Vancouver's Stanley Park battling invasive blackberry bushes to preserve native species
Staff and volunteers planting 630 trees and shrubs in places where invasive blackberry has been removed
Blackberries may taste good in a pie, but the invasive plant is jamming up parts of Vancouver's Stanley Park and out-competing the native plants for sunshine and nutrients.
In fact, the invasive Himalayan blackberry is so vigorous that if left alone it would quickly overgrow and eliminate all other shrubs in the Lost Lagoon area in a few short years, according to Andy Ferguson, stewardship coordinator with the Stanley Park Ecology Society.
That's why staff and volunteers continue to wage war against the thorny invader, with plans to plant 630 trees and shrubs around Lost Lagoon and Ceperley Meadow on Saturday to support native species — even those with feathers.
"[Invasive blackberry] is bad for birds," said Ferguson. "Birds need food all through the summer [but] the blackberry only berries pretty late in nesting season, whereas thimbleberry, salmonberry and snowberry, they berry at different times, so the birds have a more consistent food supply."
Watch | Ecologists tackle the blackberry problem
Himalayan blackberry can grow five metres tall with canes 12 metres long that send out roots where they touch the ground, according to the Invasive Species Council of B.C.
Efforts to beat back the blackberry and re-establish bush diversity around Lost Lagoon have been successful in recent years, although with new plants popping up every year, the battle never ends.
A squad of community volunteers known as DIRT (dedicated invasive removal team) are trained to identify and tackle the list of invasive species growing in the park.
Ferguson said many of the unwanted plants like English ivy probably escaped from someone's garden. The lilies choking up Beaver Lake, however, were planted there in the 1930s.
"Today if you go to Beaver Lake you can hardly see the water — it's all lilies. We quite often get asked where the lake is when people are standing right next to it," he said.