Project: Eradicate Burma reed

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Project: Eradicate Burma reed

By JEANNE MALMGRE

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 26, 1999 


MIAMI-DADE COUNTY -- Burma reed is "public enemy No. 1 in Miami-Dade
County," says Roger Hammer, a botanist with Natural Areas Management, a
division of the county's park and recreation department. 

The agency was formed in 1991, one year before Hurricane Andrew
devastated South Florida. Natural Areas Management has a tough
assignment: keeping exotic plants out of 6,000 county-owned, undeveloped
acres. That includes pine rocklands, tropical hardwood hammocks, scrubby
flatwoods and wetlands, all infested with exotic species that moved in
quickly after the hurricane destroyed native plants and trees. 

Andrew was a financial boon to Natural Areas Management, in the form of
a $5.4-million grant from the state Department of Environmental
Protection. All that money has been spent, says supervisor Joe Maguire.
The department now is funded by a $4-million grant from the Safe
Neighborhood Park program, but that money will be gone by the end of
2001, Maguire says. Miami-Dade County budgets no money for exotic plant
control by Natural Areas Management. 

And still the Burma reed grows. 

"We have seven field crews," Maguire says. "They work on it year-round." 

Also called cane grass, Burma reed grows tall -- up to 10 feet -- and
has attractive bloom spikes in the spring. Its Latin name is Neyraudia
reynaudiana. It was brought here in the early 1900s from Southeast Asia
by someone who thought it would make a great crop to feed livestock. 

It escaped the boundaries of agricultural plantings and now, says
Maguire, "I don't think anything can stop it. It tolerates drought,
flooding and saltwater. It loves the sand." 

One brutally hot July day, a crew of five is working on some vacant
county land adjacent to Miami Metrozoo. It is a desolate, rocky spot,
pockmarked with ankle-wrenching holes and strewn with scrap metal tossed
there by Hurricane Andrew. 

"We're in maintenance phase here," says resource manager Rusty Clovis,
who oversees the field workers. "This is our second or third follow-up." 

Controlled burns sometimes are used to fight Burma reed, but that is
tricky because the plant burns with high intensity and can spread fire
easily, one of the reasons it is such a threat to native slash pines,
which normally survive wildfires. The plant sprouts quickly after the
fire and has to be zapped with herbicide. 

Generally it is cut with gas-powered brush cutters and carried out in
bundles. Then, when the inevitable sprouts appear, they're sprayed with
herbicide. 

The workers wear green "Metro Parks" uniforms, hard hats, heavy boots
and thick gloves, despite the saunalike heat. They fan out in teams of
two, one person armed with a tank sprayer full of professional-strength
RoundUp herbicide, the other one carrying a large plastic shield. 

"We've been using this a few months," Clovis explains. "It was our own
invention. It's a recycled 15-gallon drum. I cut it with a jigsaw and
remount the handle from the top to the middle of the shield." 

Using the homemade device, workers worry less about windblown chemicals
hitting other, non-target plants. 

"Mira aqui," says one worker in Spanish, pointing out a young sprout of
Burma reed. "Un bebe." (Look here. A baby.) 

His partner slips her shield between it and a clump of native saw
palmettos growing nearby, and he zaps the offending weed with his
sprayer. 

A three-second operation, to be repeated hundreds of times that day. 

"We've developed this into an art," Clovis says with pride. "You come
back here in four days, this stuff will be dead." 
-- 
+================== Burma Group Tuebingen ==================+
| Heiko Schaefer                  | heiko@xxxxxxxxxxxxx     |
| Beim Herbstenhof 42             |                         |
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