Project: Eradicate Burma reed

By JEANNE MALMGREN

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 26, 1999

Burma reed, sometimes called "Public Enemy No. 1'' in Miami, is an Asian import that has naturalized and become a pest. [Photo: Laura Kleinhenz]

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY -- Burma reed is "public enemy No. 1 in Miami-Dade County," says Roger Hammer, a botanist with Natural Areas Management, a division of the county's park and recreation department.

The agency was formed in 1991, one year before Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida. Natural Areas Management has a tough assignment: keeping exotic plants out of 6,000 county-owned, undeveloped acres. That includes pine rocklands, tropical hardwood hammocks, scrubby flatwoods and wetlands, all infested with exotic species that moved in quickly after the hurricane destroyed native plants and trees.

Andrew was a financial boon to Natural Areas Management, in the form of a $5.4-million grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection. All that money has been spent, says supervisor Joe Maguire. The department now is funded by a $4-million grant from the Safe Neighborhood Park program, but that money will be gone by the end of 2001, Maguire says. Miami-Dade County budgets no money for exotic plant control by Natural Areas Management.

And still the Burma reed grows.

"We have seven field crews," Maguire says. "They work on it year-round."

Also called cane grass, Burma reed grows tall -- up to 10 feet -- and has attractive bloom spikes in the spring. Its Latin name is Neyraudia reynaudiana. It was brought here in the early 1900s from Southeast Asia by someone who thought it would make a great crop to feed livestock.

It escaped the boundaries of agricultural plantings and now, says Maguire, "I don't think anything can stop it. It tolerates drought, flooding and saltwater. It loves the sand."

One brutally hot July day, a crew of five is working on some vacant county land adjacent to Miami Metrozoo. It is a desolate, rocky spot, pockmarked with ankle-wrenching holes and strewn with scrap metal tossed there by Hurricane Andrew.

Mission: Kill the creeps Florida is crawling with non-indigenous pest plants -- one step behind Hawaii. Most of us are blissfully unaware of the invasion, and how much it costs to combat it. Project: Eradicate Old world climbing fern Jim Goodwin lets the swamp buggy roll to a stop on a steamy September morning and turns off the engine. He looks around at the tea-brown water beneath and the green walls rising on all sides. Project: Biocontrol research Gary Buckingham's job is to be careful. Say goodbye to these 11 plants The Florida Nurserymen and Growers Association has asked nursery owners to stop selling these plant species.

"We're in maintenance phase here," says resource manager Rusty Clovis, who oversees the field workers. "This is our second or third follow-up."

Controlled burns sometimes are used to fight Burma reed, but that is tricky because the plant burns with high intensity and can spread fire easily, one of the reasons it is such a threat to native slash pines, which normally survive wildfires. The plant sprouts quickly after the fire and has to be zapped with herbicide.

Generally it is cut with gas-powered brush cutters and carried out in bundles. Then, when the inevitable sprouts appear, they're sprayed with herbicide.

The workers wear green "Metro Parks" uniforms, hard hats, heavy boots and thick gloves, despite the saunalike heat. They fan out in teams of two, one person armed with a tank sprayer full of professional-strength RoundUp herbicide, the other one carrying a large plastic shield.

"We've been using this a few months," Clovis explains. "It was our own invention. It's a recycled 15-gallon drum. I cut it with a jigsaw and remount the handle from the top to the middle of the shield."

Using the homemade device, workers worry less about windblown chemicals hitting other, non-target plants.

"Mira aqui," says one worker in Spanish, pointing out a young sprout of Burma reed. "Un bebe." (Look here. A baby.)

His partner slips her shield between it and a clump of native saw palmettos growing nearby, and he zaps the offending weed with his sprayer.

A three-second operation, to be repeated hundreds of times that day.

"We've developed this into an art," Clovis says with pride. "You come back here in four days, this stuff will be dead."

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