Invasive plants are damaging California's wildlands

Invasive, alien, weeds -- these pesky plants have various nicknames, but the reality is that native habitat, especially in the wild promotes a more stable ecosystem -- which promotes air, water and land system health.


The California Invasive Plant Council says, "Across California, invasive plants are damaging wildlands. Invasive plants displace native plants and wildlife, increase wildfire and flood danger, consume valuable water, degrade recreational opportunities, and destroy productive range and timber lands."

How do invasive plants do all this? Basically, by growing so fast that they disrupt the balanced system of plants and animals that developed over thousands of years.

What can we do about it? Several things:
- Don't buy or sell invasive species
- Remove invasive species from your spaces before they escape into the wild by wind, birds or other sneaky modes of transport
- Request your garden center to NOT carry invasives, or to at least label them as non-natives, or "very aggressive".
- Request that your garden center carry native plants and to label them as such.
- Take responsiblity for your landscape and learn which native plants will enhance your enjoyment of native habitat and the wildlife that is nourished by this system.

Everything is harder when we have millions of people living in a natural system! I know -- if there were only a few folks here and there, it would be a different story so we have to adapt, right?

Check
the California Invasive Plant Council for the 2006 Invasive Plant Inventory database.