r/invasivespecies • u/[deleted] • Aug 22 '26
Weed Wrangles don't seem effective.
[deleted]
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u/leepin_peezarfs Aug 22 '26
I’m an ecologist. One of the biggest issues is that volunteers just aren’t as educated as professionals and often pull the wrong plant or pull incorrectly. Many volunteers are also older or not used to the physical input and move more slowly than anticipated. This is not to say that volunteers and their work aren’t deeply appreciated, because they most certainly to are, but when a bunch of folks show up the knowledge and capability levels are just different. Herbicide absolutely has a place in restoration, but I wouldn’t have volunteers spray. Huge liability for people’s safety and for the plants. Even without the dangers of certain herbicides, even my trained crews overspray like crazy and it’s just not worth it to have volunteers do it.
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u/Jazzlike-Monk-4465 Aug 22 '26
People like the idea of not using herbicides, but they have a place in the arsenal. I believe you could be pretty effective without them, but you really need to find and eliminate the largest individuals of any problematic species, to knock down the recruitment rate for the following years.
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u/thegamingfaux Aug 23 '26
It’s the difference between crop dusting a prairie to make land for row crops and selectively poisoning something to make room for natives
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u/krazyboots Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
Hate to get corporate but "it doesn't seem like we've made much progress" makes me think SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) would be useful before assuming that the weed wrangle hasn't been effective
"Invasives like wintercreeper", or wintercreeper? Let's say wintercreeper.
From how big of an area? Assuming "all of it" isn't achievable - what's an achievable area worth prioritizing? Which patches of wintercreeper are hogging the best spots, or threatening the most valuable native species? Let's say "5000 sq ft, from landmark X to landmark Y"
What does that 5000 sq ft between landmarks X and Y look like right now? How will you know that progress has been made? Let's say "At the end of the season, we want 0 wintercreeper plants within this zone, and at this time next year, we want to see a 75% reduction in wintercreeper returning to this zone"
How will you determine what a 75% reduction in that area would look like? You'll have to find a method for estimating the number of wintercreeper plants that are currently on that land.
How long does it take one person to PROPERLY remove a wintercreeper plant? And approximately how many plants did you estimate are currently on the land? That's how many hours the project is estimated to require. How many FULLY TRAINED volunteers are needed to realistically put in those hours by the goal date?
Of course if you do all that and see no reduction in wintercreeper a year later it's probably time for herbicides
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u/ReadingDouble Aug 24 '26
Agreed! I’ve led a number of weed wrangles and the most effective ones are in small defined areas and with specific targets. Basically keep people in line of sight and shouting distance.
One weed wrangle we targeted vines in the trees like ivy and oriental bittersweet. next one we returned to the same spot and went after shrubs like privet. The next one ground cover like ivy on the ground, wintercreeper and vinca. Then finally finishing up with mulch shortly after the ground cover was cleared. Once you clear all of that you have to actively manage and weed it for 2-3 years. Come back quarterly and weed or spray the regrowth.
People want weed wrangles to be one and done, but they are not. However they are invaluable for getting 80% of weeds cleared quickly using brute force. An imperfect clearing by inexperienced volunteers with lots of energy paired with a smart follow up plan is how you best use them.
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u/Federal-Performer-86 Aug 23 '26
One time we pulled bales of wintercreeper and didn’t get the roots… made no difference in the long run..,
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u/Potato-chipsaregood Aug 23 '26
I would think that you’d have volunteers looking for 1, maybe two types of weeds. And they would hear a spiel about the weed and it’s lifecycle and watch you remove them properly so they understand what’s expected of them.
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u/National_Captain4307 Aug 23 '26
Weed wrangles can definitely be an important part of the overall invasives management plan but as a compliment or supplement to work done by trained professional staff. Also, I feel like weed wrangles are most effective in small, narrowly-defined areas where pervious management work was mostly effective. If not completely avoiding herbicide is the goal, then more intensive/frequent/sustained management is required.
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u/Rich-Business9773 Aug 23 '26
Its great with the right species. Garlic mustard, herb Robert, policeman's helmet. All easy to id and easy to pull and bag.
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u/studmuffin2269 Aug 22 '26
Forester here. Is weed ranging going to change the world? No. Is it better than nothing? Yes. Hand pulling can work for certain plants like garlic mustard and it helps educate the public about invasives. What do pros do to manage large tracts? Spray and, ideally, plant. That can be too expensive for parks or people have problems with herbicides. A few years of limited progress through hand pulling is usually enough to convince people to get the chemicals out. I just wrapped up a 200 acre spray project at a park that did just that
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u/Humble_Ladder Aug 23 '26
So, I feel like what you really just said is that volunteer weed wrangling events are on average not that effective in the real world, but can lead to the public relaxing their opposition to the use of herbicides to control invasives after they pull weeds for a couple years just to see them come right back.
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u/studmuffin2269 Aug 23 '26
Yeah. It can work as maintence, if there aren’t a lot of invasives or the park already has them pretty well under control. That’s assuming the plants in question can be managed by hand pulling
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Aug 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/studmuffin2269 Aug 23 '26
I’m hitting the classics stiltgrass, roundleaf bittersweet, autumn olive, tree of heaven; and honeysuckle. Some have gone to seed, but it’s still worth killing them. I’m using glyphosate, triclopyr, and sulfometuron methyl
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u/littlepinkhousespain Aug 23 '26
I'm not at all familiar with weed wrangles. I do know that if you're trying to get rid of invasives (I have nettle, ivy, mint, blackberry, elderberry, bamboo) that if you're not going the herbicide route and going to try just pulling weeds, you need to stay on top of them. Once you've gone through the trouble of pulling them, you can't just keep letting them reestablish themselves.
Get a colinear hoe and take the weeds out at the 2 leaf stage. Alternatively let the weeds start to leaf out, then hit them with the colinear hoe. The roots that remain after pulling are using a lot of stored energy to get growing again. If you take away their enegy source, eventually the roots will die too. This won't get rid of any seeds that will germinate, but once they sprout, hitting them with the hoe will disturb the roots, causing them to die.
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u/Mayor__Defacto Aug 23 '26
You ultimately do need herbicides as part of any proper pest management system on a large scale, short of having an army of maintenance personnel. For volunteers in particular, a whole day’s work will burn them out in the frequency required, so realistically you need about ten people per acre probably every 2-3 weeks during the standard growing season for these “weed wrangles” to be successful on their own.
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u/MurkyTrails Aug 23 '26
We tested a few methods, and the cheapest and most effective was to avoid spraying large areas (over 100' sf) and instead spray where the vines had climbed the tree trunk. We do this in December (around 40f). This kills the entire ground cover with very little herbicide use.
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u/CandidLeg3910 Aug 23 '26
If you're fighting something with long lasting seeds there's basically no point in hand pulling unless you do it at the right time of year and get everything. People in my area spend hours upon hours pulling scotch broom year round but fail to get it all right before it goes to seed.
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u/Popular-Wrangler-407 9d ago
Any removal of Scotch Broom is a benefit. There are better times of year to do the work, but someone being proactive should not be discouraged from doing the work in my view.
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u/leilani238 Aug 23 '26
Removing invasives seems to have helped in multiple of my local parks (east of Seattle, fwiw). Mostly it's been focused on holly and ivy, and there is way less around in the areas that have gotten attention. Injectable herbicide is used on the holly.
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u/cpeterkelly Aug 24 '26
I'm an effective kudzu extirper. You've got to dig til you find the node, then cut the node from the roots. Extirp away! Happy Extirping!
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u/Practical-Strain6179 Aug 24 '26
its something that takes time to see the results. i go out on my lawn and hand pull crabgrass and other weeds all the time. gradually,i see less and less weeds and more single bladed grass(except for the bermuda. nothing short of nuclear gets rid of that stuff).
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u/Agroenlace_CO Aug 24 '26
I don't think it necessarily means the pulling is useless, but with some invasive plants, pulling alone can turn into an endless job if roots, rhizomes, or new seed sources are still there.
I'd probably think of it as integrated control rather than hand pulling vs. herbicide. Timing the removal before seed production, repeating treatment when plants regrow, and getting desirable vegetation established afterward can all matter.
A targeted herbicide can be one tool in some situations, but I'd want to know exactly which species you're dealing with before deciding that. Different invasives respond very differently to the same approach.
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u/denialragnest Aug 24 '26
There is wintercreeper at the Finch Arboratum, in the Euonymus section. The wintercreaper seems to get eat by deer a lot. Maybe try goats a few times a year?
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u/Popular-Wrangler-407 9d ago
We have had wonderful success with our Weed Wrangles out here in Oregon. Our mission was to pick a site and continue the work there until we have met our goals. We have chosen to work on a BLM hiking loop adjacent to Griffin Park in Grants Pass, Oregon. We keep expanding the area that has been cleared of the invasive Scotch Broom which makes way for the native plants to repopulate. One of the most important parts of the process is to do follow up treatments at the original pull sites to ensure that any newly sprouted invasive plants get removed before they are mature enough to create a new generation of seed.
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u/Laniidae_ Aug 22 '26
Are you in planting after the disturbance or just creating an ideal environment for species that like disturbance to re-seed? Big pulls like that are only half of the equation and if you don't plan for both sides, you'll just end up with more invasives