CINCINNATI — A huge effort is underway in our area parks to clear honeysuckle plants.
Why? It's an invasive species and it's literally choking our forests and putting our forests at risk for the next generation.
I hiked with a small group from Great Parks of Hamilton County at Kroger Hills on Cincinnati's east side to see the process behind honeysuckle removal.
"It ends up shading out all the other plants that should be coming up. So all your other shrub layer plants, all your spring wild flowers that should be growing are getting completely shaded out. The other problem is which is what were here working on, is it will shade out trees from being able to naturally regenerate," said John Walker with Great Parks.
I was expecting this to be an effort along existing trails but this is more of an fight that doesn't start with the edges of our forests but instead the core.
"If we were to just push from the road, it would take us years to get into some of these spots that are high value," said Walker.
Their small group found an opening to the forest, cut a basic trail and made the hike deep into the woods. From there the volunteers and employees of parks department went to work.
First they cut the honeysuckle plant close to the base. They then remove the limb and put it aside into small piles. Then another volunteer comes in and sprays the stump with an herbicide designed to kill honeysuckle.
"Ultimately everything we'll end up spraying dies, I'd say is 90-95 percent of them don't come back but the problem is we have so much of a seed bank here that we will have to come back and do follow up maintenance on this area," noted Walker.
Last year, Great Parks employees and volunteers cleared 49 acres of honeysuckle.
The crews that are out working on these projects are designed to be small, so it limits the amount of footsteps in the forest. We were stepping around new oak and maple saplings all morning. But more volunteers are welcome!
For more information on volunteer opportunities head to THIS WEBSITE.
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