Managing for Sustainable Biodiversity at New Quarter Park

During the five years that I have worked for York County at New Quarter Park I've watched the Japanese Stilt Grass problem grow. If I knew what I know today, I would have been more vigilant to guard against its near establishment in the park. Hindsight is always 20-20, as they say. Our work will be more difficult, but there is still time to manage it now, I believe. Especially since the hot summer has had an impact on its late and less abundant seeding this fall.

The Asian annual grass came to the United States in 1919. It had been used as packing material around imported porcelain and some of its seeds escaped in Tennessee. Since then, the grass has thrived in a variety of habits in the east. It seems to love our moist soils and shady forests. Because it has no predators here, not even the herds of White-tailed Deer. It keeps growing and going.

Seeds found there way into New Quarter when it was opened to the public in 2005. Typically, the seeds are carried by animals (including us) and fall into disturbed soil along roads. Japaneses Stilt Grass got a foothold alongside the path to New Quarter's floating dock first, I believe. I watched it jump over to the road to the point. All along the edges of the hiking trails you can find patches of the stuff, but it's become particularly dense and matted along the floating dock road that passes Loops 1 through 4, where it first took hold.

The Historic Rivers Chapter, Virginia Master Naturalists, have taken on the task of eradicating invasive species and developing the first hiking loop as a teaching trail. We plan to nurture a variety of natives plant that are found throughout the park on the first trail. The Teaching Trail will be a showcase for biodiversity and a place where we can model to others how to use native plants to enliven their property. The development of the loop has had a couple of false starts as people who were in charge came and went, but each year we've made a small attempt to eradicate the Japanese Stilt Grass, which can overwhelm and crowd out the natives.

This fall, we're trying even harder to eradicate the grass on our Teaching Trail. I am please to report that today I worked with 5 volunteers to pull the grass invading on the floating dock road side of our trail. We made great progress and I am more determined than ever to work with volunteers to eradicate as much as we can from the park.

I attended a seminar at VIMS last week about the growing problem of non-native species, especially those that are invasive. Though the presenters didn't talk about Japanese Stilt Grass in particular, I did buttonhole them afterward about it. The couple of presenters that I talked with encouraged me. They feel that it is important to sustain biodiversity in places such as New Quarter, which is a recently biodiverse area that is just now being invaded. Well, it's been five years since the relatively unused land was opened to the public as a park and invaders began to chew away at biodiversity. But Japanese Stilt Grass hasn't become fully established and there's time.

Read my blog post on world.edu where I talked more about the problem of invasive species as presented at VIMS last week.