Invasive Species Week is Feb. 26th to Mar. 4th

Florida Invasive Species Partnership: www.floridainvasives.org
While there is a national recognition of Invasive Species Awareness Week (www.nisaw.org) with a conference in Washington, D.C., we here in Florida have have our own action-oriented plans. Some of our efforts have gained national attention like Gainesville's recent air potato round-up in an AOL article, and regional attention with articles like this one in the Dayton New Journal "New coalition Works to Stamp Out Invasive Plants," and this Orlando Sentinel story, "Volunteers Help Pick Up Pesky Air Potatoes at Orlando Park" withe the subtitle: "Central Florida Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area's holds Air Potato Mega Raid at 14 sites."

The Florida Native Plant Society has long been actively fighting invasives, and was in fact, the first non-profit organization to join the Florida Invasive Species Partnership. Here on the FNPS blog, we've posted Removing Invasives in Mandarin: A Team Effort, Mexican Petunia: A Plant Gone Rogue, Aggressive vs. Invasive, Part 1, and An Invasives Debate. Recognition is nice, but mostly we've toiled in the field and in politically-charge environments in relative anonymity. Maybe this awareness week from Feb. 26th to Mar. 4th will bring our problems with invasive plant species and our efforts to reduce their populations into a spotlight.

In Northeast Florida, there are several events: a workshop and several invasive removal projects including 12 sites for air potato round-ups. Here is their page "First Coast Invasive Working Group" on the Florida Invasive Species Partnership. You can get to your local events on the FISP website by clicking on the colored area in the map at the right of the site. If there are no events listed, maybe you could list your local events or get something going, if not in time for the Invasive Awareness Week this year, maybe you'll be ready next time. 

Of course, in order to make progress, we must work at it year round on our own properties and on public lands. We'll continue discussing invasives here and would love to hear your story or cover your local invasives actions.Write to us at fnps.online@gmail.com


Don't be part of the problem: grow more native plants,
sue dingwell & Ginny Stibolt

Comments

Loret said…
Great article, great links. Keep up the good fight aggainst invasives!
February 7, 2011 at 2:53 PM
EcoHero said…
Check out my blog "Florida's War on Exotics"
February 9, 2011 at 12:01 PM
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