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Parks & Environmental Services
Invasive plant removal programs
Volunteers participate in an invasive plant cleanup at the historic Woolsey Homestead in Fayetteville, Ark. (Photo provided by Fayetteville, Ark.)
By STACI REAFSNYDER | The Municipal
Cities across the country are incorporating invasive vegetation removal programs in hopes of promoting healthy plant growth. The removed plants are usually nonnative and grow quickly, disrupting plant ecosystems and causing harm to the environment or human health. In 2019, Fayetteville, Ark., created a bounty on invasive plants as a part of its Urban Forestry Program. Residents of Fayetteville receive a free tree or shrub to plant when they successfully remove a specific type of invasive plant from their property. “The invasive program started as the Bradford Pear Bounty; now, it is simply the Invasive Bounty,” Fayetteville’s urban forester John Scott stated. “Our goal is to add all 18 plants to our invasive list. We started with Bradford Pear, then Bush Honeysuckle, Chinese privet, and this last spring Tree of Heaven was added to the list. I want to spotlight a different invasive plant each year.” Scott noted the program has always been an educational tool, but he knows they could never be completely eradicated. The board has raised awareness of invasive plants in the area and chose native trees and shrubs to give away, as opposed to nonnative ones. 50 THE MUNICIPAL | AUGUST 2022
“The Urban Forestry Advisory Board came up with the idea, and I took it and came up with the details on how to make it work. We got the idea from the Burmese python bounty reward in Florida, and instead of money, we thought of replacement plants as the reward,” Scott said. To promote invasive plant removal, there is also a group of advanced placement high school students who conduct experiments for science projects. “They have been assigned a plot in an invasive part of the school’s grounds and are monitoring growth after removal. It has become part of the curriculum for the science class,” Scott said. According to Scott, the first year saw around 20 participants. The program grew, and in 2021, there were approximately 45 participants
