Last week the Weed Warriors were on the job.

On July 10, helpful residents, Wildsight representatives and Paul Goodkey, Noxious Weed Inspector for the CSRD, were out along the Kicking Horse River banks helping to remove invasive plant species like the Orange Hockweed and spotted and diffuse Knapweed that grow there.

The community weed pull is a grass-roots effort spearheaded by Rachel Darvill, who heads Wildsight’s Columbia Headwaters program. She explained that invasive plants are the second-biggest threat to biodiversity. Darvill said that though invasive plants are spreading in Golden, there are non-toxic, effective ways to slow them down and protect our local biodiversity.

“Some of these invasive plants are very attractive plants so people don’t pull them out. But because there are no natural predators to keep these species at bay, they out-compete our native plants for space. They can completely take over an area, pushing out our native plants, birds and animals.”

Goodkey, who was at the first weed pull last year, said that with last year’s pull and the work done on July 10, he anticipated that most of the Knapweed would be removed from the river bank, but the Knapweed seed can lie dormant in the soil for 20 years so there is the possibility that the plant will return in some places.

Goodkey said that he expects to see diminished numbers of this invasive weed over the next decade. That is partly from the hand-pulling of the weed and also due to bio-agents that are and have been introduced to the Golden area.

There are four bio-control agents, he explained, three are flies and one is a beetle, “They directly target weeds that we are trying to control,” said Goodkey, adding, “They attack the seed heads of the plant, destroying about 99 per cent of the seeds.

Bio-agent insects have been studied extensively in Europe and Asia where plants like the Knapweed come from. The plan is to collect more of the insects in August and release them into the Golden Area.”

Darvill said that it is really important for people to educate themselves to recognize invasive plants look like in order to be able to eradicate them from their yards. Contact Nancy Bellward, summer intern at the town, for more information on these pesky plants.

For more information on Wildsight’s efforts, contact Rachel Darvill at 250.344.4961, or email her at Rachel@wildsight.ca.