Plant NOVA Natives Tree Rescue Program

By Margaret Fisher

The unfortunate fact is that people create invasive plant problems. The closer you get to an urban center, the worse they are, and Northern Virginia is a very populous area. The most visible of these problems is the invasive vines blanketing the trees, especially English Ivy and Wintercreeper in residential areas and Porcelain Berry, Oriental Bittersweet, Asian Wisteria, and Japanese Honeysuckle along roadsides and in the parks. The Plant NOVA Trees campaign decided to join the existing efforts to control invasives by quantifying and increasing public awareness of the threat to trees.

Volunteers for the Tree Rescuers project of Plant NOVA Trees do two things. One is to walk or drive around, counting the number of trees that are at serious risk from invasive vines in a given area. In residential areas, they also drop off door hangers (photos left and above) that alert the owners to the problem and show them how to address it. The results have been both alarming and highly encouraging. Hundreds of people stepped forward and together have counted 85,000 trees. Extrapolating that data to all of Northern Virginia results in an estimate of 3 million trees at risk. The encouraging part is that the idea of rescuing trees has really grabbed the attention of the public and our elected officials. New people are helping at existing volunteer events, but more importantly, new initiatives have sprung up to address the problem on a global scale, increasing the outreach to the public exponentially, making improvements to public policy, identifying and addressing barriers, and seeking new funding sources. The problem is massive and extends beyond just the invasive vines, of course, but we have

confidence that if enough people step forward, we can at a minimum stop the tree loss from the vines and get a handle on at least the worst of the other invasive plant infestations.

If you are interested in learning more about these initiatives, you can find some of them here.

• Plant NOVA Trees Tree Rescuers educational program

• Fairfax County Park Authority Tree Rescuers volunteer program

• Fairfax Tree Rescuers PRISM

• Loudoun Invasive Removal Alliance

• Fairfax Invasive Removal Alliance

The Plant NOVA Natives website has an extensive library of attractive campaign materials which can be downloaded for outreach purposes.

Margaret Fisher is one of the coordinators of the Plant NOVA Natives/Plant NOVA Trees campaign and the new Fairfax Tree Rescuers PRISM. She also volunteers on wildlife surveys and as a Virginia Master Naturalist and a Fairfax Invasives Management Area site leader.