Brian Greene discusses the challenges facing Adirondack Park as it loses its natural defenses against invasive species, emphasizing the role of herbicides in future conservation efforts
By Zachary Matson
The Adirondack Park is gradually losing its “former superpowers” that protected it against invasive species, said Brian Greene, who this fall took over as director of the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program.
Once buffered by cold temperatures and remoteness, the Adirondacks are likely to face rising risks from invasive species in the decades to come, Greene said. The use of chemical herbicides and pesticides, like the contentious application of ProcellaCOR in Lake George this summer, will remain an important tool for managers, he added.
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Read more in this interview with Greene about the state of invasives in the park, edited for length and clarity.
Q: What was your journey to the Adirondacks and this position?
I grew up in Maryland and went to college in South Carolina, where I took a class about field botany, and started looking a lot at plants and the role that plants played, and I got really interested in invasive species.
I got my masters at Cornell University, and followed my spouse and conducted water quality monitoring in Utah. We moved to Pennsylvania, and I was doing trails and conservation work in a national heritage corridor. I’ve counted everything from insects to salamanders to frogs to people to trees, and I’ve come to find out that if I’m outdoors and I’m counting things, I’m happy. I like to use that data to help us better manage our natural and aquatic resources.
I feel so incredibly fortunate to get to work in an incredible landscape where people are so cognizant of the environment, and we live in that daily tension with the environment. Here in the Adirondacks we’re this great, grand experiment where nature got to have a seat at the table.
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Q: You were the aquatic specialist for three years: What did you learn about the park and the challenge of invasive species in that time?
It was a great opportunity to work with all of our different communities, lake associations and other nonprofits who are so incredibly passionate about our lakes and streams. What first struck me was the wide array of aquatic resources we have. The different lakes have a lot of similarities, but they’re all unique. We’re talking about going anywhere from trying to manage a small community pond, like Moody Pond here in Saranac Lake to the work that we’re doing with our partners at Lake George — similar types of issues at the core, but vastly different scales and different landscapes.
Q: How do you see APIPP’s role within the broader ecosystem of nonprofit groups, state agencies, local lake associations and local governments? Where do you all fit into that?
It really comes down to what’s in the name: partnerships. We have just under five people on staff, and we have 6.6 million acres in our coverage area. How we can be efficient and effective is by leveraging our knowledge and our resources that the Department of Environmental Conservation provides to empower us and work with all the different nonprofits, local towns, villages, counties, all of the different environmental groups, all of our county soil and water conservation districts to leverage the different strengths that each of us have. We’re trying to be efficient and focus on what’s the highest priority, so we can protect the core of the Adirondacks and keep our resilient and connected lands healthy for the future.
Q: When it comes to invasive species, what is the greatest threat?
The Adirondacks are the least invaded region in New York. We do have invasive species. They will always be here, but they don’t have as many strong negative impacts as you can see in these other parts of the landscape. And that’s because of probably two reasons, our two former superpowers. Unfortunately, we’re losing these superpowers. The number one superpower that we used to have but are rapidly losing is that we should be really cold. Climate change is going to have these impacts and unintended feedback loops in our forests with invasive species. There were so many species that just couldn’t survive in the past. If you talk to anybody who’s lived here for 10, 20, 50 years, they’ll tell you our climate is vastly different. That’s allowing a lot more invasive species to be able to survive and come up here, where in the past it would have been too cold. Climate change is now taking away that superpower.
Photo by Mike Lynch
The other thing: we were really remote. We were far away. Now, anybody can get on the Northway and shoot up here. We’re so connected. I love the boat stewards. We’re collecting this data where we ask people the last place they put their boat in. We get reports from 40 different states and six different Canadian provinces. That just shows you how connected we are now, where people can come all the way from Texas and trailer a boat, and we find hydrilla on it when they’re trying to put in on Lake Champlain. We have these new challenges that we are going to have to work on without having these former superpowers.
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Q: Is there an invasive that’s already here you feel doesn’t get the attention its impact maybe would merit?
We’re biased towards things we can see, big things and flashy things. So there are some of these species that are just kind of out of sight, out of mind, or they’re just smaller, like invasive zooplankton, like spiny water flea, or fish hook water flea. You can barely see them when looking at a lake, but they can have all these different food web impacts and harm fisheries.
On the terrestrial side, these small insects are serious threats. I think it does get good attention here in the Adirondacks, because of how important our forests are. But I think the common person might say, “What’s the impact a beetle can have? What’s the impact a nematode can have?” But these forest pests and pathogens can have really large impacts. In the Adirondacks, I think something like 25% of our forest volume is beech trees and hemlocks, which have some significant forest pests that are going to impact them in the next decade. These are incredibly small creatures that punch well above their weight.
Q: Eurasian watermilfoil is the most pervasive invasive aquatic plant, and it’s been a major focus of management for a long time. Just in the last couple of years with the herbicide ProcellaCOR, there’s been this big rethinking about how best to control the plant. So talk about how you think about the role of this chemical in managing invasive milofil in the next five or 10 years?
We are believers in the science and that shows that the best course of action for dealing with invasive species is what’s called integrated plant management or integrated pest management. That means you are using the right management tool at the right time, at the right place. Sometimes people think the conversation is you either do chemical management or do mechanical management and usually that’s not correct. Usually you need to do different types of management at different times and places. In the Adirondacks, we had a long history of not doing any chemical management of our lakes. But if you step outside of the Adirondacks, if you look across the country, there are many communities and many states that have a long history of using chemical management on lakes. As new tools and new best management strategies come up, it’s up to us working in partnership with the different state agencies to evaluate how effective they are.
There are times and situations where chemical management is sometimes our only option or our best option for trying to control invasive species in the most environmentally sensitive way. ProcellaCOR can work very well, but it’s not a magic potion. It’s not going to eradicate your milfoil, it’s going to make it more manageable for more sustainable techniques and methods. If you are on what we call the high end of the invasion curve, where there’s just so much of it, most times, you don’t have enough resources to pull it out faster than it’s growing. Now with ProcellaCOR, you can lower the amount of Eurasian water milfoil, so that these other tools are sustainable. It’s not like you put this chemical in your lake, you walk away and for the next 10 or 20 years you never think about invasive milfoils again.
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Q: Part of what I think is jarring to people is it feels like a very dramatic shift from not using chemicals to now seeing its use spread quickly.
That’s right. So there were very few examples of chemical management in the past, and now we have some new tools that seem to be effective. One of the reasons why we didn’t do as much was there were more concerns about the impacts that some of these chemicals could have. One of the things about ProcellaCOR is that it is a newer type of herbicide that has very low contact time. Within 24 to 40 hours, we cannot even detect it in the water anymore. We’re talking about using parts per billion, tiny amounts.
We also use terrestrial herbicides, but we are using them very precisely. This idea that people are just going out and being very cavalier with these chemicals is untrue. The professionals that are doing this are doing it to the best of their ability and as required by law. Chemical management will be part of our future, because the challenges of invasive species are increasing. We do not have the luxury of taking tools out of the toolbox.
Q: On hemlock woolly adelgid, creeping into the southern part of the park, what do you expect in the next five to 10 years?
I think hemlock woolly adelgid is a serious pest that we are concerned about, but we do have a lot of hope with it. I do believe that hemlocks are going to be a long term part of our landscape. Some things will change, but we’re working hard every day to make sure that we’re not going to lose our hemlocks.
We have places in the United States, like the southern Appalachians, where it’s moved into an area and within four or eight years killed off all the trees on the whole hillside. We have other places in New York that have had it for 20 years, and we see it on the hemlock trees, but the hemlocks are still there. They’re stressed, but they’re still there. So where are we on that spectrum? I’m hopeful that we’ll be a little bit more on the longer side of that spectrum, so we have more time.
We are working with our partners in the Lake George area, and have formed a Lake George Hemlock Coalition. We don’t have the current resources or the tools currently to be able to treat every single tree, but we don’t need to treat every tree. So what trees do we treat? So we’ve been leading some modeling efforts that have shown what we are calling priority hemlock areas that have the strongest ecological, societal and environmental impact values. So we’ve identified these parcels on public land that will be protected, that we can start doing management on today that will hopefully lessen the impacts.
Q: I’ve got a list of other species to ask about but we can’t go on for days.
It’s a never-ending list. There’s always a new species, there’s always a new challenge. Sometimes our local communities can get invasion fatigue. For me, it’s not so much focusing on the individual species, but thinking about what it is that we can do to reduce the threat. It goes back to messaging these easy things people can do.
I think not enough attention has been paid to septic tank upgrades, and the large about of fill they require (in addition to the number of trees that usually must be cut down). The fill is coming in loaded with invasives, and it is often applied lakeside. I understand the need to clean up the septic situation, but I feel that bringing in invasives is even worse.
For God sakes, drain and clean up Lake Durant, if you haven’t already addressed this major invasive weed problem!
To allow such a weed infested man-made or enhanced lake to fester in it’s stew of invasives is to only entertain and invite trouble within the heart of otherwise pristine waters.