by Steven Blaisdell, Balanced Ecological Systems
In 2024, I was tasked with the removal of invasive trees and shrubs on an eleven-acre National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) contracted site in central Vermont, dealing primarily with common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), invasive honeysuckle (Lonicera x bella), and the occasional multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora). As the landowner had ruled out herbicide use, this meant mechanical clearing of eleven acres of infestation varying from very large and extremely dense to small and occasional stem incidence. In particular, one two-acre section of the contracted work area, which had been working agricultural land until the 1970’s, was an almost impassable understory jungle of thousands of three to ten foot tall buckthorn whips and saplings, propagated over the years by two dozen very large, forty to fifty year old seed bearing stems and made all the more interesting by tree deadfall throughout. And that’s just for breakfast.
As is often the case with these badly infested landscapes, and certainly a familiar story here in Vermont, most of the parcel I was hired to work on had been under cultivation until the late 1960’s or early 1970’s. There were some attempts afterwards at active management with white and red pine plantations, and some portions of the former ag land have succeeded to hardwoods (maple, basswood, aspen, and oak). However, buckthorn, honeysuckle, and other non-natives established with prejudice on the abandoned and marginal areas and migrated throughout the parcel, even into the deep shade of older growth mature pines, resulting in sometimes monocultural density of some of the largest invasive stems I’ve seen (including the single largest buckthorn I’ve ever seen, a hollow cored monster measuring 22-24″ basal diameter and 40′ height). Apparently, and unsurprisingly, prior to my recruitment no one wanted to take this job, or more precisely the only responses the owners got were “bring in the (big) machines” and “spray, baby, spray.”
To be clear, people use herbicide for invasive removal because it works—it’s inexpensive, easy to apply, and effective at scale; and there are some infestations that are so well established, densely grown, and cover such a large area that herbicide and/or machines are the only realistic option. What I believe happens, however, is that the realm of what’s possible becomes (understandably) delimited by the methods you’ve invested time, money, and energy in, and in return have become defined by. It doesn’t help that every state and federal agency, decades of documented work in the field, and the vast majority of current practitioners essentially view herbicide as not just the go-to answer for any and all problems invasive, but as the only viable answer. Outside of community efforts for relatively small projects organized by groups of volunteers, in which sheer numbers are substituted for herbicide toxicity and/or machine power, the reflexive answer for any terrestrial invasive plant infestation is just that—herbicide, and/or (big) machines. These are the de facto limits of the discourse, limits that however understandable are unfortunate at best and distorting at worst, as there are effective low and no herbicide solutions that work at scale and in real time, or to be precise, can succeed within the parameters of an NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) contract. As those who’ve dealt with the EQIP program are aware, these are fairly demanding parameters.
Another limiting factor in terms of broadening and diversifying the discourse of invasive management is a rather pedestrian, and mundane, but obvious one—that mechanical removal can be, and usually is, hard work, harder than most anyone currently advertising as an applicator or professional wants or is willing to deal with. Which, again, is understandable, but again limiting when we’re discussing what’s possible in terms of having the flexibility and tools to respond to the demands of widely varying conditions, both human and non-human. A corollary to this is how the actual mechanics of mechanical removal are perceived, where the mechanical toolbox contains heavy and unwieldy items like weed wrenches, which while highly effective for certain applications, do not facilitate fast and efficient work across landscapes. So there you have it—mechanical removal is hard, and the tools are a pain to use. Ergo, mechanical removal is neither practical nor possible at scale and in real time. As I’m going to outline, this is just not the case.
So, what do I mean when I say that it’s possible to clear landscapes of invasives at scale, and in real time, without resorting to either blanket herbicide spraying or machine clearing? What does that actually look like? What magic potions have I distilled from herbs, bark, and berries that make the impossible possible? First, it’s necessary to recognize that while there are general and even specific similarities from situation to situation, every landscape or parcel is different, with unique demands and conditions, and every landscape or parcel has different stakeholders with unique objectives, values, and resources. One size does not and cannot fit all, whether it’s herbicides or machines or mechanical removal. As per the overlapping principles of Integrated Pest Management and Adaptive Management (both of which I personally file under the heading of “common sense”), the best tools and strategies are always those that most effectively respond to the demands of both the human and non-human landscapes, at any given point in time. So what does that mean, you ask. Let’s start with time. For the project I described above, the work area was flagged in May 2024, marking also the beginning of the contract period; work done prior to this is not eligible for reimbursement. As the contract covered work done until the end of the year, this gave the landowners eight months to meet the removal metrics set by NRCS (although extensions were offered if needed). Because the owners’ objectives were, and are, only to restore the landscape to ecological health and functioning, not build condos or sell the property, this means time is not a tightly limited resource. This in turn means that mechanical removal, which is much more time intensive than using herbicide or machines, becomes a viable option. The question then becomes, how do you clear an eleven acre section of a forested parcel that’s 1/3 heavy, 1/3 moderate, and 1/3 light infestation of tree and shrub invasives within the time parameters of the contract?
Piles of buckthorn pulled from the landscape
The answer to this, of course, depends also on the human and terrestrial landscapes, in this case how the values of the owners intersect with land conditions. Because the owners have specified no herbicide use, this means, for instance, that brush cutting those thousands of buckthorn whips and saplings to the ground and then spot spraying the resprouts was (and is) not an option. This leaves two possibilities for mechanical removal—pulling by the roots, or brush cutting and then cutting back the resprouts repeatedly to induce mortality. I estimated that the one and done of pulling would not be measurably more time intensive than returning to brush cut the resprouts two, three, or possibly four times over the next two growing seasons, and that the net disturbance would not only be no worse, but that breaking up the compacted clay soil would be beneficial for moisture infiltration and native reestablishment. In terms of financial resources, as per NRCS protocol any follow-up management outside of the contract period would not be eligible for reimbursement. This means out of pocket expense plus the time and labor expense of having to revisit that section repeatedly over the next two growing seasons, which although a possibility was not guaranteed. So first by values and conditions, and then weighting of options, pulling it is, and was, and here’s where the right tool makes the work possible: a 2 ½ lb. pickaxe with a (nearly unbreakable) hickory handle. Yep, in this world of ‘smart’ everything, of GPS and GIS and satellite mapping to the square meter, what made this job doable was a relatively lightweight, easy to carry and manage, yet nearly indestructible tool of the 18th century. With this, sweat, muscle power, and practice, anyone so inclined can pop stems up to 2”—or sometimes more—out of the ground with remarkable speed and efficiency. (I’ve pulled honeysuckle root crowns that even I wasn’t sure I could get.) But the name of the game is efficiency—instead of trying to clear everything all at once in any given area, I started by targeting the tallest, most vigorous stems throughout, then the next biggest, then next, maximizing effort for the greatest return in terms of biomass removal. Hard work? You bet. But there are two acres of formerly impassable buckthorn jungle that are now >95% permanently cleared (barring seed expression and incursion), where freed of invasive pressure the maples, basswood, ash, shagbark, and dogwood will seed and regenerate, and where the fern, jumpseed, sedge, and cohosh will rapidly expand and cover. This is not hypothetical; I’ve witnessed repeatedly the remarkable speed with which native species, especially the herbaceous species, fill in areas that have been fully cleared of dense invasive growth. Clearly the seeds, rhizomes, and growth energy are there, waiting for the opportunity to express. They just need the space to grow.
The satisfaction of seeing a landscape transform before your eyes in real time, from almost impassably dense, early succession non-native growth promising a near future, climax invasive monoculture, to a permanent change of developing Northeastern natural community forest, is hard to convey. The work described above took approximately 150 contractor hours to complete, including chainsaw removal and breakdown of about two dozen mature, occasionally very large buckthorn and honeysuckle stems, and building compact brush piles for the invasive biomass. I also brush cut to the ground (literally…) all seedlings and small whips under 36”, as in my experience these root systems are too small to regenerate or are weakened to the point of debility. As this area was only two acres of the eleven acre work section, there was much more work involved in successfully meeting both the time and removal requirements set by the NRCS contract, but as an example of what’s possible this would appear to be a fairly clear demonstration of a highly effective approach that works at scale and in real time; and that within certain limitations transforming landscapes from invasive choked to 95% permanently cleared, without the use of herbicides, is possible with hard work, effective strategies, and the right tools and methods. To be clear, if the contracted work section were eleven acres populated entirely with the above or similar density of invasive growth, the expense of manual removal would likely be beyond the financial means, budget, or willingness to spend of most landowners. It’s also necessary to know and consider what the reimbursement rates are for different modes of removal if you’re thinking of enrolling in the EQIP program. On the other hand, if the landowner’s values allowed the option of low dose herbicide applications such as cut stump treatment and spot foliar spraying, the time, effort, and cost of multiple followup manual cuttings of stump sprouts become unnecessary; in this case a multi-year management plan was and is required in order to prevent the cycle of infestation from beginning anew. In the end, however, the final product on the full contracted work section, using the above and other no-herbicide strategies, was >90% permanent removal/mortality of all invasive stems and effectively 100% removal of aboveground invasive biomass, at an average cost of approximately $1,300/acre. Compared to $1,000/acre for straight herbicide, or $4,000/acre for machine removal, this is very cost competitive; and given the considerable detrimental effects of both herbicide and heavy machinery on the landscape, a well planned, flexible, and thoughtfully executed protocol of low-dose or herbicide free manual invasive removal, that’s sensitive and responsive to the needs of both human and terrestrial landscapes, appears to be not just possible but in some cases a preferable path for land restoration.
Forest cleared of buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica)
It’s also occurred to me that the bias against manual invasive work, chemical free or otherwise, has had another effect, a rather important one: a vacuum of the inevitable improvements in skillset, efficiencies, and knowledge base resulting from practice, practice, practice. Any practitioner of any profession makes hundreds of decisions throughout the day, each based on experience and judgment, leading always (hopefully) to improved performance. Week to week, month to month you weigh options, especially difficult ones, in real time; you form and test hypotheses, make mistakes and see successes; you test and adapt and adopt, keeping always your proximate and ultimate objectives and outcomes in mind, and in this case it’s no different. As a result of this intersection of theory and practice, what seemed (and seems) to many to be impossible, or at least highly unlikely, becomes not just possible but reliably so. But what I view as perhaps the most encouraging outcome of my journey is the knowledge that anyone in reasonably good health can do what I do, maybe not to the same degree of intensity but certainly enough to make a real difference on any given landscape. As a good friend of mine used to say, love is work; and as I like to say, love your land. This is what transformative land stewardship looks like: thoughtfulness, practice, persistence, and the willingness to do the work of loving your land.
Steven Blaisdell owns and operates a small invasive management and land restoration company (Balanced Ecological Systems) based in Burlington, Vermont. He’s certified in Ecological Restoration from the University of Minnesota, is licensed in Vermont as a category 2 (forest) pesticide applicator, has completed training in wetland ecology and delineation, and likes to run around the woods with his long haired miniature dachshund. He also welcomes any and all inquiries, questions, or suggestions pertaining to the management of terrestrial invasive plants and integrative and assisted succession land restoration.
