Despite woeful budgets, hundreds of staff vacancies, and the repeated weakening of many environmental safeguards, the work of the National Wildlife Refuge System goes on!
The Kudzu Team by Joe McCauley
On a recent September day, I joined Refuge System staff and one other volunteer, who happens to be my son, to combat kudzu at the Rappahannock River Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia. Kudzu is a highly invasive plant that if left unchecked will smother anything and everything in its path, and quickly. Over the past three years, the Refuge has employed the full arsenal of control methods to combat this species. These include mowing, hand cutting, herbicide application, prescribed burning, and, wait for it, goats! Turns out that goats love kudzu. This should come as no surprise since one of the early promotions for this introduced plant was as cattle fodder. It was also promoted by the Federal government to control erosion. If only we knew then what we know now about the potentially harmful effects of introducing non-native species. But what’s done is done, and Refuge staff continue to face the challenge head on, taking all the help they can get from volunteers and interns.
The spread of invasive species is but one of the challenges facing the Refuge System today and into the future. This is no time to shrink from our responsibilities to protect our planet and our life-sustaining natural resources.
The National Wildlife Refuge System is up for it, the National Wildlife Refuge Association is up for it, are you up for it?
Written by the Refuge Association’s own Joe McCauley, Regional Representative, Northeast Region
Photo: Kudzu at the Hutchinson Unit of Rappahannock River Valley National Wildlife Refuge by Joe McCauley