Abstract
While public funding of invasive species management has increased substantially in the past decade, there have been few cross-institutional assessments of management programs. We assessed management of Phragmites australis, a problematic invader of coastal habitats, through a cross-institutional economic survey of 285 land managers from US public and private conservation organizations. We found that from 2005 to 2009, these organizations spent >$4.6 million per year on P. australis management, and that 94 % used herbicide to treat a total area of ∼80,000 ha. Despite these high expenditures, few organizations accomplished their management objectives. There was no relationship between resources invested in management and management success, and those organizations that endorsed a particular objective were no more likely to achieve it. Our results question the efficacy of current P. australis management strategies and call for future monitoring of biological management outcomes.
References
Acharya, C. 2009. Forest invasive plant management: understanding and explaining management effects. Masters thesis. Ithaca: Cornell University.
Agresti, A. 1984. Analysis of ordinal categorical data. Hoboken: Wiley.
Angradi, T.R., S.M. Hagan, and K.W. Able. 2001. Vegetation type and the intertidal macroinvertebrate fauna of a brackish marsh: Phragmites vs. Spartina. Wetlands 21: 75–92.
Blossey, B. 1999. Before, during and after: The need for long-term monitoring in invasive plant species management. Biological Invasions 1: 301–311.
Burnham, K.P., and D.R. Anderson. 2002. Model selection and multimodel inference: A practical information-theoretic approach. New York: Springer.
Cohen, J., J. Maerz, and B. Blossey. 2012. Traits, not origin, explain impacts of plants on larval amphibians. Ecological Applications 22: 218–228.
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). 2010. Invasive alien species. http://www.cbd.int/invasive/ (accessed 10 November 2010).
D'Antonio, C.M., N.E. Jackson, C.C. Horvitz, and R. Hedberg. 2004. Invasive plants in wildland ecosystems: Merging the study of invasion processes with management needs. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2: 513–521.
Denslow, J.S., and C.M. D'Antonio. 2005. After biocontrol: Assessing indirect effects of insect releases. Biological Control 35: 307–318.
Dillman, D.A. 2007. Mail and internet surveys: The tailored design, second edition—2007 update. Hoboken: Wiley.
Fell, P.E., S.P. Weissbach, D.A. Jones, M.A. Fallon, J.A. Zeppieri, E.K. Faison, K.A. Lennon, K.J. Newberry, and L.K. Reddington. 1998. Does invasion of oligohaline tidal marshes by reed grass, Phragmites australis (Cav) Trin ex Steud, affect the availability of prey resources for the mummichog, Fundulus heteroclitus L? Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 222: 59–77.
Global Invasive Species Program (GISP). 2010. http://www.icsu-scope.org/projects/complete/gisp.htm (accessed 8 November 2010).
Gratton, C., and R.F. Denno. 2005. Restoration of arthropod assemblages in a Spartina salt marsh following removal of the invasive plant Phragmites australis. Restoration Ecology 13: 358–372.
Hayes, T.B., A. Collins, M. Lee, M. Mendoza, N. Noriega, A.A. Stuart, and A. Vonk. 2002. Hermaphroditic, demasculinized frogs after exposure to the herbicide atrazine at low ecologically relevant doses. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 99: 5476–5480.
Hershner, C., and K.J. Havens. 2008. Managing invasive aquatic plants in a changing system: Strategic consideration of ecosystem services. Conservation Biology 22: 544–550.
Hobbs, R.J., and S.E. Humphries. 1995. An integrated approach to the ecology and management of plant invasions. Conservation Biology 9: 761–770.
MacDougall, A.S., and R. Turkington. 2005. Are invasive species the drivers or passengers of change in degraded ecosystems? Ecology 86: 42–55.
Maerz, J., J. Cohen, and B. Blossey. 2010. Does detritus quality predict the effect of native and non-native plants on the performance of larval amphibians? Freshwater Biology 55: 1694–1704.
Marks, M., B. Lapin, and J. Randall. 1994. Phragmites australis (P. communis)—Threats, management, and monitoring. Natural Areas Journal 14: 285–294.
Martin, L.J., and B. Blossey. 2009. A framework for ecosystem services valuation. Conservation Biology 23: 494–496.
Matarczyk, J.A., A.J. Willis, J.A. Vranjic, and J.E. Ash. 2002. Herbicides, weeds and endangered species: Management of bitou bush (Chrysanthemoides monilifera ssp rotundata) with glyphosate and impacts on the endangered shrub, Pimelea spicata. Biological Conservation 108: 133–141.
Mooney, H., and R. Hobbs. 2000. Invasive species in a changing world. Washington, D.C.: Island.
Mozdzer, T.J., and J.C. Zieman. 2010. Ecophysiological differences between genetic lineages facilitate the invasion of non-native Phragmites australis in North American Atlantic coast wetlands. Journal of Ecology 98: 451–458.
Myers, J.H., D. Simberloff, A.M. Kuris, and J.R. Carey. 2000. Eradication revisited: Dealing with exotic species. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 15: 316–320.
Orson, R.A. 1999. A paleoecological assessment of Phragmites australis in New England tidal marshes: Changes in plant community structure during the last few millennia. Biological Invasions 1: 149–158.
Panetta, F.D., and R. Lawes. 2005. Evaluation of weed eradication programs: The delimitation of extent. Diversity and Distributions 11: 435–442.
Park, M.G., and B. Blossey. 2008. Importance of plant traits and herbivory for invasiveness of Phragmites australis (Poaceae). American Journal of Botany 95: 1557–1568.
Pullin, A.S., and T.M. Knight. 2005. Assessing conservation management's evidence base: A survey of management-plan compilers in the United Kingdom and Australia. Conservation Biology 19: 1989–1996.
Reid, A.M., L. Morin, P.O. Downey, K. French, and J.G. Virtue. 2009. Does invasive plant management aid the restoration of natural ecosystems? Biological Conservation 142: 2342–2349.
Rinella, M.J., B.D. Maxwell, P.K. Fay, T. Weaver, and R.L. Sheley. 2009. Control effort exacerbates invasive-species problem. Ecological Applications 19: 155–162.
Robertson, T.L., and J.S. Weis. 2005. A comparison of epifaunal communities associated with the stems of salt marsh grasses Phragmites australis and Spartina alterniflora. Wetlands 25: 1–7.
Saltonstall, K. 2002. Cryptic invasion by a non-native genotype of the common reed, Phragmites australis, into North America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 99: 2445–2449.
Saltonstall, K., P.M. Peterson, and R.J. Soreng. 2004. Recognition of Phragmites australis subsp. americanus (Poaceae: Arundinoideae) in North America: Evidence from morphological and genetic analyses. Sida Contributions to Botany 21: 683–692.
Tewksbury, L., R. Casagrande, B. Blossey, P. Hafliger, and M. Schwarzlander. 2002. Potential for biological control of Phragmites australis in North America. Biological Control 23: 191–212.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), US Department of Labor. 2010. Occupational outlook handbook, 2010–11 Edition, Conservation scientists and foresters. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos048.htm (accessed 11 January 2010).
US Department of Agriculture (USDA). 2010. Plants database: Phragmites australis. http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=PHAU7 (accessed 2 January 2010).
US Government Accountability Office. 2005. Invasive species: Cooperation and coordination are important for effective management of invasive weeds. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05185.pdf (accessed 10 February 2010).
US National Invasive Species Council (NISC). 2006. Fiscal year 2006 interagency invasive species performance-based crosscut budget. http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/docs/council/FY06budget.pdf (accessed 1 October 2009).
US Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). 1993. Harmful non-indigenous species in the United States, OTA-F-565. Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office.
Warren, R.S., P.E. Fell, J.L. Grimsby, E.L. Buck, G.C. Rilling, and R.A. Fertik. 2001. Rates, patterns, and impacts of Phragmites australis expansion and effects of experimental Phragmites control on vegetation, macroinvertebrates, and fish within tidelands of the lower Connecticut River. Estuaries 24: 90–107.
Williams, S.L., and E.D. Grosholz. 2008. The invasive species challenge in estuarine and coastal environments: Marrying management and science. Estuaries and Coasts 31: 3–20.
Acknowledgements
We thank Nuria Marba and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback and all focus group and survey participants, as well as Greg Poe, Eric Nelson, and Holly Menninger. L.J.M. was supported by the NSF GRFP; additional funding was provided by the NY Department of Transportation. This project was approved by the Cornell Institutional Review Board for Human Participants Protocol No. 0905000421.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Martin, L.J., Blossey, B. The Runaway Weed: Costs and Failures of Phragmites australis Management in the USA. Estuaries and Coasts 36, 626–632 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-013-9593-4
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-013-9593-4