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The
60,000-acre Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the
Texas Coast is probably best known as the winter home of the
only last natural migrating population of whooping cranes in North
America. Here you can also find pelicans, herons, egrets,
ducks, geese, and varied songbirds, in the brackish waters
and salt marshes alive with fishes, blue crabs, and clams.
On land, the javelinas, bobcats and deer will wander the oak
woodlands.
Unfortunately,
on water and on land you will also find a number of other
organisms that do not belong at Aransas, species like Chinese
tallow tree, water hyacinths, creeping fig, and salt cedar.
The Chinese tallow trees, native to Asia, are spread by bird;
they quickly grow into groves, resilient to treatments. Water
hyacinths, native to South America, can choke water-flow on
parts of the refuge. Creeping fig, another Asian plant, climb
up trees, leaving them fighting for sunlight. Salt cedars,
a Eurasian plant originally brought to the refuge for erosion
control, have become a hardy and resilient pest.
A
team of staff and volunteers approach the eradication campaign
with their handheld GPS units, prioritizing the refuge’s
efforts to monitor, and, ultimately, control the plants’
spread. The mapping process is crucial in seeing if treatments
(usually herbicides, painted on or injected into trees or
sprayed by airplane) are effective over multiple years.
Click
on any photo for a larger view.
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