Nonnative Plant Management Plan for Guilford Courthouse National Military Park Greensboro, North Carolina

O'Driscoll, Matthew; Shear, Ted

Nonnative plant invasions have wide-ranging impacts that compromise natural resource management goals. Controlling invasive nonnative plants on National Park System lands has, consequently, become a high priority. The National Park Service (NPS; U.S. Department of the Interior) is committed to protecting the natural and cultural resources within its parks and is “required by law to keep … parks as unaltered by human activities as possible (NPS, 1996).” The proliferation of invasive nonnative plants [which, by definition, have been introduced deliberately or accidently by humans (NPS, 1996)] has been linked to alterations in ecosystem processes, losses in native biodiversity, and environmental degradation. While the effects of invasive nonnative species have long been recognized by the Park Service, the agency has only recently (i.e., within the past 15 years) begun to elaborate an integrated, comprehensive management strategy to deal with the issue. The overall strategy is based on the concepts of integrated pest management and adaptive governance and considers a number of tenets including, but not limited to, prevention, inventorying, prioritization, treatment, outreach, and monitoring. This approach may represent the Park Service‟s most viable option for controlling invasive nonnative plants and keeping parks “as unaltered … as possible.” The management history of the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park (GUCO) mirrors the evolving approach to nonnative plant management within the Park Service. Nonnative plants have been seen as a distraction to historic interpretation and a threat to conservation goals at the park since the early 1930‟s, when the Park Service began operations at the site. Early control efforts focused on removing nonnative plants and planting native species. The ad hoc nature of these efforts, stemming from a lack of baseline information on nonnative plants in the park, and the failure to address the issue at the larger landscape level, resulted in only limited gains in terms of controlling or eliminating invasives. More recently, the Southeast Nonnative Plant Management Team (SE-EPMT; Fraley et al., 2007) has used integrated pest management principles and a more systematic treatment approach to reduce populations of nonnative plants within the park. While these efforts have been moderately successful in controlling certain problem species (e.g., wisteria), the SE-EPMT and park managers recognize that several basic components are still missing and must be addressed in order to achieve long-term management goals. The following report provides some of the basic information, analyses, and recommendations that have been missing or incomplete in nonnative plant control efforts at GUCO. The SE-EPMT and the resource management staff at GUCO coordinated this project with the Ecological Restoration Program in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University (NCSU). In the summer of 2007, we conducted a census of nonnative forest plants at the park, identifying and mapping species throughout the park. Based on this information, we prioritized nonnative species for control and made recommendations for preventive strategies, including education/outreach initiatives. Treatment and monitoring recommendations are made throughout and are presented by individual species in the final section. We hope that this plan will better inform management decisions, increasing the efficacy of control efforts at GUCO.

Nonnative Plant Management Plan for Guilford Courthouse National Military Park Greensboro, North Carolina

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