Invasive Exotics Management and Control: Partnerships Equal Success

Be Plantwise: A national partnership to prevent the spread of invasive species across the urban/wildland interface

Damon Waitt

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 - 9:00-9:30

Be PlantWise is a public outreach partnership between the National Park Service, The Garden Club of America, The National Invasive Species Council and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Exotic plants currently infest approximately 2.6 million acres in the National Park System and in November 2005 invasive species experts from across the country gathered at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to address this issue. From this meeting a standardized set of best management practices for non-native invasive plants called the PlantWise guidelines was developed to educate the public and communities about controlling invasive plants at the urban/wildland interface. Since its inception, the partnership has distributed over 16,000 PlantWise brochures and posters to a wide variety of stakeholders including city, state, and federal agencies, EPPCs, IPCs, NGOs, school groups, parks and nature preserves. The Be Plantwise website (www.beplantwise.org) features the PlantWise Guidelines and an interactive Invasive to Native Translator to help the public find native alternatives for common invasive plants.

Keywords: PLANTWISE, PARTNERSHIP, PUBLIC OUTREACH