come out and join us.

The Invasives Strike Force Plant Survey Program would like to thank Rita Alzamora, Heather Lorusso, and Claudia Esker for their leadership and guidance as Survey Mentors this year. This program is designed to help new surveyors who had requested a helping hand to get them started on their first assignment. It's this type of leadership and commitment to teamwork that enables our program to blossom and build the necessary confidence of our volunteer corps to get the job done, make it fun and feel collaborative!

The ISF Crew sends out another huge thank you to our project partner, Stancy DuHamel, for housing the ISF crew at her beautiful property for sticky sage management.  We’d also like to thank the Cornell Cooperative Extension-Rockland County interns Heather Hamann and Marcus Octaviano and Hudson Highlands Land Trust and Fresh Air Fund at Sharpe Reservation interns Adriana Butler and Katie Cassidy for their help with spotted lanternfly management along with Vassar interns Echo Hertzberg and Bronwyn Pappas-Byers for their help locating sapphireberry and castor aralia infestations. Shout outs also go to volunteers Ed and Nancy Duvinski, Laura and Frank Galdun, Nick Homyak, and Willard Dye for their incredible efforts with invasives removals at High Point State Park and Turkey Mountain this past month. We are so appreciative of all the help and inspiring work ethic of these super volunteers!

Shout out to Janelle Heise for producing an informative handout on our native gardens and conducting monthly garden tours at Trail Conference headquarters as well as to Sara Maher who has been helping to lead invasives guided walks with Citizen Science Program Coordinator, Brent Boscarino, and adding valuable information on edible invasives!

Last but not least, the AISF Crew would like to thank their rock star volunteers Werner Mueller, Thea Landesberg, and Chris Petty for braving the heat and the muck at multiple water chestnut pulls this past month. We consider them honorary crew members!

Pictured left (or above if viewed on a mobile device) is a tangle of pale swallow-wort. Notice that the dark green and glossy leaves are oppositely arranged along the stem and the presence of "green-bean like" seed pods, which should be apparent at this time of year. Pictured right (or below if viewed on mobile devices) are the 5-petaled star-shaped flowers of black swallow-wort which are dark purple and bloom in the spring, though some plants may still retain these flowers into the fall. Photo credits: Chris Evans, Illinois Wildlife, bugwood.org and Leslie Mehroff, UConn, bugwood.org

Monarch butterflies are one of the most iconic insects in North America. Their impressive multigenerational migrations from their winter grounds in Mexico to our natural areas in the Northeast follow the blooming cycles of their host plant, milkweed, which their young require for survival. But there is an impostor plant in the monarchs’ midst, invasive swallow-wort vine, which resembles milkweed in appearance and chemical composition, thus confusing the monarchs into laying their eggs on it. Despite the similarities in appearance, monarch caterpillars cannot survive on swallow-wort’s nutrients. Any eggs laid on this invasive host plant are lost. Not only this, but swallow-wort is an aggressive vine that clambers and climbs over other vegetation, stealing vital nutrients, and outcompeting the native plants we are trying to protect. It is a nefarious invasive, indeed.

There are two different species of swallow-wort in our region: black swallow-wort (Vincetoxicum nigrum) and the less common pale swallow-wort (Vincetoxicum rossicum). Both species have dark green glossy leaves about 3-6” long that come to a slightly rounded point at the tip. The vine twines around other vegetation as well as itself in a corkscrew-like fashion. The two species can be distinguished from each other when they flower in the spring. Pale swallow-wort produces pink, star-shaped flowers whereas black swallow-wort flowers are a very dark purple with a similar 5-petaled star-shaped arrangement. At this time of year,  swallow-wort is best distinguished by its seed pods which are 1.5-3” in length and thin, resembling a green bean. The inside of these seed pods are full of flat, brown seeds covered in fine, white hairs. Please make sure to watch this Swallow-wort Field ID Video created by Invasive Species Citizen Science Coordinator, Brent Boscarino, for further tips!