It’s invasive species awareness week in Alaska, and our new neighbors are here to stay

Danielle Butts of Kodiak Soil and Water Conservation District is on the prowl. She’s marching up an unmarked trailhead with a hiking pack, a warning sign about chemicals, and a bottle of bright blue pesticide. She arrives at her target: an approximately one square meter patch of hawkweed.

Orange hawkweed was brought to Kodiak by gardeners. The European plant blooms vibrant orange flowers and usually grows with little prompting. But on Kodiak and in other parts of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, the bright little flower smothers the other species, spreading aggressively and making its own special pesticide to sterilize its neighbors.

“Orange Hawkweed will- if we let this patch here grow and consume the area- it will outcompete the native vegetation, you will lose your favorite native flowers, and pollinators will lose their native plants that they pollinate,” Butts said.

She sprays the invading vegetation with pesticide, dying the area blue. Using the pesticide requires intensive training. It’s a caustic solution, but it’s applied sparingly to a severe problem. The City of Kodiak is inundated with Orange Hawkweed. Now it occasionally breaks out into the surrounding wilds, carried by the boots of hikers or the treads of ATVs.

“I know people within the Kodiak road system feel discouraged because the city of Kodiak and just around populated areas, residential areas, even in the borough- there’s Orange Hawkweed everywhere. But what we’re trying to do right now is focus on these satellite sites that are showing up outside of this main central area,” Butts said.

Concerned citizens warn Kodiak Soil and Water Conservation District when they find patches. With help from the conservation district, Butts can hit several sites a day in fair weather. But there is always more hawkweed. Even on the way back to her truck, Butts finds and sprays another small patch.

Hawkweed isn’t the only invasive species that is causing problems on Kodiak. Just down the road at the Buskin Lake, an invasive population of crayfish gorge their insatiable appetites on salmon eggs. Zebra Mussels ravage waterways all over the country, and down south in Washington State, Japanese Giant Hornets terrorize local honeybee populations and their keepers. Invasive species are now a part of modern life, and they likely will be for generations to come.

While the outlook may seem bleak, Alaska Department of Fish and Game invasive species program manager Tammy Davis says that not all is lost. She compares the problem to Coronavirus.

“There are always pathogens moving through human populations and that can have drastic and dire impacts on humans… cause massive death as we have seen with Coronavirus. And yet we continue to be optimistic that through prevention and response, through medicine, we’re able to sustain human populations. I guess that’s where my optimism is- I want to believe that most people want to do the right thing,” Davis said.

When asked whether it is a matter of inevitability that these species break out of control despite our best efforts, she retains her positive outlook.

“I really want to believe that through sharing that information, we’re able to at least keep invasive species in a position where we may need to be constantly responding to them, but they haven’t totally decimated what we think of as our native environment,” Davis said.

The methods of preventing accidental transplant of invasive species are myriad, but typically they consist of ensuring that boots and recreational boats are cleaned when off the trail or are taken out of the water. Those looking to learn more can find more information on the websites of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the Department of Natural Resources, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and Soil and Water conservation districts. Those groups have resources ranging from guides to identifying and reporting invasive species, to heat maps of invasive species spread, to tactics and tools for you to take the fight straight to the invader.