[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Kill Russian Olives! Elk? Frogs.
- To: Carolinabirds <carolinabirds@acpub.duke.edu>
- Subject: Kill Russian Olives! Elk? Frogs.
- From: Joshua Stuart Rose <jsr6@duke.edu>
- Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 23:00:05 -0400 (EDT)
- In-reply-to: <5.0.2.1.0.20010410231248.00a14860@mail.earthlink.net>
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
Hi Carolinabirders,
Not much new bird-wise; did get some new amphibians last night, as my
folk-singing naturalist friend Tracy Feldman had a cookout at his place.
Heard my first Bullfrog of the year booming from his pond, and found a
Gray Treefrog (didn't call, so no telling which of the two species)
clinging to a brick wall. Have noticed that the Durham Yellow-rumps are
finally singing, not just chipping, and are gaining some breeding
plumage... Frank told me earlier today that he had heard something last
night near South Square Mall in Durham, and described pretty convincingly
the call of a Chuck-Will's Widow!
On Tue, 10 Apr 2001, Russell Lay wrote:
>
> Waxwings continue to descend on our Russian
> Olive's, usually 25-50 in a flock; this has been going on since
> mid-March.
I saw something similar this morning; the Olives were growing along the
route 147 overpass where it crosses Erwin Road in Durham. Sorry to say,
these things should be ripped out of the ground, no matter how much (or
maybe because) the waxwings like them. It's an ecological threat of the
first order. While a handful of bird species feed on the fruits,
virtually none nest in the dense monocultures it forms, and it also wipes
out native plants and the butterflies and other insects that depend on
native plants. Irvin Farm, where I'm leading a Duke Natural History
Society trip this weekend, is being overrun with the stuff; one of the
Triangle Land Conservancy's top priorities for the site is to spend lots
of money eliminating this botanical plague.
For more details about just how nasty Russian Olive (and its cousin
Autumn Olive) really is, and why it should be removed no matter how many
Cedar Waxwings eat it, see the following websites (especially the first
one, which has an animation sequence showing how it spread across
Massachusetts):
http://omega.cc.umb.edu/~conne/jennjim/elangust.html
http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/elan1.htm
http://www.cwma.org/russ_olive.html
http://www.dcr.state.va.us/dnh/fselum.pdf
http://infoweb.magi.com/%7Eehaber/factoliv.html
http://www.mdflora.org/publications/invasives.htm
If you want to attract birds to your yard, use native species, not exotic
weeds like Russian Olive! The Cedar Waxwings have been all over the Duke
campus for weeks attacking the Yaupon Hollies, which are native to the
coastal plain. There are some other native hollies to this area,
like Inkberry and American Holly and Possumhaw (a deciduous species). Will
Cook has some great information on his web site in this vein, and I
recently gave my fiance a big list of native plants for Valentine's Day
which she is using for her own yard now. I'd be very happy to share this
with anyone who promises to destroy all their Olives, Privets, Multiflora
Roses, Japanese and Bush Honeysuckles, English Ivy, Bamboo, Purple
Loosetrife, and other non-native weeds...
On Wed, 11 Apr 2001, Connie Ward wrote:
>
> My girlfriend and I went to Cataloochee Valley (Haywood Co., NC) today
> to see the newly released elk. (snip)
> we saw two herds of 9 elk each.
Okay, this sounds like another bad idea in the making. Elk used to live
in this part of the country, but back then there were also Eastern
Cougars and Red Wolves here too, right? The Red Wolves at Alligator River
won't be expanding to Haywood County anytime soon, and the Cougar is long
since extinct; what's going to control the populations of these elk? The
NC mountains are full of rare plant and amphibian species that could
disappear if big herds of massive ungulates trample their habitats into
bare mud, as generally happens with herbivores that have no carnivores.
The birds won't fare well either; just look at what happens to forest
interior birds anywhere that White-tailed Deer can get at them, and I'm
not sure whether Elk are restricted to "edge" habitats the way White-
tails are. And after that, we either have Elk starving to death, or the
government hiring sharpshooters to keep the population down... anybody
got a few dozen mountain lions they can set loose up there?
Sorry about the rant, but if you spend enough time studying invasive/
exotic species, you get really tired of all the dumb things people and
their governments do, and wonder if they'll ever learn...
Josh
Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)
jsr6@acpub.duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/