Volunteer Powered Invasive Species Management

By: Ecospark
Over the past two years EcoSpark partnered with the City of Toronto’s Community Stewardship Program (CSP) and Humber College’s Professor Lynn Short to see how well volunteers could tackle the invasive grass Phragmites australis (AKA common reed, or phragmites). Using Short’s manual removal technique​- spading - volunteers removed phragmites with minimal disturbance to the surrounding environment. We compared cutting above the soil, spading once in a season, spading twice in a season, and doing nothing. We also documented the amount of phragmites removed by volunteers, and used surveys to gauge how volunteers felt about their contributions, and whether or not they learned anything. Check out the full report here. 

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