Invasive Species Removal and Monitoring with the NCC

• Kip Fleming
• Evansville Alvar

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Kipp Fleming

​In August of 2022 Manitoulin Streams and the local staff of the NCC completed a working partnership that involved the removal of invasive White Sweet Clover and the search for invasive Spongy Moth on an ecologically rare Bur Oak Savanna habitat. In total 8 bags of white sweet clover was hand pulled from across 2 acres. The team found empty egg sacs on Bur Oak throughout the property, indicating that the invasive Spongy Moth's had already bred and hatched.

Evansville Alvar

The team also explored the Evansville Alvar property in search of invasive species as well as species at risk. While on the property we explored an American Beech grove where Megan from the NCC taught the group how to identify Beech Bark Disease. Manitoulin's Beech trees are being impacted by the combination of an invasive beech scale insect and a native canker fungus. The insect creates cracks in the bark which allow the fungus to take hold in the tree, eventually leading to the tree's death.