Westfield River Watershed Invasive Species

Partnership (WISP)

A partnership to promote cooperative efforts for managing invasive species in the

Westfield River Watershed

Who Are We? WISP is a group of organizations and individuals concerned about the threat of invasive species in the Westfield River Watershed. Because invasive species do not recognize ownership boundaries, it is important that we work together to deal with this threat to our native ecology.

Native Purple Flowering Raspberry Blossoms

Healthy natural areas and habitats have a diversity of species, each of which plays an important role in the lives of our wildlife including birds, butterflies, other insects, and animals. The goal of our partnership is to promote cooperative efforts to manage invasive species through an integrated approach of protecting and/or restoring desired native plant communities at the watershed level through education, early detection, eradication, and management.

What Are We Doing?

Invasive Autumn Olive

Outreach and Education

• Raise awareness of the impact of invasive species among the public, our partners, towns, and others.

• Build knowledge of invasive species identification and control.

Early Detection and Rapid Response

• Create a network of professional and volunteer naturalists to ID early detection species.

• Mobilize partners and volunteers to eradicate new infestations before they spread.

Increase Resiliency of Natural Habitats

• Improve and maintain the health of our natural areas, on both privately and publicly owned land.

• Provide support for key projects that will have a greater impact than the sum of its parts.

• Share the results of management practices, research, and control projects.

What are invasive species?

Invasives are non-native pests, pathogens, and plants that have spread into native or minimally managed habitats in Massachusetts. These species cause economic or environmental harm by establishing self-sustaining populations and becoming dominant and disruptive to our existing natural areas.

Invasive Japanese Knotweed

Why does it matter? Invasives are one of the leading causes of biodiversity loss. They can diminish biodiversity by outcompeting native species, choking waterways, and providing less nutritious food and insufficient cover for wildlife. Besides being harmful to natural communities, invasives are expensive. Invasives cost billions of dollars a year in management and lost revenue to landowners, road crews, farmers, anglers, hunters, loggers and many more.

How Can You Help? Identify the invasives on your property. Develop a strategy for dealing with them. If you can't tackle them all, prioritize. Deal first with the ones which are just starting to appear. Keep at it. Invasives are persistent, so need tackling over several years. Learn how to dispose of pulled invasive plants properly so they don't re-root or go to seed. Don't move firewood. This can spread pests and pathogens to forests. Talk to your neighbors. Invasives don't respect property lines. Clean equipment when leaving an area infested with invasives. Boats, boots, tractors, and other tools could have seeds that would spread the population. Drain water from boats before leaving a water access.

Plant natives. Native species provide important wildlife habitat and support healthy, diverse natural areas.

Invasive Black Swallow-wort

For more information or to be added to the WISP mailing list please contact us at wrwisp@gmail.com or contact the Highland Communities Initiative at (413)-628-4485

Current Participants

Private Individuals

The creation of this brochure partially funded by:

2010

Photos by M. Mansfield The Trustees of Reservations