FARMINGTON – This month’s Western Maine Audubon Program is titled, Invasive Plants: Pests or Laudable Survivalists? and will be held 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 16 at the Roberts Learning Center at UMF, in classroom C23.
Are invasive plants a menace to local ecosystems or a visible example of local plant evolution at work? Should they be pulled out, root and branch, or allowed to flourish and spread? Bob Bittenbender of Maine Audubon, will discuss this topic at an evening program of the Western Maine Audubon Society.
Under Bob Bittenbender’s leadership Maine Audubon is undertaking a five-year project to eradicate invasive plants from the meadows and forests at the Gilsland Farm sanctuary in Falmouth. Bob says that “lots of Maine insects, birds, and other wildlife have adapted to a pretty specific range of plants. Exotic species don’t provide much nutritional or habitat value for our wildlife, and they also crowd out the plants that our wildlife need.”
He will be showing slides of his work and will lead us through plant identification while talking about why invasives are such a problem.
Bob has been the assistant property manager at Maine Audubon or the past six years. He is a horticulturist who has presented several workshops, including a naturalist forum at Gilsland Farm, to educate people on the identification and removal of invasive species.The event is free and open to the public.
