Sudbury Valley TrusteesConservation, Collaboration, and Community since 1953

In July, Sudbury Valley Trustees and our partners released thousands of purple-loosestrife-eating beetles to six wetlands in our watershed:  French’s Meadow in Concord, Lincoln conservation land, Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Sudbury, Hop Brook marshes at SVT’s Memorial Forest in Sudbury, and Jericho Hill in Marlborough.  Many volunteers assisted throughout the project – from digging up loosestrife rootballs to raising loosestrife and beetles, to releasing beetles and conducting monitoring.  Partners involved in the project include the Town of Lincoln, US Fish & Wildlife Service Eastern Refuge complex, Concord Land Conservation Trust, Fay School, and Marlborough High School.

Beetle ranchers, those who raised the beetles, included Marlborough High School teacher, Linda Ryan and students from her environmental science classes and A.J. Purcell and students from his science classes at Fay School in Southborough.  Other high school students were involved in different aspects of the project as well.  Ms. Ryan reports that, “The students learned a lot about invasive species and how they gain a foothold and choke out native species.  They took responsibility for caring for the plants and the beetles.  This hands-on learning made these lessons stick.  In addition, four of the students taught a lesson on invasive species and biocontrol (with an emphasis on purple loosestrife and Galerucella beetles) to an 8th grade class.”  Mr. Purcell comments that his students “were very fascinated with seeing and learning about biological controls, and did some research on how this project and other biological control projects which have been undertaken in the past, with both positive and negative results.”

Purple loosestrife is the pretty, purple flower that you can view in abundance along the Sudbury River and in other wet meadows.  It is an aggressively invasive plant, originally from Europe and Asia.  In the United States, there are no native "predator" species that control purple loosestrife populations.  As a result, this invasive plant spreads rapidly in wetlands and causes significant impairments, including reduced native plant coverage, lower plant diversity, and degraded wildlife habitat.

Biocontrol agents are natural competitors imported from the invasive species’ native landscape to a location where the invasive is growing out of control.  For purple loosestrife, select species of beetles from Europe (where purple loosestrife is native) were studied to demonstrate their effectiveness as biocontrol agents.  These beetles (Galerucella sp.) have been used successfully in the United States since the early 1990s to control purple loosestrife infestations.  Treatments have occurred in all the New England states, including Massachusetts, where beetles were first released at Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.  Results in our watershed have been very positive, and there have been no negative impacts on our native flora and insects.

SVT and our partners will be monitoring these sites annually to evaluate success of the program.  Similar projects in our region have shown positive results in three to five years, significantly reducing the vigor and abundance of purple loosestrife. 

This project was funded in part by the National Park Service’s River Stewardship Council via the SuAsCo Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area (CISMA).  Non-native, invasive species of plants are changing the watershed of the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord Rivers, altering habitats and disrupting ecological processes.  The impacts of invasives do not stop at property boundaries, and all efforts to control them need to take this into account.   SVT is part of a new coalition called the SuAsCo Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area (CISMA), which is addressing issues of both invasive plants and animals.  Our partners in this endeavor include the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Mass Audubon, the National Park Service, New England Wildflower Society and several municipalities and local land trusts.  This collaboration provides for a regional approach to invasive species management, across ownership and organizational boundaries.  Collectively we are sharing resources and expertise and are prioritizing species and sites requiring management.