Gallery: Cutting Cattail at Alpena Wildlife Sanctuary

Huron Pines AmeriCorps members and staff were among 25 volunteers working in chest-deep water to remove invasive cattail from Alpena Wildlife Sanctuary on Friday, June 25.

They joined community volunteers, wetland restoration crew from Loyola University, and board members for the sanctuary and Thunder Bay River Center in clearing narrow-leaf cattail from the kayak launch and a swath of the sanctuary. By doing so, they also dealt a blow to European frog-bit, another invasive that hides among the cattails. The mountain of cattails that were cut and removed that day was enough to fill 21 city dump trucks.

Loyola University conducts experimental removals like these to measure their impact on invasive frog-bit.

“We’ve done this treatment elsewhere, both with our mechanical harvester and weed whackers, and it is effective,” said Drew Monks, Research Associate at Loyola University.

Here are photos from that day.


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