Indiana Invasive Species Awareness Week - Day 3

Making Connections - Kosciusko Water and Woodland Invasive Partnership

with Dugan Julian, SICIM Northeast Regional Specialist

Nature is all about connections. Thriving, healthy ecosystems only exist when things are connecting properly, like a functioning computer or an engine – everything there has a job to do and needs to work with everything around it to function. So, what happens when something that doesn’t belong there, something with no relationships or connections, gets added to a computer or an engine? Things break. A computer with dust and dirt getting into the motherboard starts having glitches, and an engine with water in it overheats and breaks down. It is the same with invasive species. These plants don’t belong here and can disrupt the processes of everything around them.

A functioning native ecosystem has thousands, millions of connections and relationships that have developed over time. Everything from the microbes in the soil to the red-tailed hawk have specific connections to everything around them. Each thing is reliant on countless others to have the resources necessary to carry out its function. When invasive plants start staking claim to areas, they can cause a myriad of problems. Since these plants don’t have formed relationships with the microbes, insects, birds, or other animals, they provide little or no resources to the community. Some invasive plants are openly hostile (using allelopathy – chemical warfare – to alter soil chemistry and soil microbe populations that prevent other plants from growing.) Others are more subtle, but no less destructive, as they rob native plants of sunlight, water, soil nutrients, and space by growing quickly, densely, and very aggressively. All of these activities disrupt or outright sever the connections of the native community.

When we look around and see how big the issue of invasive species has become, it is easy to get discouraged. How can anyone even make a dent in the huge amounts of disruptions these plants have caused nationwide? Luckily, the answer is simple: Connections. Partnerships and collaborations enhance every aspect of invasive species management. Shared expertise, tools, financial resources, and volunteers can create a synergistic machine that functions at a higher capacity than any one part could ever do on its own. Many times, the connections and relationships are obvious: like a county park system working with a forester to enhance the health of a forest. Others are less obvious, but no less important, like Kosciusko Water and Woodland Invasive Partnership (KWWIP), the CISMA in Kosciusko County, joining forces with Kosciusko County Velo – KCV, a local Cycling Club, to make their mountain bike trails safer and more beautiful by adding the removal of invasive plants along intersections and trails to their management plan – and then partnering with a local tool manufacturer (Seymour-Midwest) to help supply loppers for the organization. Only one of those groups is focused on invasive species removal, but they created lasting connections that benefit all three organizations, centered on invasive species management.

KWWIP and KCV Safety and Education brief from Winona Lake Trails Weed Wrangle event held on March 20th, 2021.

Healthy communities rely on connections. Invasive species cannot fill the role of native species in our communities, in fact they disrupt and destroy those pivotal connections. We can and we must restore those connections by forming connections of our own! We must meet the aggressive force of invasive species with aggressive collaboration, with aggressive partnerships, with aggressive creativity in how we pull resources together. We can do this, we can restore the connections that make our area great, together.

***To see what KWWIP is doing and how they’re forging new connections in their community, follow them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/KWWIP

Stay tuned throughout the week to see more highlights of CISMAs or other partners and their efforts for improved land management. Be sure to visit the Indiana Invasives Initiative linktree to read more and find events in your area.