Why Does Everyone Hate Invasives?

I think this wins the award for The Longest Running Thread on the Forum! 6 pages and counting. FWIW, I have no idea what youse guys are talking about. I do gotta chain saw. I use it for cutting firewood. Lots of deadfalls here since Katrina.

I think this wins the award for The Longest Running Thread on the Forum! 6 pages and counting.

It's only 4 pages.

I came across these a while back while looking for small snowshoes for silt. Mudders. Not exactly cheap and have not yet decided to spend the bucks for them.

Where I got the snowshoe idea was from birders doing estuarine work.

From what I understand, the mudders don't work all that well. They have a tendency to get "mudded up" and then fail, esp when you have water on top of them. As well, my advisor is Dutch and is a wetlands ecologist who did his grad work in Florida. He had the same complaint as the birders.

So you might want to look at finding a pair of aluminum snowshoes cheap on Ebay. Stuff like that gets bought and never used. I can't imagine it's all that hard to round up if you're persistent. Esp after everyone cleans out the garage in the spring.

As for this thread, yeah, it's turned into an invasive exotic loose in our native forum of its own kind lol. But I think it's still a pertinent and helpful topic, so why not?

Todd

I placed a bid on a pair of aluminum snowshoes very similar to what I posted a photo of that were on eBay shortly after tglassburner said he had a buddy about my size who used them with no problems. I'll see if I am high bidder on them in a few days. I think I bid like 53.00 using a snipe service. If I don't get them, I may have a Tubbs back up that I can buy a lot cheaper than my bid on the no-name brand.

The style that teleost posted doesn't work all that well for me. I guess they're fine for mucking out a horse stall or maybe to get around out in a muddy pasture. Anytime there was water and a good suction was created, I got stuck. I passed my pair onto a die hard horsie person who is thrilled with them. I'd be nervous with a power tool out in a wetlands on that style.

As for getting it caught up in the blade, it won't kick. There's a pin that will shear if there's enough force for it to do that. Part of Natureman's issue may have been youthful male exuberance with a power tool icon_wink.gif You will get stuff that will wrap, but you STOP when you see it start, before it 1) jams or 2) shears.

Same deal with the chainsaw. I flunked the first round of chainsaw classes for not being able to recognize when mine was going to wrap on multi-stems. They repeated the classes for me in the field to help me better recognize when to back off. I didn't find out until a few years later that I was the only person who had ever flunked, I think the words they used were "failed to pass" which made the situation somewhat more palatable. I have a healthy respect for chainsaws and anything that could take off my leg. Don't you guys wear chaps when you work as an added precaution? As far as that Rosa multiflora; I can't win against that unless I wear goggles, a leather bandana, Carrhartt overalls, gloves, and a hooded jacket. Trick is to leave as little flesh exposed as is humanly possible. That's one invasive that is particularly challenging to deal with and I flat out got sick and tired of coming out looking like as if the boogie man got me with tattered blood-stained clothes. Fortunately, I think my R. multiflora days are coming to a close. Most of it is gone. Next challenge is the Berberis thunbergii but none of that is any where near the size of the R. multiflora. Watch out for that one. It became real popular and everyone's Barberry is breeding with everyone else's Barberry and it's reverting to type and popping up everywhere now. So far I can hand pull the volunteers with basic rose gloves. I'm going to look like a bee keeping astronaut when I begin to remove the Pastinaca sativa from the west side of this property. Now there's one plant that scares me more than a chainsaw. What do you do... burn your outerwear when you're done ripping that out of the ground? I wish we had some white lists on the books to stop these invasives from disrupting natural areas. I wouldn't be in the mess I'm in right now with two ponds out back that can't support native life forms until they get cleaned up if we had white lists about 20 years ago. Well, heightened public awareness of the gravity of the situation would be a big help too.

I don't know if anyone else read that online "Fishes of Wisconsin" by Becker however he quoted this from Pister,

We still have a long way to go in the fish and wildlife professions before we reach an acceptable level of philosophical maturity. History alone will judge the value of what we do today. In the year 2076, society will be far less interested in the 1976 catch per angler in Crowley Lake or the degree of hunter success on a certain wildlife management area than in what happened to our native fauna if we fail to appreciate it enough to preserve, manage, and utilize it. We have inherited so much from our predecessors that we automatically assume an enormous debt to our future.

Sort of sums up why I want to clean up around here to be able to stock those two ponds with native fish someday.

Back to my Phragmites. I won't be getting the Stihl until sometime around Mother's Day. I've noticed the Phrag begins active growth several weeks earlier than the natives. What if I went out there now while everything is frozen and started trying to remove some of it with the little chainsaw I have? Temps here this morning were -3° and looks as if all is nice and frozen out there. That way I can go back in with the AquaMaster at the first signs of growth and hopefully avoid negatively affecting any natives that wouldn't have begun active growth? I realize water is bad for a chainsaw but how bad is nicking it in ice?

Irate Mormon, please visit me if you are ever up my way. This place isn't a total wasteland any longer. It's always hard visualizing what people are talking about but the minute someone shows you the way they have been shown, we get it. I promise. I'm more of a hands on person myself and have always learned best by doing. Most of my friends are all hands on too. You show me how to whack an Asian Carp and I'll show you how to whack R. multiflora.

Really glad I found all of you. I think my best tip of the year '07 may very well end up being the suggestion to go for my Phragmites on aluminum snowshoes with a Stihl FS550 and maybe... just maybe... the second best tip of '07 will be to for me to work up enough nerve to humanely destroy an Asian Carp properly.

I have a healthy respect for chainsaws and anything that could take off my leg. Don't you guys wear chaps when you work as an added precaution?

Chaps and a visored helmet are a must. I have glasses, so behind the visor, that seems to be enough protection. If I'm just whipping some small stuff I'll wear saftey glasses over mine and skip with the helmet.

What's really cool is cutting all morning and then walking into Panera with nearly full gear on in the uppity suburb near where we work to get lunch.

I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay...

Todd

Hm, I've gone to pick up my kids from school after having been outside working and they thanked me for waiting in the car for them to walk to the parking lot. I was a white collar professional before I resigned to stay home with the kids. They are not used to me appearing publicly in anything but hose and heels with every hair on my head in place just yet.

I did get those snowshoes. My husband also surprised me by purchasing a pair for me too from the Sports Authority. Do they stack for greater buoyancy? Just kidding. Money down the drain as far as I'm concerned as I only needed one pair.

I am told I can have the Stihl for Mother's Day. His question is if the smaller horsepower Stihl that costs several hundred dollars less would work or if we need to buy the heavier 550? The size is rather interesting. Weight seems to be ok but I don't know if I would still think the weight was ok after using it for about 2-3 hours straight- I am not a Lumberjack.

That's why I was suggesting you talk to the Stihl dealer, because I'm pretty sure they'd just give you the right answer, and then it wasn't just the advice of "some guy on the internet".

I don't think you need a 550. I really think it's overkill for what you'd ever use it for.

The snowshoes would fit the kids or husband, right?

Todd

Not to derail the topic, but on a sort-of-relevant note: a number of big expansions by native and non-native species have been facilitated by human habitat alteration, moreso than by people moving the organisms too and fro: examples include coyotes (invaded the eastern US in the mid-twentieth century; bridges, extensive land clearing, and extirpation of native large predators opened up a whole new realm to them); nine-banded armadillos (railroads at the turn of the twentieth century provided a path across the inhospitable plains of south Texas and allowed their incredible expansion into the midwest and south); and cattle egrets (trans-Atlantic vagrants of this African native became established in Brazil in the mid-nineteenth century after cattle ranching had become common there, and quickly spread throughout the tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate parts of the New World). I have been researching the recent (1980's to present) range expansion of the green treefrog; I haven't found a good explanation for this phenomenon yet, but I'm working on it!

I have been researching the recent (1980's to present) range expansion of the green treefrog; I haven't found a good explanation for this phenomenon yet, but I'm working on it!

Very interesting... I would love to see some of the Data and information you have come up with so far on this.

I went to the Stihl dealer. They claimed I needed the 550. I think I'll stick with the advice of "some guy on the internet" and go with the 450.

Kids are into downhill skiing. Husband encourages me to do what I believe is best and funds same but doesn't have the time to help being as how he probably works 70+ hours a week and is simply too tired or not around. I have a girlfriend who volunteers removing invasives at Glacial Park and I'm giving the extra set to her. She thinks the idea to use snowshoes in a wetlands is brilliant and indicated she has never seen anyone using them. The extra set will be put to good use!

I haven't found a good explanation for this phenomenon yet, but I'm working on it!

On the run from The Cuban treefrog and brown tree snake? Sorry, I get silly every once in a while.
I too would be very interested in your research.

To continue forward with the de-railing, I believe one factor accelerating the expansion of coyotes has to be the explosion of feral cat populations across the US. Sad to say with all we have learned about the negative impact of our precious kitties that we still have millions of people letting their house cats outside and add to this the astronomical number of private citizens coast to coast who religiously practice TNR. Incredibly, many sign contracts to be landlords of feral cat colonies wherein which they agree to provide food and an ongoing source of fresh water to their colony. We're blessed (tongue in cheek) to have one such bleeding heart militant PETA zealot down the road from us. Her 150+ colony of cats doesn't respect property lines. Needless to say, we have been experiencing a boom in the local coyote population the last few years since she signed on.

What are your thoughts on deer Newt?

Deer? They're out of control!

I don't know what I can say that hasn't been said many times before. Deer in many places are mismanaged, so that the populations are sustained at ecologically disastrous levels (Pennsylvania is notorious for this). I think that wiser hunting limits and regulations are probably adequate to solve this problem; the difficulty is that many state DNRs are supported mainly by hunters' dollars, and the hunters may supply pressure to keep the deer populations up (even though this leads to smaller and weaker deer, increases the chances that deer diseases will reach catastrophic proportions, harms other wildlife, and causes destruction of both natural and cultivated vegetation). If you were referring to deer range expansion, I was unaware that it was occurring.

Feral cats are a big problem. It's hard to get people to look beyond the one-on-one interaction between the dogcatcher and a stray and look at the bigger picture, of how feral animals impact ecosystems. Just as with the Pennsylvania deer hunters, there needs to be more ecological awareness among members of the public.

I've submitted my treefrog research to Herpetological Review for review; I don't know yet if it will be published or not. I was mostly just trying to figure out where the frogs are now, and how that compares to their historical distribution, in the Middle Tennessee-Western Kentucky-Northern Alabama region. I also looked at historical records rangewide to see if there were any overarching patterns. What appears to be happening is that the frogs are expanding their range from the Coastal Plain into the Piedmont along the Atlantic slope, and up the valleys of major rivers in the Mississippi and Ohio drainages. What becomes difficult is establishing that new reports actually represent new populations and not previously overlooked ones; I've had some success with that in the Cumberland River watershed, but not so much elsewhere. So far I haven't been able to look at causes for this expansion, beyond unsupported speculation.

Okay, that's probably enough thread derailment!

I hate carp! And I really hate bush honeysuckle!

Are the treefrogs expanding northwards as winters become shorter and somewhat milder? There is research done in suburban Boston by Richard Primack at Boston University that seems to document that many native plants in the area are blooming and coming into leaf as much as 3 weeks earlier than they did at the time of Thoreau. Thoreau kept exquisitely detailed journals of his observations of the phenology of natural events while living in Concord, MA, and Primack's group has used these journals as a baseline to compare the 1840s to today. Other ranges and timings are changing, too; possums are still expanding northwards, armadillos are now commonly found on the north side of the Tennessee River in Alabama, and cardinal birds are expanding the northern limits of their breeding and wintering ranges. Documenting that tree frogs are doing this too is, I'm sure, not a trivial thing. But I look forward to your work if it is accepted.

Fundulus-

That's my best unsupported speculation as to why the treefrogs' range is expanding. Unfortunately, so many basic aspects of this species' physiology (temperature tolerances, etc.) and life history (vagility of juveniles) are unstudied that I really can't say more than "The period of rapid range expansion corresponds with a period of mild winters in the eastern and central US." Another factor is the likelihood of anthropogenic introductions- this species is common in the pet trade, and may be a common bait bucket stowaway; certainly some populations west of the Mississippi were introductions, and maybe some east of the Mississippi as well. I'd like to pursue this line of inquiry further, and maybe do some genetics work to see if the new populations are more closely related to older nearby populations or to pet trade source populations in the deep south. I'd also like to look for them in the northeast; if the habitat is there for them, there's no reason they shouldn't be moving into the Philadelphia area or southern New Jersey.

Thanks for pointing me to Primack's work; I knew such phenomena in plants had been observed, but I haven't read any of the primary literature.

With regards to armadillos- they are far beyond northern Alabama. They are abundant in west Tennessee and western Kentucky, as well as in the southern half of middle Tennessee (up to I-40). We've been getting a few individuals up here in the Nashville area and in Land Between the Lakes since the turn of the century; I wouldn't be surprised if the buggers have crossed the Ohio by now.

Armadillo's have been found as "incidentals" into souther Illinois and Indiana.
Hell...I half expect to one day hear of one found in southern Michigan!

My personal observations are based on 8 years in the northern tier of Alabama. Early in my experience you could see roadkill armadillos on I-65 south of the Tennessee, but not north of the river. Now we routinely encounter them during field work in counties on the north side of the river, and roadkill armadillos can be found up I-65 into southern middle Tennessee en route to Nashville.

Definitely check out Primack's work. It's pretty eye-popping. I just read accounts of research reporting that average winter temperatures in the Northeast have increased by 2.5 degrees F since the 1960s, which is consistent with shifts in flowering phenology. Things ain't like they used to be...

it looks like anything goes on this thread.

when i got home last night i found my order frmo Jonah's Aquarium on the front step. the ordering department there is closed fo rrenovation, but Mark gave me great personal service through email. the Perfect Dipnet is a slick piece of gear. i can't wait to hit the water.

Yes, I was referring to deer range expansion however far too tired to chat about hooved rats right now.

So armadillos are in my state already. Special. Have we any tasty recipes for them? Forgive me, sick and slap happy and really sorry that nutria hasn't become more popular in fine dining establishments.

Thanks for mentioning Primack's work.

Say puchisapo, which dipnet did you purchase from Jonah's Aquarium?

Here in Savannah and most of south Georgia, Armadillos are called "Possum on the Half-shell". Any good possum recipe will work on 'em.

BTW How many actually green colored tree frogs are there. Theres a bunch here that will actually eat bugs from your hand if your real slow and careful.

Jim, in 72 degree Georgia

Here in Savannah and most of south Georgia, Armadillos are called "Possum on the Half-shell". Any good possum recipe will work on 'em.

BTW How many actually green colored tree frogs are there. Theres a bunch here that will actually eat bugs from your hand if your real slow and careful.

Jim, in 72 degree Georgia

In GA, you've only got one treefrog (the Pinewoods Treefrog) that isn't often green. Green and Barking Treefrogs are usually green, and Bird-voiced, Squirrel, and Cope's Gray Treefrogs are sometimes green (all treefrogs are able to change color to a certain extent). Plus, you've got several related frogs, such as Northern and Southern Chorus Frogs, Little Grass Frogs, and Ornate Chorus Frogs, that look like little treefrogs and may also be green. That's what you get for living in such a biodiverse state! That's great that you've got such trusting frogs; if you post a picture of one I should be able to ID it for you.

I'd be leary of eating 'dillos- they're known to carry Hansen's Disease (leprosy).

Did somebody say "chainsaw classes"?! I never heard of such a thing. Down South if you lop off a foot, that is considered part of the learning curve.

My good friend "Stumpy" laughed his @ss off when I told him that there were people who actually took CLASSES on how to use a chainsaw!