Simmer together some rock-hard mountain ground and 39 determined volunteers armed with digging tools, clippers, and thick gloves in the heat of a summer Colorado morning; spice it up with some free fresh coffee and donuts, pour it over a natural area -- and you get ... 67 bags of invasive alien, "noxious,"* weeds, improved habitat, and an effective community-building event! That's what the Weed Committee of the Evergreen Naturalists Audubon Society (Denver, CO area) cooked up, in response to the growing threat that alien plants in their area pose to native habitat -- and to the native animals and plants dependent upon it.

Photo Caption: Lynne Price, "Weeder-Victorious," displays her trophy among the alien invaders at Evergreen Lake in Colorado on the first annual "Let's Pull Together" Weed Day. Photo by: Marilyn Rhodes

The chapter's first Community Weed Day this summer, dubbed, "Let's Pull Together," joined community residents, volunteers from non-profits, and governmental agencies in the fight to raise community awareness and to eradicate non-native knapweeds, thistles, and Dalmation Toadflax (aka "butter-and-eggs") from Lair O' the Bear (an open space area in Jefferson County, CO) and Evergreen Lake, both about 30 miles southwest of Denver. Cathy Shelton, Weed Committee chair, outlined the chapter's successful approach to involving the local community. Committee members:

• called as many community groups as they could (Rotary, Scouts, Chamber of Commerce...), asking them if they could:
  1. support the concept of Weed Day;
  2. provide publicity and people for the event (people to pull weeds, as well as people to pass out educational material and refreshments, identify plant species brought from backyards, direct volunteers...);
• contacted state officials; obtained free educational materials;
• got good press coverage on their own, and through their new partners during the month prior to the event;
• solicited grocery stores and nurseries for donations of snacks and weeding supplies (including face masks for allergy sufferers and knapweed-toxin-sensitive volunteers).

Evergreen Audubon notes that part of the challenge continues to be to educate people: learn to decry those acres of Dalmation Toadflax, perhaps attractive-to-some-human-eyes during their once-a-year glory bloom! The toadflax spells disaster for less-conspicuous native wildflowers that bloom at intervals evolved to be supportive of interdependent native fauna and flora. Future goals for this creative committee include an "Adopt-a-plot" program, in which groups or individuals would agree to assume long-term weed eradication for a specific plot of land, and a letter-writing campaign targeting local nurseries, asking them not to distribute or sell seed packets containing non-native species.

For More Info, Contact: Cathy Shelton, POBox 523; Evergreen, CO; 80437; ph: 303/674-8610; FX: 303/674-0919 (call residence first); e-mail: catshelton@uswest.net. Visit Cathy's community's Web site for a list of plants both attractive to wildlife and compatible with conditions at higher elevations: http://heartbeat-of-evergreen.com/audubon/audubon.html. Additional literature on the topic: "Alien Invasion, America's Battle with Non-native Animals and Plants," by Robert Devine, © 1998 (National Geographic).

* Editor's Note: "Noxious weeds" are invasive alien plants brought in without their natural controls; they spread quickly, crowd out native species, disrupt food and water supplies for native wildlife, and generally disturb the often-delicate balances in existing ecosystems. (See related article by Ted Williams in the March/April 1997 issue of AUDUBON magazine, pgs. 24 -- 31: "Killer Weeds".) Williams notes that native perennial grasses on our grasslands, for example, have "thousands of fibrous roots that seal in moisture and hold the earth against wind and rain. But after invasion by taprooted aliens like knapweed and yellow star thistle, there is bare ground everywhere... sediments pour into aquatic habitat...deer, elk, and bighorn sheep... find themselves without winter range...small mammals [which fed] raptors and snakes and bigger mammals, vanish...".