Plants and Partners: multi-faceted approaches to controlling buckthorn invasions

Common buckthorn is a wide-spread and persistent invader throughout eastern North America, including the greenbelt region of Ontario. Conventional approaches to buckthorn removal often yield only short-term benefits and affected areas can easily become dominated by buckthorn within a few years. In this webinar, Mike Schuster will share findings from the Cover It Up! project at the University of Minnesota that illustrate how re-establishing native grasses, wildflowers, and trees can help prevent continued invasion of forest understories. He will also describe how this approach can be combined with multiple other strategies and highlight the role of community partners in effective buckthorn management. This is a special webinar with support from the Greenbelt Foundation.