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Early this year we were contacted by Rob Nichols, a student in Environmental Restoration at Skagit Valley College. Rob needed to do a practicum to finish his studies, and asked if we had an appropriate project for him. We thought about that, and came up with a discrete project which could be finished in a single season.
In the last five years, patches of California Tree Lupine (Lupinus arboreus) have appeared in numerous locations on Whidbey, especially along the highways. While this species is unfortunately planted as an ornamental, most of the recent invasion appears connected with roadside disturbance.
This invader hybridizes with two of our native lupines, Streambank Lupine (Lupinus rivularis) and Shore Lupine (Lupinus littoralis). Besides threatening the native Lupines through genetic pollution, the Tree Lupine is known to invade and dominate sandy coastal areas, displacing the native vegetation. We recently found hybrids in Joseph Whidbey State Park. While more patches have been appearing each year, their extent is relatively small. Eradicating this invasive species is still possible, but at the current rate of increase, in ten years it will probably be impossible if nothing is done. These interns working their butts off now will prevent an incipient threat to our native flora from becoming a future disaster.
Rob and another student, Bill Clay, have now been out on the highway for about two weeks. They have completed GPS mapping of all Lupinus arboreus they could find and have gone back to remove the mapped plants by cutting and pulling. The big and obvious ones are easy to find. The very small seedlings are a lot trickier and require them doing some crawling around. They will return several times throughout the season to find and remove new or overlooked plants. Continual cutting throughout the summer will kill off most of the plants outright and weaken the ones that are not killed this year. Mapping will allow follow-up next year (perhaps by new interns) to cut the plants that were not killed this year. Because the seed can remain viable for decades, monitoring for new plants will need to continue more or less permanently. Because of the mapping this year, if new plants appear we’ll be able to tell if they’re a re-occurrence from seed of a previously known location or an entirely new invasion.
Rob tells us that he has been able to check off a whole list of learning activities/skills from this project. He has learned the use of a GPS, basic mapping skills, plant identification, including identifying these lupine hybrids, interacting with Washington Dept. of Transportation, and the best non-toxic methods of control for this particular species.
Noxious weed control is never finished. We will have to return next year to see what has come up or been missed and in future years to check for new plants from seed. But Rob and Bill will have put a very big dent in the problem, and their mapping will make it a whole lot easier to check possible re-invasions.
Rob and Bill are not being paid for their internship, but WEAN is providing tools and gas money from the WEAN restoration fund. Project design and oversight, including plant identification is being provided by Steve Erickson of Frosty Hollow Ecological Restoration. This is one collaboration which has been a major win for all parties.
