A group of local volunteers is waging a battle to remove an invasive plant species that poses a major threat to Delta's environmentally sensitive foreshore.
Volunteers from the Rotary Club of Ladner continue to comb mudflats and the foreshore to eradicate a noxious weed called Spartina. Most of the work to pull over 4,500 of the plants was done by hand, not an easy task since
Spartina forms thick mats with deep reproductive roots.
After receiving some supplies from Delta, volunteers recently got out to dig up more of the plants.
"Unfortunately, the bloom in Spartina this year was unparalleled from past years. We went from a roughly 2,000 plants count to 9,600 in one year," said Rotary Club of Ladner member Don Burkett, a participant in the B.C. Spartina Working Group.
Spartina is a salt-tolerant cordgrass invasive to the Pacific Northwest. If left unchecked, the fast-growing plant, which has the ability to clone, can impact B.C.'s coast in a variety of ways. It can significantly decrease habitat for shorebirds, waterfowl, fish and shellfish, as well as disrupt the ecology, structure and function of intertidal habitats.
Left uncontrolled, the invasive grasses will likely spread in distribution and density across tens of thousands of hectares, according to the B.C. Ministry of Environment.
There are several types of Spartina, and one type, Spartina anglica, commonly known as English cordgrass, was discovered during an intertidal marsh survey of Roberts Bank in 2003.
Following that discovery, several agencies, including Ducks Unlimited and Port Metro Vancouver, got together to form a committee to monitor and remove the plants.
Neither herbicides nor pesticides have been used in this province yet to fight the plant. Burkett said most of the removal the work so far has been done by hand, although an excavator has been used on occasion.
"The vast majority of the outbreak (Spatina anglica) is in Delta, and the Roberts Bank side by the ferry slip is heavily infested and Boundary Bay all around to Mud Bay is heavily infested," Burkett said.
The plant can be introduced by several means, including currents, but trying to figure out how it arrived isn't as important now as getting a handle on the situation before it spreads, Burkett said.
"It's a noxious plant, which means it's one of the highest threats of an invasive species. It's been playing out its game in most of the world where it's arrived and it basically crept up here from California. The devastation
in California is overwhelming."
The larger plants can be extremely difficult to remove by hand, prompting the need for heavy equipment.
In a presentation to Delta council Monday, Dan Buffet, a biologist and project manager with Ducks Unlimited, noted they had made significant progress by 2005 and 2006, but in the last couple of years the plant has made a vigorous comeback due to limited funding preventing the working group from hiring excavators.
Following the model used in Washington state, where removal of the plants was approached through the use of herbicides, as well as manual removal, Buffet said the working group is now recommending the use of a herbicide to help kill the Spartina here.
Council voted in favour of a recommendation to support an application to the federal government.
Coun. Bruce McDonald said the invasive plant is an extremely serious issue that can't be dealt with by mechanical means alone. He said unless stronger action is taken, the growth would be exponential and devastating to the foreshore ecosystem.
