Winter Creeper, English Ivy, Japanese Honeysuckle, Chinese Wisteria — these are just some of the invasive vines that slowly make their way up the trees of Long Island’s forests, threatening them inch by inch.
The North Shore Land Alliance, a nonprofit land trust, has invited the public to visittheir 12 preservesacross Oyster Bay to remove the invasive vines from sunup to sundown every day of the week. Preserves can be found in Oyster Bay Cove, Upper Brookville and Mill Neck, among others.
The goal, Carter Rogan, conservation associate and geographic information systems manager, said, is to free 250 trees of vines before July 4, the 250th anniversary of the country.
Since 2003, the land alliance has protected thousands of acres of land through education and volunteer work, fostering a connection between Long Islanders and the nature that surrounds them.
It takes approximately a decade for an invasive vine to make its way up a tree, attacking it in small, compounding ways, Rogan said, but it takes just ten minutes to free a tree from the invasive vines. If unaddressed, the vines can lead to rot on the exterior portions of the tree under the vines, and can trap moisture, pests and fungi on the tree.
“If you have 10 plus years of vine growth that you just stopped in its tracks, it’s going to take another 10 years to get to that point,” Rogan said. “Mitigating it … is the best and most time-efficient way to do it.”
The invasive vine species are not native to Long Island, Rogan said, and many are now found after escaping gardens and backyards where they were planted as ornamental vines. Most of the species that the North Shore Land Alliance is freeing trees from are still sold commercially.
The vines not only cause tree bark to rot, but can eventually cause a tree’s demise. Rogan said that between the added weight of the vines, their disruption of water flow and the disruption of a tree’s structure, the invasive species can cause a tree to become more likely to fall over.
“[The vines] act like a sail, and that combined with the extra weight makes the trees way more susceptible to falling over in a rainstorm or in heavy wind,” Rogan said. “Combined with any other stressors the tree may be facing can ultimately lead to its death.”
Rogan said the public is welcome to free any trees covered in vines within the preserves, and said the mitigation process involves cutting the vines close to the ground and then again about two or three feet up from the ground and removing the cut section.
Source: LI Press
