Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast

Save Your Chickens! Identifying Invasive Species with Dugan Julian

• Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams • Season 2 • Episode 3

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On this episode of The Lake Doctor Podcast, we’re joined by Dugan Julian, Northeast Regional Specialist for Indiana at the Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area (CISMA) and a former student of Dr. Nate Bosch (The Lake Doctor). Dugan shares how his circumstances and time with the marines eventually led him into a career combating invasive plant species across Northern Indiana. From lake shores to neighborhood landscaping, we explore the real-world impact of invasive plants on Indiana's ecosystems—and how we can help to stop their spread.

You’ll also learn how to tell the difference between look-alike plants like Queen Anne’s lace and the dangerous poison hemlock. Dugan shares how foraging and eating certain invasive plants—like garlic mustard—can be a fun and practical way to protect the environment. Whether you’re a homeowner, a hiker, or a weekend lake goer, this episode is packed with insights on how you can play a role in native biodiversity.

Visit lakes.grace.edu to learn more about the research mentioned in this episode and discover how you can support healthy lakes and streams in your community.

Learn more about the Lilly Center's work at https://lakes.grace.edu/.

Have a question we could answer on the podcast? Send an email to lakes@grace.edu or submit a comment below.

Help us improve the podcast by filling out this short survey: https://forms.gle/MzGSXHcnkEQC8T74A.


Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining us on our new set of the Lake Doctor podcast. I'm Suzy Light and my co-host, Dr Nate Bosch, is a professional lake nerd.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so I got my PhD from the University of Michigan in limnology, freshwater science. In today's episode we're excited to have one of my former students, dugan Julian. I'm going to read his title because it's the longest I think I've seen Julian. I'm going to read his title because it's the longest I think I've seen. He's the Northeast Regional Specialist for Indiana at the Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area.

Speaker 1:

You might want to listen closely about why having two first names might impact college admission. We are so excited about today's episode. The doctor is in Dugan. Thanks so much for joining us today. You know I've known you probably since you were in charge of the Lake Festival at the Lilly Center, but tell us about you and make sure our listeners know all about the good stuff you're doing right now.

Speaker 3:

Sure. So, yeah, we've known each other quite a while. I was a student here with the Lilly Center and came in and worked with the Lilly Center as a student worker when it was Nate, amy and Anna and only them, yeah, the early days and since then I've I've had kind of a really weird whirlwind of work opportunities and I'm currently, for the last four, almost five years, been working with the state of Indiana Cooperative Invasives Management, which is a nonprofit that statewide educates people on invasive specifically invasive plant species.

Speaker 1:

For those of you who are listening, dugan's wearing an eye patch and not a pirate hat. No, okay, tell us about your eye patch.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so, um, on top of being, uh, the invasive species person for all of Northeast and currently Northwest Indiana, um, I have a lot of other hobbies and side jobs and things that I'm really passionate about. I do pro wrestling, I do a Dungeons and Dragons podcast, and, but my favorite thing that I do is I'm a student ministries director, I'm the youth pastor for my church. Um, I absolutely love middle and high school ages because they understand sarcasm and they're, they're, they're coming of age, they, they kind of still speak their mind. They're not quite fully like, uh, cognizant of all the social etiquettes and everything, so they're, they're a little more unfiltered, but but they're, they're, they're desperate to like, learn it Like they really are, especially in a a less structured formal environment. That's kind of how I run the youth group.

Speaker 3:

But so we had an all nighter because I got pneumonia when our church district was supposed to have their all nighter and I wanted to make it up to them. So we ran an all-nighter and we did laser tag and we did some ridiculous youth group games and stuff and everyone was having a really good time. It was time for the Nerf War. We hadn't done a Nerf War in like three years because the cleanup is just annoying. There's thousands of Nerf darts and we use our whole church, the sanctuary and everything is on limits. Everywhere is open. So cleanup takes like an hour and a half.

Speaker 3:

You know we do two hours of nerf war and it's how many kids were here we had 18 okay um, so not a crazy amount, but but a good amount of a good amount of kids with a good amount of nerf and um. We're about six minutes in and one of the students had a modified nerf blaster and um, it was shooting just a little faster than the stock model. He's about six feet away and shot a dart and it went right into my eye.

Speaker 1:

A little faster than you could duck.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, about 120, 125 feet per second from six feet away it doesn't give a lot of reaction time. So took the blood, took the dart right to the eye. I watched it go in and I was just like, oh okay, well, I'm done. And we'd been doing Nerf wars for like 15 years and no one's ever gotten shot in the eye. Not once gotten shot in the eye, not once. And then I got shot in the eye.

Speaker 1:

So better me than a student. Next, your safety glasses.

Speaker 3:

I already purchased 24 airsoft rated safety glasses, so Nerf isn't going to do anything to them. They're fashionable. They stick really well to the head. They don't fog up. They're great. They're already in my office.

Speaker 1:

We learn from mistakes.

Speaker 3:

And luckily all these students get to learn from my mistake without having to learn it themselves. Yeah, and luckily it's not a permanent, no, it's temporary. My pupil's just the size of a dime right now and that's not an exaggeration, it's really that big right now, and so all these lights would be very horrible.

Speaker 1:

Well, we're glad that recovery is on your future.

Speaker 3:

Me too.

Speaker 1:

So you grew up in the Silver Lake area.

Speaker 3:

Correct.

Speaker 1:

And then tell us about your journey to get to Grace College.

Speaker 3:

So I had always wanted, I always knew I was going to go to college. I was debating between being a teacher and a lawyer and I was like well, the Marine Corps will pay for that, so I'll be a reservist, I'll do the. It's called a 92 day reservist. You go to boot camp during the summer, go to college for a year, do more training next summer, college for the year, and you kind of do that until you're out. And then you're a lawyer. And I was like cool, I can be like a JAG officer. I'm really good with arguing with people. I could be a JAG officer. So I was all set to do that whole program. Um, but you have to get accepted to college. And I was like all right, cool.

Speaker 3:

So I I had like an, an, a average. Warsaw used a 12 point GPA and I had like an 11.2. Tons of extra curriculars. I did rugby, I was in spelling B, drama club, one acts, that kind of stuff. I was. I was all over the place.

Speaker 3:

I was doing a bunch of stuff and I applied to this tiny liberal arts college in Wisconsin. It's not tiny, but it was a small liberal arts college, a Christian liberal arts college in Wisconsin, and you know, I'd taken the ACTs, did really well, um like exceedingly well, blew the requirements for this place out of the water. I was an ideal candidate and I had had a falling out with my mom. I was, you know, 18 and thought I knew everything. I did not, um, so I thought I knew everything, had a disagreement with my mom, I moved out and so I got a general delivery box set up at the post office and that's where all of my mail was supposed to go, but with a name like Dugan Julian, as has been the case with my entire life. Somebody at the post office most took my first name for my last name. So every time I came in and they were like, what's the last name? And I gave them Julian, they'd come back with yeah, there's no mail. So apparently somebody else had a general delivery box and they got very little mail.

Speaker 3:

And about two months before I graduated I had not gotten a college acceptance letter. All my friends are getting into their schools, either their first choice or safety, whatever it was, and I hadn't gotten a college acceptance letter and some of them were applying to places like IWU, clemson, like they were getting in. I was like I have a much more impressive resume than you do. How is this happening to me? So I talked to the Marine Corps recruiter is like hey, I didn't get into college, I need to go active duty. And he was like, ok, cool.

Speaker 3:

And about two weeks after that I made up with my mom. We went into the post office and it happened to be one of her friends from a church. We went to back in like ninety three and she was like there's a box for Julian, but it's not for Dugan, let me go check something. And she went back and she came back a few minutes later with a small stack of papers and she was like, yeah, so they had your box set up as last name being Dugan and first name being Julian.

Speaker 2:

And I was like okay.

Speaker 3:

So what happened to all the mail? She was like well, after 30 days of not being collected, it gets returned to sender. So like, how do I get that back? She's like, oh, you can't. Like that's gone now. And I didn't have a cell phone. I didn't have a phone at the time because I wasn't living with my mom or anything, so I had no other form of communication other than snail mail and so I just didn't get in. I might have gotten in, I'll never know. But so I called the recruiter and he was like yeah, we'll have you in boot camp three days after graduation and that's what happened?

Speaker 1:

Wow, wow.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

You know, one of the school that you were going to is a Christian school. You know, sometimes God has a path for us that we don't know about. So you were accepted into the Marine Corps, yep, and went to boot camp. How did you end up coming to Grace College then?

Speaker 3:

So I went to boot camp, did all the combat training, I became an admin specialist and when I got to my first unit I became a legal clerk and then eventually the legal chief. I was the main guy doing basically dealing with all the Marines who were getting themselves in trouble. So we deployed to Iraq, um and, and we were in Ramadi. As we're driving through the city, I'm looking around and I'm like hold on, isn't this like? Like I can see the Euphrates river? And I'm looking around and I was like this is all sand and why can I count the ribs on that cow? Like I'm I'm from silver lake, like I had friends raising cows. Cows are big animals. You shouldn't be able to count their ribs. And I like this cow's the size of somebody's large dog, like what is?

Speaker 3:

going on here and it started like working in my head, like, didn't, didn't I learn in ancient world history? This was supposed to be like the fertile crescent. So you know, I had some downtime, uh, and I'm sitting here on a computer and I was like, why is Iraq a desert? And I started learning about desertification. I was like, oh, that happened in the Fertile Crescent. What if this happened in America? Oh, ok, that opened up a can of worms. And then that led to, like you know, land usage practices, conservation, like people countering and and trying to do regenerative agriculture and things like that. And after that it became like this background, passion of like well, there's, there's a calling in the bible to be stewards of the land and like clearly yeah, we are missing the mark in a lot of places.

Speaker 3:

So it became this background thing and I kept telling people. When I was getting ready to get out of the Marine Corps for a medical separation cause, I crushed my back working out um, use a spotter people Um, but um, as I'm, I'm getting ready out. They want to know what your plans are for afterwards.

Speaker 1:

It's like I want to.

Speaker 3:

I want to do like regenerative agriculture. I want to have like a goat farm and do um permaculture and rotational grazing and all this other stuff and I'm like that's really weird, why would you do that? And you know. So. When it was time to get out and start using the GI Bill because, man, I earned it, like let's use it I started looking at colleges that took the GI Bill and what what their environmental fields looked like, and there were a few that were OK.

Speaker 3:

But I also wanted to be kind of close to home. All my family and all of my wife's family because she's from Warsaw, we're high school sweethearts. They all lived in Kosciuszko County, with the exception of a few relatives in like Oklahoma. So we want to get back there. We like the area we love. We we love being close to family. So I started looking around. In Grace while being a private school, they couldn't accept the GI bill because it's for state schools. They did what's called the yellow ribbon program where they would lower their tuition cost for a veteran or GI bill recipient because you can give it to your kids, to whatever the state's GI bill would allow for, because it's by state, and then that would be what the tuition was, so you could go to school for free, as well as getting the living stipend and the book stipend and all this other really cool stuff. So I was able to be a full-time student while still providing for.

Speaker 3:

At the time I had two kids and my wife um and we were able to be a full-time student and do everything there. So, grace, grace got the nod because they had a really good. They had a good from all the reviews environmental, uh, program. Um, and I wanted to. I also started looking at being a teacher so I was like, oh, they have an environmental science teaching degree.

Speaker 1:

Like cool, like life science education, let's, let's go. And so I came to Grace for free, because they had the yellow ribbon, they had a good science program and they were in Winona Lake.

Speaker 2:

I was like man it's hitting all my wickets.

Speaker 1:

This is. This is ideal. Thank you, lord for providing Dugan was here. He's obviously a man of many talents thinking teacher, thinking legally but he came to the Lilly Center and you put him to work coordinating something.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so as a student, dugan was involved in a lot of different things here as an intern at the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams, and then, when it became time for him to graduate, and as we were working on some different projects, we thought this would be a really good fit, which is our Northern Indiana Lakes Festival, and it did go well, and so that at the time, was the largest festival that our community does, and Dugan spent the majority of his time in his position at the Lilly Center after he graduated in organizing that big festival, and so we had lots of different activities as part of the festival, lots of education, sort of like a big party thrown every summer for all of our lakes.

Speaker 1:

A big free party event for attendees, but it took a lot of work on your part, like I'm guessing nine months of planning.

Speaker 3:

Pretty much me as the event coordinator and the whole staff, because the staff is involved pretty much from jump. We took maybe a month to kind of catch our breath and focus on getting some lake samples, stuff done through through June and July. And then it was immediately like, ok, start, time to start contacting sponsors, time to start locking on events and everything. And then that process goes through into the fall and winter. People's fiscal years are ending and everything they're ready to start committing. And then January, february hits and the Lilly Center starts filling with boxes of stuff and phone calls from every vendor imaginable, from education to food vendors, to caterers for the meals and everything, and everybody starts going all in, usually around March or April, like everyone has a regular job, and then every spare second is spent on handling lakes festival stuff. It was. It was pretty massive.

Speaker 1:

So the the lessons that you learned doing that have been translatable, I imagine, to the weed wrangling that you're doing and the other kinds of things addressing invasive species. We have samples of them here. What lessons did you learn that have really solidified with your work? Now?

Speaker 3:

Oh, taking care of volunteers is absolutely the biggest one. You're volunteer without volunteers. If you're doing a nonprofit of any shape or size or trying to do a collaborative effort type thing, you have to take care of your volunteers. Without them, you're nothing. You will accomplish nothing.

Speaker 3:

And taking care of the volunteers means asking their opinion on stuff, having we did after action reports. We would have a Google form put together by our communications specialist, abby, and it was. It was that we had one for volunteers, we had one for vendors, we had one for vendors, we had one for, uh, ed staff. Like, and it was, it was really helpful because it gave us insights. Like, yeah, this was fun, but this part was really hard because of this, uh, and so we'd be like, all right, cool, next year we're going to take care of that.

Speaker 3:

Like we wanted the volunteers to feel like they were participating and contributing in a very meaningful way, but also to be comfortable, because it got hot a few years. A few years, heat index was over a hundred and it's like, oh yeah, watch this bouncy house on the asphalt, let's, let's get them a shade tent and make sure they're hydrated and fed and they're on shifts and stuff like that. So taking care of the volunteers was a huge one, and and learning how to engage them and listen to them after the engagement's done. Listen to their feedback so that you can make sure that they come back.

Speaker 1:

So tell us about your work with invasive species.

Speaker 3:

So, after finishing this really cool owl spotting retreat at Koinonia on February 29th of 2020, it was my last day with the Lilly Center. I had put in my resignation to pursue becoming a conservation officer February 29th of 2020.

Speaker 1:

Uh-huh and about 18 days later.

Speaker 3:

Uh-huh, three days before I was to do the physical testing and everything at Warsaw High School which was the last thing needed before they write me in and send me to the training camp officer training camp the whole country locked down and the whole world locked down for about two years, two weeks after I quit my job. So my wife and I were blessed with a really good tax return. We'd been saving money up from the Lilly Center and I had had a small side hustle doing life coaching, so physical fitness, nutrition, stuff like that. That also got shut down too, because it's like a gym facility personal trainer thing. But so we had. We had about six months of savings saved up and we prayed really diligently and we both heard, separately and together, god telling us just wait. I was like, just wait, I was looking for anything. Um, there was no passion. It was like I need to put food on the table for my kids. Um, we had three kids at the time and we're like, ah, but just wait, and six months, it was just wait.

Speaker 3:

And then, um Caitlin, who had recently left the Lilly center and went to the watershed foundation. She had been working while at the lily center and the watershed foundation, with a lady named erica who was with sicum, then the southern indiana cooperative invasives management, to form what's called a sisma, a cooperative. I know it's a lot of abbreviations and the word cooperative is it's a kill word at this point, but it's a cooperative. I know it's a lot of abbreviations and the word cooperative is it's a kill word at this point. Um, but it's a cooperative invasive species management area. So typically it's a County, but it doesn't have to be that big. We have one that operates just in Wabash park over in Wells County, um, so it can be really small, it can be really big. We have one called you in. That's three counties.

Speaker 3:

But um, caitlin had been working with Erica and the Watershed Foundation, the Lilly Center, some of the other clean water partners, some volunteers, soil Water Conservation District to form this CISMA and Erica and her husband both had gotten job offers to work for like Bureau of Land Management or something like that up in Montana, like a dream job in the Rockies, and I'm like, oh, so her job's open, what's it entail? And she was like, yeah, you form these SISMAs, you do landowner surveys, you go to people's property and find what invasives they have and tell them how to get rid of them and how to make it more of a natural ecosystem. I'm like Caitlin and I were talking about that eight months prior in my last two months here at the Lilly center about about. Wouldn't it be cool if we could just somehow figure out how to get paid to tell, to help people make their land more of a natural ecosystem, the way it was designed to be, with healthier soils and no runoff and these really great plants? I'm like yeah how would?

Speaker 3:

that even work, though he's like I don't know I'd have to be like a nonprofit or something. Little did we know it actually already existed, um, and so she told me to apply. I applied for the Northwest 00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00. But we'd like to create a Northeast regional position for you. You've already worked with some of the people we've identified as core conservation partners in the Northeast, like Heartland Restoration. The Lilly Center was actually on their list because nobody else is doing what the Lilly Center does with that amount of detail and you know how a nonprofit works and you know how to engage volunteers. It was literally my time with the lakes festival as the event coordinator. That was the big solidification because they knew I knew how to work with partners and bring in interesting partners who people probably wouldn't think to bring in um and engage volunteers. And they're like that's really what we want. We want these schismas to get built, and so they were. They were like yeah you're not about.

Speaker 3:

You don't have a botanist background. I had an environmental studies background, so I wasn't unfamiliar with plants, but I didn't have invasive species as a lock-in during college. That all came on the job, and very quickly, but it was my engagement with volunteers and nonprofits that really wanted them to bring me on almost five years ago now.

Speaker 1:

So those partnerships that Dugan was talking about are things that exist here at the Lilly Center, and when I think about your students and the paths that they've taken, what are things? Why are those partnerships important and how is helping students connect into those pathways important?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so one of our three pillars at the Lilly Center, we have research, education, then collaboration, and collaboration is so important to us because we don't need to know how to do everything and we wouldn't even do everything if we knew how to do it the best that some other organizations might not do it better than other organizations.

Speaker 2:

And so we increase efficiency and effectiveness when we work together in areas of strength with different organizations, so we can all help steward our local environment better when we're working together in our areas of strength, and so we're really excited about doing that.

Speaker 2:

And so that's natural, then, for our students to network and get involved in a lot of these different things as well. So this past year, for example, we had 46 college student interns working here at the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams, and some of them were working doing field sampling and would get to interact with different organizations that way. Others of them are doing educational programming, and so they're interacting with those partners. Others of them are doing marketing or communications, and so they're interacting with those partners that we work with, all the while getting more experience, building their resume, building that skill set, like what you were talking about, dugan, with working with other nonprofits working with volunteers, and so our students then go out not just from the classes they've taken, but also with a resume already start to be filled out with different skills and interactions that they've had.

Speaker 1:

And it sounded like Dugan. That resume that you built while you were here was what helped you get that dream job you were seeking.

Speaker 3:

Oh for sure, the list of partners for the lakes festival by the. By the time we'd put four on that list was like we had to get real creative with how we were listing all of the partners on the t-shirts and everything Like that's true it was hard to list them all. We had engaged so many different elements of our community to pour in to celebrate the lakes and the natural resources God's given us. It was hard to recognize them all.

Speaker 1:

Well, I've got some of those t-shirts and I feel like a walking billboard with all those names on the back.

Speaker 3:

It's great. And the SISMAs that I've helped strengthen. I don't really run a SISMA. I try not to do that because I technically right now have 26 counties I'm responsible for and that's just a little too much to run a SISMA for. But I'm responsible for and that's just a little too much to run a system for. But I'm plugged in with Quip, Kosciuszko, Water and Woodland Invasives Partnership, which is the Kosciuszko one, because it's my home base and I've worked with almost everybody involved with it as a actually Darcy Zolman was involved with it for a while. I knew Darcy since I was a third grader at Camp Mollenhauer. She came to talk about river otters.

Speaker 3:

And those my favorite animals in the world. Um, so I I was able to work with her before her retirement, which was fun. But I've worked with a lot of those people as volunteers at the lakes festival or as partners with the lily center for the lakes festival or some other uh opportunities and um, so it was kind of a reconnection, um, but uh, yeah, working with um quip and help the when I help them out and everything, those experiences from the lakes festival really, really helped reconnect and forge stronger connections.

Speaker 3:

And then knowing how to like tie things to people because everyone lives in a watershed.

Speaker 3:

It's like the first thing we learn when we do any type of education stuff and like kindergarten class and everything from the Lily centers education stuff, everything's in a watershed, so everything that happens in a watershed affects that watershed and every watershed leads to another watershed, so everything really affects it, and so it's finding the creative way that an individual, organization or individual like can have a sense of ownership and steward their part of that watershed, even if it's really small, and then when that light bulb clicks, they want to grab everybody else and make them do the same thing.

Speaker 1:

So, talking about light bulbs clicking, you made a presentation to our Warsaw Kiwanis Club Boy, probably about it was my first year.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it was four years ago.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, four years ago you did a good job then. You've been back a couple times and I remember telling you at the time we have this lovely plant along the border of our yard that smells heavenly. And you said honeysuckle. Oh yeah, Yep, and I hope that our listeners will tune in to the YouTube channel, because then they'll be able to see these samples that you brought us. And the honeysuckle still smells so good, oh yeah.

Speaker 3:

So tell us about these plants are either very beautiful or very, very fragrant and wonderful to smell, or they're very visually appealing, or, uh, they, they serve a purpose that people really wanted and they weren't aware of or knowledgeable of a of a native that could do it. And so what we did was we brought these over from other places. So you know they're. They're not bad plants. That's what I tell people. All the time I was like, oh, I hate that plant. It's like don't hate the plant, it's not a bad plant. There's no such thing as a bad plant. God didn't make bad plants. God made plants for a very specific place, for very specific interactions and relationships. These plants are misplaced. They're not where they belong. So they're. They're behaving the way God designed them to behave, but the environment they're behaving that way in is not the appropriate environment. It's like having a martial artist doing martial arts inside of a China shop.

Speaker 3:

Martial arts aren't bad doing Taekwondo and being a black belt and it's great, but if you're doing it inside of a fine China shop, probably not the right location and that's. That's kind of the type of destruction that a lot of these plants end up bringing in. They really damage stuff and it's not intentionally. Some of them have allelopathic properties, which is kind of intentional.

Speaker 1:

Okay, wait, you said a word I'm not familiar with. What is that?

Speaker 3:

Allelopathy. So allelopathy, more or less, is some type of chemical warfare that these plants engage in. They emit chemical compounds either through their leaves or through their roots, where they can alter soil composition. They can raise or lower the pH, fix nitrogen very heavily or they'll have compounds on the leaves that will prevent predation, which gives them an advantage over other plants that things might be able to eat.

Speaker 1:

That's why stuff doesn't grow under my walnut tree.

Speaker 3:

Yes, walnuts are mildly allelopathic. They're also. They also have a lot of leaf, leaf coverage, which limits sunlight and everything. But, yes, walnut, there are some things that will grow with walnuts, especially some natives that are. They have this very unique relationship and adaptation that allows them to grow alongside walnuts, but a lot of things won't. So a lot of our plants, a lot of our natives, are very big specialists. They need very specific soil requirements, water, they need the right pollinators and those pollinators need very specific plants. Very few things are generalists there's a handful of them but many things are specialists and when these invasives come in, none of the specialists that have relationships with them are here, and so they they start filling in these specialist roles that nothing interacts with them. With that, the relationship's one sided and that becomes really big and problematic.

Speaker 1:

So honeysuckle, an Asian honeysuckle.

Speaker 3:

Eurasian, asian, asian. So the state of Indiana has a terrestrial plant rule, which is this legislative codified rule where there are 44 plants. There's a whole council, there's an invasive species council and there's people representing nurseries and greenhouses and conservation groups and federal and county agencies like soil, water conservation districts and stuff, and they're all on this council. They all evaluate sightings, infestations, spreads, controls. They look at a whole metric of information to determine how invasive a plant actually is and when it hits a certain threshold they make a recommendation to throw it onto the terrestrial plant rule. So there's 44, throw it onto the terrestrial plant rule. So there's 44 plants currently on the terrestrial plant rule and three species of Asian bush honeysuckle are on there.

Speaker 3:

So there's a myrrh, a myrrh A-M-U-R and I apologize if I butchered the pronunciations of these tartarian and marrow marrow's honeysuckle, but they're all bush honeysuckles. They all have very similar traits, um, and those on the youtube they can see it's, it's opposite leaves, it's always opposite leaves. The flowers and then therefore the fruit are always on the top side of the stem, which is relatively unique. We don't have a lot of natives that do that. Most of our fruit comes underneath, um, and then the pith, so the center of the stems of all of the asian bush honeysuckles is actually hollow. There'll be a hollowed kind of space in the center of all the the branches and stuff you cut and that's a really easy id for the non-native asian bush honeysuckles. Southern indiana has a native honeysuckle but it's solid all the way through and there's no hollow pith, so it's pretty easy to ID.

Speaker 1:

So this, this Asian honeysuckle, is not especially good for bees.

Speaker 3:

Um, they're. They're not bad for the pollinators. They have proteins and sugars, just like most other flowers do. Um, the bigger problem with a honeysuckle isn't so much that it's bad for the pollinators that are using it, because pollinators are cross-pollinating it and helping it have fertilized fruit and they're really helping out. Um, it is actually that's kind of the problem, it's it blooms really early. Most of our native plants haven't gone to flowering yet, but most of our invasives have already been flowering for a while. We've had a pretty mild spring, we didn't have a terrible end of winter, and so they're really getting into the fruit bearing stages kind of early and their early food for the pollinators, and they're very showy flowers with a lot of fragrance, as you were noting the honeysuckle smells amazing.

Speaker 3:

I was walking a property with tons of honeysuckle and you could just the whole air was almost sickly sweet with honeysuckle. It was really, really great and it's a beautiful flower. But because it's out early and because it can grow faster, it's a lot more advantageous. It's it out competes a lot of natives, so it fruits really early. If the fruits fall really early, animals eat the fruits really early and then they leave little fertilizer bombs of honeysuckle berries all over the place and then the leaves stay green and keep photosynthesizing really late into the year. I've seen green leaves on honeysuckle in warsaw as latest december and then they'll have new leaves on it as early as february. That's two-month dormancy. Most of our natives are dormant for four months, sometimes five.

Speaker 1:

So it replicates faster it replicates faster. And squeezes out the native.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and then honeysuckle is also allelopathic. Its roots are actually allelopathic. We refer to it as a circle of death. Underneath honeysuckle, almost nothing else will grow, aside from a few ground covers that are pretty hardy and other invasives.

Speaker 1:

And when somebody is trying to eradicate that from their property, there are certain steps they have to take.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, anytime. We're talking about actual eradication, really getting it completely out. You got to have a marathon, not a sprint mentality. If you come in thinking, oh, I'm going to hit it once with Tordon, please don't do that, please don't use Tordon on this, that's overkill. You'll kill everything in the ground too and everything around it, but they're hoping to do like one treatment and it's dead. That's, that's not the right mentality.

Speaker 3:

You got to think five years for maintenance, yeah, so you can go in with a couple of different ways to kill it. There's what's called cut stump, where you go in with a chainsaw pruning loppers what have you? A brush cutter if it's really bad, and you cut it really close to the ground and then relatively quickly we recommend within 15 minutes you come in with a chemical mixture of some type of broad spectrum herbicide and water and you paint around the outside, half inch to inch of the cut stem, where the vascular tissues of the plant are the phloem and the xylem, and that'll suck it down into the roots and hopefully kill it. No-transcript, and it spreads really aggressively. So cut stumps one way to get back to the question.

Speaker 1:

So protecting stream banks using plants even bad plants not bad plants.

Speaker 3:

Plants in bad places.

Speaker 1:

Plants in bad places Great way to say that. So why is it important to have the banks of streams protected with something?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so whenever we have water flowing through a stream, that water, as it's interacting with the soil on the banks of the stream, could be pulling that soil into the water, eroding those banks.

Speaker 2:

And that soil is usually having with it phosphorus associated, so phosphorus can adsorb onto those soil particles.

Speaker 2:

So wherever the soil particle goes, that's where the phosphorus goes, and we know from our lake research that excess phosphorus coming into our lakes, those little streams, are going to flow into a lake eventually, typically in our county, and then that phosphorus is going to come in cause extra weeds or algae in the lake, things that are in an overabundance that we don't want to see there.

Speaker 2:

So we don't want there to be erosion along those stream channels and in Kosciuszko County here, for example, in Northern Indiana, we have over 600 miles of streams that flow across our county, and so you start thinking about all of those places where you could get soil erosion along stream banks and we want to try to minimize that. So, as Dugan was just talking about, invasive species will colonize those stream bank areas, but they will not hold the soil as well as the native species will. Unfortunately, if left unmanaged at times we can get invasive species which move in and take the place of those native species, kind of push them out for some of the reasons that Dugan was just talking about, with more aggressive reproduction, for example. Reproduction, for example, and then a plant that doesn't hold the soil as well now takes over for a plant that was holding the soil really well, and so we're going to get more erosion from stream banks, more nutrients into our lakes and more of those problems like weeds and algae that we don't want to see in our lakes.

Speaker 1:

So when the weed wranglers go out and they may be treating Asian honeysuckle or other kinds of plants, do they need to beennessee? And it's a nationwide program that they have people participate in indiana.

Speaker 3:

Being just to toot our own horn like the most weed wrangles out of any state. We do the most with the most all right and we have for years.

Speaker 3:

Uh, even at the height of the pandemic in 2021, we had over 200 weed wrangles in indiana because you could social distance and you were outside and you were doing stuff in nature. So it was, it was still green lit for everybody and we did over 200 weed wrangles in a single year. And you think about the weather in Indiana. We got a maybe a six month window for weed wrangles, and we did over 200 throughout the state.

Speaker 3:

But yeah, so when they're doing weed wrangles, we, we always do a site survey first, and when I say we, it's usually the regional specialists helping with that. But some of the CISMAs have agency people or volunteers who have been very well trained and they know what they're looking for. But we'll look at, you know, potential impacts on waterways. We did a huge weed wrangle three years in a row at Foster Park in Fort Wayne, right along the St Mary's River, and so their parks department were the only people allowed to use chemical, and so they were.

Speaker 3:

We opted to not spray, um anything. We always did cut stump, because you can have a dobber or some type of hyper controlled way of putting it just on the surface and while that will go through the roots and some of that might leach into the soil, it's going to be very little because we're not using a lot of chemical and we were very cognizant of the fact that we didn't want it going into the St Mary's. But we also didn't want all that leaf litter. When the you know 400 linear yards of solid bush honeysuckle and multiflora rose, with all this massive amounts of leaf biomass, when it does go dormant.

Speaker 3:

All those leaves then go into the St Mary's, carrying all that phosphorus and other nutrients into the water and as it breaks down it goes into a lake somewhere and, you know, causes problems. So we were really cognizant, so we were careful with what chemical we were using. More surgical hand Quip and a number of other Sismas have what we call a strike team, which are volunteers specifically trained on how to do other control methods that are a little more surgical, require a little more complexity and a finer touch, and we'll use very specific chemicals, ones that are rated for aquatic use, for instance, and things like that.

Speaker 1:

So we've been picking up on the poor honeysuckle. Let's talk about some of the other plants that you brought with us, especially the crimson maple.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so Norway maple, which is the actual common name crimson king or crimson maple is just kind of a marketing name that a lot of people put on there. So when you're buying plants, double check what the scientific name is and then see what other common names are, because a lot of these are just commercial cultivars the names that they put on them and people don't know, and sometimes sometimes they're actually illegally selling plants because it doesn't have the scientific name in big print or whatever and they think, oh, it's okay to sell that and sometimes it's not. I've actually found a box store that will remain nameless where they had like 500 Japanese barberry plants for sale but they were calling them something like Japanese sunrise bush.

Speaker 2:

Oh no yeah.

Speaker 3:

And Japanese barberry is on the terrestrial plant rule. It's illegal to buy, sell, trade, transport, exchange graft. You can basically leave it alone or kill it. You definitely can't sell flats of it at a box store.

Speaker 2:

So and that's one that we've been working on here on campus with dugan's help. So dugan was a student here and we did. We were um doing a lot of invasive species removal but then, after uh he graduated and then his new position that he's gotten, we've started going after uh, the japanese barberry on our own campus here because it's a host plant for deer ticks. Deer ticks can carry Lyme's disease, so not only a bad ecological problem with that plant but also then a human health threat at the same time, and so we've been working really hard at Japanese barberry. Grace College as a campus has removed all of the barberry off of our campus. I know the town of Winona Lake, where Grace College sits, has been removing those plants because just a few of those plants in your community, the berries can spread, the seeds can spread all around from birds eating those berries and start to grow out in our forested areas.

Speaker 1:

Is burning bush on the list.

Speaker 3:

It is, yes. So Euonymus ultimis is the burning bush. Well, it's on the invasive species list, it's not on the terrestrial plant rule. There is an amendment to the terrestrial plant rule that we're trying to get pushed through the state. It's kind of held up with some stuff going on with the new uh uh state legislature and executive stuff, but it's, it's up there, it's, it's waiting to be pushed and signed. Um, we call it the dirty dozen list because it also includes things like calorie pair oh golly yeah, but burning bush is on the amendment request.

Speaker 3:

It's not. It's not on the the terrestrial plant rule, but it is on the list of invasive species for Indiana because the invasive species council maintains that list and there's something like 250 plants on that list.

Speaker 1:

And Indiana is a pretty big state. So what works well in maybe the North, it doesn't maybe work so well in the South.

Speaker 3:

We've even got some species that are native to Southern Indiana that are considered invasive up here, like black locust, for instance. Black locust is native in Southern Indiana it's. It's a key part of a lot of their, their glade ecosystems and things. But when it comes up here it invades grasslands very aggressively and it'll grow kind of clonally.

Speaker 2:

That might be a good opportunity. I know we've talked about it during season one of this podcast invasive versus exotic. And then there's also another term I don't think we talked about it yet on the podcast but adventive, where it's sort of moving to a new area, and maybe that's an example If it's native in Southern Indiana and it moves up here. Maybe it's an inventive, kind of like the advent idea of Jesus coming to earth.

Speaker 1:

That's interesting.

Speaker 2:

But why don't you tell us a little bit about so? Just because a plant's invasive doesn't mean it's exotic, and just because it's exotic doesn't mean it's invasive. Do you want to talk through? Exotic meaning more non-native and invasive. Even some native species could be technically invasive.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so we, we being Sikkim, and all of our partners, we try to encourage them. We use what the federal government's definition is. So it's, it's a three-part definition for the federal government. It has to first be non-native. That doesn't mean to the state, it means to its geographic region, right, so it has to be non-native to the geographic region. It also has to spread or be likely to spread, the implication being aggressively as well, but that's not technically part of the definition, but it has to spread or be likely to spread. And then the third is that it causes harm. And then there's three bullet points under that either to the ecosystem, by out-competing natives, ruining specialist relationships, being actively toxic, things like that. Or infrastructure think kudzu in the South, which, by the way, we have in Indiana, even Northern Indiana, elkhart County, has a site that's been quarantined, being eradicated and they found it in Canada.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it overwinters. Apparently it's a super plant. Again, not a bad plant, it's just in the wrong place. So infrastructure, ecosystem or animal and human health Cue one of my other native or invasive species over here.

Speaker 3:

poison. Hemlock, something that is actively toxic and causes damage, just like Japanese barberry, poses a human health risk to another reason why it's considered invasive. So invasive has to be all three. If it's two, it's non-native and is likely to spread but it causes no harm. That might be an advent, uh say inventive, or it might be, um, a naturalized species, for instance. White pine, for instance, is not a native evergreen to Indiana. It's native range stopped somewhere in Ohio. We only have two native evergreens in Indiana typically on the list and it's Tamarask or, uh, red cedar, eastern red cedar, um. But white pine plays pretty nice. It doesn't doesn't disrupt anything. It hosts a ton of insects. Birds love it, it behaves itself, it integrates really well with the native population. So it'll be on most native plant sales and things like that. It'll even be on some native tree list, but historically it's not actually a native species.

Speaker 2:

And I haven't actually seen Eastern white pine reproduce naturally out in the environment. It's planted but I don't really see it.

Speaker 3:

Right, it doesn't. It doesn't replicate very well, um, again, it's not supposed to necessarily be here, but it plays nice with everything else. Um, and then we have exotic species, like if you were to bring in some I don't know African orchid or something, and it goes really good when you keep it in your potted plant, indirect sun, and you bring it inside during the cold months and everything like. Okay, cool, that's an exotic and you can keep it in your landscaping because it's not going to overwinter, it's not going to survive, it's going to die. Um, a good example from northern Indiana would be princess tree.

Speaker 3:

Now, it's a big problem in southern Indiana where they're growing seasons way bigger, but I've seen it on one property. It was purposely planted and it just will not do anything. He's since tried to kill it. It also won't die, apparently. It keeps suckering and throwing up sprouts, but it won't grow more than like six feet tall. It just isn't doing well and it will not fruit, and he's had it for like five years, and so that's a. That's an example of an invasive that just isn't doing very well. Um, so, so invasive has to be non-native, spread, cause damage. We have some native species that people will be like oh well, that's invasive because it spreads really aggressively poison ivy poison ivy, yep, great one.

Speaker 3:

It causes health, uh, health harm humans and animals. Although most of the animals love it, whitetail deer is one of their primary food sources. Until the trees will drop, nuts as poison. Ivy and rabbits will love it too.

Speaker 2:

I know we have a little hobby farm and our alpaca and sheep love to eat poison ivy.

Speaker 3:

Most ruminants absolutely love it. It's really nutritious. Apparently, Just humans have a bad reaction to it.

Speaker 1:

I think I need your alpaca to come over to my house.

Speaker 3:

Find somebody with 4-H goats, They'll tear it out of the trees. They'll grab the vines and pull it out of the trees. They're very aggressive with it.

Speaker 2:

We used to have goats and they loved the poison ivy, as well as a lot of the invasives we've talked about today. Our animals loved honeysuckle and multiflora rose. It was so crazy to see goats chomping on the thorns of multiflora rose, elk won't touch it.

Speaker 3:

LC Nature Park in Aboy, over by Fort Wayne, they've got a herd of elk that they keep in a very it's an open enclosure type thing. It's massive. The elk won't touch the multiflora rose. The goats have no problem with it. That's interesting. They love it. The elk won't touch the multiflora. Really, the goats have no problem with it. That's interesting. They love it.

Speaker 2:

So here now we have an example of an interaction with a non-native plant species, and a native animal won't eat it, though normally elk are herbivores that would eat almost all of our local native species, and so another reason why these invasives or non-natives can cause problems in our ecosystems here.

Speaker 1:

So tell me a bit about poison hemlock, because I'm trying to convince some of my friends that what they think is Queen Anne's Lace is not.

Speaker 3:

So poison hemlock and Queen Anne's Lace are both in the carrot family and they have another cousin who is also invasive wild parsnip. So Queen Anne's Lace is invasive. It's known as like Indian carrot or something like that, um, so they're all three invasive carrots, um, but two of them are toxic and one is not. And queen anne's lace is not toxic. You can pull it and eat the tuber and it tastes like a carrot. It's actually pretty tasty, yeah, um. So, by the way, that's be an invasive or which is the term for people who eat invasive species, um, be an invasive or eat the invasives. But not.

Speaker 2:

Not all of them, not all of them no you're, no, you're invasive species.

Speaker 3:

So poison hemlock, um, it's a biennial, so it has a two-year life cycle. So, um year one it'll have this really wide, bushy type growth of this fern, like carrot tops, um, and it's usually a very nice dark green. It looks really pretty actually, um, and it gets sizably big. And then year two, it does what this guy is starting to do and it starts bolting and they can bolt up to seven to eight feet tall and, um, it'll start, uh, throwing out these big humble flowers. They're white, um, some of them have small black dots in the middle. Not all of them.

Speaker 3:

Some people like that's how you know if it's queen anne's lace or not. No, not all of them have it, um, but they all have very similar flowers queen anne's lace and poison hemlock in particular. The difference is poison hemlock will be flowered out in may and june. Queen anne's lace is not until much later in the year usually august, september before you start seeing that flower out. So if it's, if it's the end of summer, early autumn, it's Queen Anne's lace and you're going to be fine. But if it's, if it's springtime, early summer, it is definitely not.

Speaker 2:

So Queen Anne's lace never gets that tall either. It's not going to be over your head.

Speaker 3:

And it's also really hairy. Queen Anne's lace has a lot of hairs along the stem, but, as you can see here, poison hemlock does not. The other thing with poison hemlock that's a huge giveaway is these purple flecks, and it might not be super visible on the video, but there's these, these spots. It almost looks like somebody took a paintbrush and just flicked purple paint on it. Um, that's a huge tell for poison hemlock. Um, the big issue with poison hemlock is that every part of it has this toxin in it. It's some type of alcohol, alkaloid toxin, and that's. It's organic chem beyond my knowledge, but this alkaloid toxin is in everything the stem, the leaves, the flowers, the seeds, all the root, which you know looks like a carrot Because it is there. They all contain this toxin and this toxin is is a huge poison that starts shutting down body systems contain this toxin and this toxin is is a huge poison that starts shutting down body systems.

Speaker 3:

Hemlock is is most widely known in history because it's how socrates the philosopher was forced to commit suicide as his capital punishment for corrupting the youth of athens is. They gave him a tonic of hemlock. So this is at least 4 000 plus years that we've known about the lethality of hemlock and there's still no antitoxin and I've I've had calls from farmers that have lost milking cows, like large milking cows, because they had it in their silage. They had harvested their own hay and didn't know they had hemlock and the cows ate some of it and there was no saving it.

Speaker 1:

So for our listeners, I want you to be assured that Julian Dugan, Julian, Julian. Dugan was handling that poison hemlock with a glove, a chemical glove, a chemical gloves, to prevent contaminating himself with that toxin. Yeah, fascinating, yeah Fascinating.

Speaker 3:

We have other invasives that are not toxic at all, like this one that everyone's seen in the woods a billion times. This is garlic mustard. So garlic mustard is another biennial. This one was brought over very purposely for food because it's one of the most aptly named plants in the world. It tastes like garlic and mustard combined. So in its first year of growth the leaves are very round. Um, it almost looks like wild ginger, except for it has kind of a serrated crinkle around the edges, very much like this does, but it's very. It's much more round, um, and that's where it actually tastes the best If you get it. Get it early spring.

Speaker 3:

It loves the woods and you pull it up it. Its roots are super shallow. It pulls up really easy. You can literally have three-year-olds help you get rid of your garlic mustard. But it's also super edible, um. The problem with garlic mustard and its damage to the environment why we don't like it in the woods is that there are a number of butterflies that love to lay their eggs on some of our natives that grow in the same conditions and have very similar leaves as garlic mustard. But when those butterflies try to lay their their eggs on these leaves, typically on the underside. There's actually compounds in the garlic mustard that will dissolve the egg sack of those butterflies and it kills them on impact.

Speaker 3:

All of their eggs die, and I mean insects that lay multiple eggs. They do that because the survival rate of the eggs is pretty low and it becomes zero. And that's how we can see the extirpation of some of our native insects from some of these invasives, because this isn't the only one that does that and it can when you take care of the. If you get rid of the insects in a trophic, in a food web, in a trophic cycle, that's the basis of a lot of animals, and so you can start having trophic cascade problems, food webs collapsing. If you start getting rid of the insects Because, like I said earlier, a lot of our native animals and plants, they have very specialized relationships with one another. And the second you start eliminating one thing, you're going to affect others.

Speaker 1:

Which is why we don't really want to kill all the mosquitoes, right Correct?

Speaker 3:

We don't want to kill all the mosquitoes, no matter how annoying they are.

Speaker 1:

And are there invasive plants in water?

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, we've had a number of them over the years Curly leaf, pondweed, eurasian watermilfoil and then most recently, starry stonewort has been one that's moved into a number of our lakes and they are not moving around like a lot of these invasive terrestrial species where, as Dugan's mentioned, maybe it's a berry that a bird eats and then they fly to a different spot and they poop the seeds out along with a little fertilizer to help that new plant start to grow In an aquatic environment. Instead, it's typically moving on boats from one lake to another and so we start to see things slowly moving from one lake to another, and starry stonewort is certainly an example of that Starry stonewort, as Dugan was describing, with some of the terrestrial plants. And starry stonewort is certainly an example of that starry stonewort, as dugan was describing, with some of the terrestrial plants. Starry stonewort out, competes other native plants around it and creates sort of a pillowing sort of effect where it's kind of like these little pillows, almost like fluffy clouds kind of under the surface of the water, pushing out other native plants.

Speaker 2:

It's not great habitat for critters that might normally live in the near shore areas of our lakes. And, yeah, it can then impede recreation as well, because it's similar to cara, which is kind of seen as a brillo pad type of a plant. Although Kara is native, some people pronounce it Kara and Sari Stonewort will stop a boat propeller that's going through it. I mean this is really like tough interconnected plant fibers. Certainly people who are trying to sail through that middle keel, that fin on their sailboat, will just get stopped immediately. That middle keel, that fin on their sailboat will just get stopped immediately and so it can impact recreation as well as the ecosystem of the lake can be damaged.

Speaker 1:

If that can be transmitted by boats, how does a boater who's moving his boats help protect against that?

Speaker 2:

Right. So in the case of plants as well as even animals like zebra mussels, which is another invasive critter that can move from one lake to another on boats, we want to make sure that when that boat comes out at a boat launch for example, that any plant material that's on the bottom there is cleaned off. Sometimes there will be water in the intake of the engine or in the bottom hull of the boat. We want to make sure that that water comes out and stays in the lake where it came from. And then that boat and the trailer is the other thing to keep in mind.

Speaker 2:

Some people don't pay attention to the trailer, but the trailer has a lot of nooks and crannies where maybe a plant fragment or a larval stage of zebra mussels might be hanging out. A larval stage of a zebra mussels might be hanging out, and so we want to make sure that boat and that trailer are dry and clean Then, as they're transported to another lake, and then do another quick visual inspection before it goes into that next lake. Some areas around the Midwestern United States actually have boat cleaning stations at those boat ramps where there's a hose with a spray nozzle and people can make sure that any of those fragments would come off before they move from one lake to another.

Speaker 1:

Do our lakes have those.

Speaker 2:

No, not that I've seen, but that's something that we could definitely look into. We'd have to partner with the DNR, who manages most of those public boat launches here in the state of Indiana. Um, but that would be a worthy project to work on. And and sometimes people just don't think of it right they're sort of they're in a hurry. Sometimes people are part of a fishing tournament on a weekend and they got to quickly move from one lake to another so that they can be as competitive as possible. Or someone's you know, in a hurry to get their their boat out cause they're going to go do something else, um, or there's storms coming in, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So there can be a number of reasons, but sometimes those, those, um, those sort of short sighted uh things can, can leave to some leads to some long-term impacts if we're not careful.

Speaker 3:

We see similar things with terrestrial plants as well. Um, in some parks uh, winona Lake trails, for instance, included quip, um got a grant and we put in boot uh brush stations at the three main trail heads because people uh, we just had fat skinny tire fest, for instance. I mean, you're talking about people bringing in mountain bikes from all over the country, sometimes from other countries even, um, and if they haven't thoroughly cleaned out their treads and everything, they could be carrying in seeds and dirt with seeds from invasive plants. Some of these are really small Poison hemlock seeds are tiny, they're like a mustard seed. And so we put in boot cleaning stations as well as bike cleaning stations at the three main entrances for one of the lake trails, because those biocontrols are super important, because people don't think about it, and so having educational signs and then the ability to just take care of it right then and there it can go a long way. It's not a cure-all but it's part of the solution.

Speaker 1:

Well, the team from California that was just at the bike fest thanks you. They were paying attention to that stuff. Nice, good to know Anything else that you want to tell us about your good work.

Speaker 3:

It's, it's not my work, right. Like I view myself as like a enabler is a bad word a force multiplier. I find people who are already doing the things, or people who have a feeling that there's something wrong about their property or their landscape or like ah, I feel like there's a problem. How do I get involved? I become a force multiplier for that and and and. So I plug them in with uh, ongoing, um, uh, work being done by conservation partners. I plug them into SISMAs, um, it's it's taken that same strategy that the Lilly center had with all these different partnerships and not doing everything yourself.

Speaker 3:

I always view it like uh, when you look at like a bubble bath, bathtub, right, every there's a billion little bubbles doing their own thing. They're their own little bubble. But the really cool things are when the bubbles connect, not when they form one bubble doing everything, but when there's like a hundred bubbles around one big bubble. That's always really cool to me. I always love that and that's how I view all these partnerships. Like you can keep working in your bubble, but you can come up really close and maybe, maybe, dip over just a little bit. You can share a little surface, go outside of maybe your very specific bubble just a touch, because this thing definitely affects your bubble.

Speaker 3:

Um, and so you know, a private landowner might be like man, I got all this honeysuckle and I really want to get rid of it and but like, what else can I do? I'm like, oh well, there's this really great natural area nearby. Are you aware of this park? And they're like, yeah, I love that park. It's like, well, there's this group doing a weed wrangle there in a few weeks and they just need people loppers and really go at it. Uh, and sometimes that's the launching point.

Speaker 3:

People hear about this volunteer opportunity, like what's a weed wrangle? Oh cool, I get to go out and help take care of the park. I want to do that. And then they part of a weed wrangles always some education part where we'll talk about what plants we're dealing with, how do I dm and why we're getting rid of them. We educate them right there. And I at least 10 different times I've been to a weed wrangle and before I leave, some of the volunteers are like, hey, I think I have this on my property. Can you come out and like, do a survey? I want to get rid of it. And then they tell their friends, their neighbor, their family. I've actually done surveys for entire HOAs in Fort Wayne like massive HOAs because they went out. One member of their HOA board came to a weed wrangle, loved it and they're like you need to come out and teach us how to do this.

Speaker 3:

And I'm like, all right, cool, we'll do it. Yeah, um, so I, I, I do the force multiplier thing. I plug people in into one of those bubbles that they're completely outside of. Because everybody wants more help, everybody wants more volunteers and the great thing with volunteers is they can volunteer at five different conservation partners that are hyper focused in any given thing, and there's no reason they can't cross that line. You know, the lily center has a mission and in their mission creates the bubble. And then soil water conservation district has their mission and their mission has a bubble.

Speaker 3:

Sometimes those butt up but a volunteer can go between those bubbles like it's's nothing. It's like a little hydrogen bond. It gets to bounce around and be connected to everything. Um, and, and that's what I help people do, and I teach them why it's important to take care of their 1200 square foot backyard or their 500 acre woods, because it all affects everything. It affects your neighbor If you have an invasive species.

Speaker 3:

I'm sorry, birds don't care about property lines. They're going to take your invasive species and spread it. It might not be spreading on your property. Somebody down the road has it same same way with um. You know it all affects the watershed. Same way with the lakes If, if you take sorry stonewort off of your boat and you take it to a lake that has no sorry stonewort, that lake now has sorry stonewort.

Speaker 3:

So as part of being a good steward is is knowing what your responsibility is and accepting that responsibility once you're made aware of it. So a lot of it is a lot of my force multiplier stuff is just letting people be aware that, one, this problem does exist. Two, you can be a part of the solution and no matter how big or small that commitment is, you can be a part of the solution. You, you could financially support a CISMA. You could donate an hour a month to one of the conservation partners doing something good, and it doesn't have to be massive. If you can do massive, do massive. Everybody loves massive, that's great, but if you can do an hour, do an hour.

Speaker 3:

Tell a few friends about it, because telling people is free. Tell a few friends it, because telling people is free. Tell a few friends, invite them to come do an hour with you and all of a sudden that's five man hours instead of one. Now it's stacking. We get to do really fun stuff.

Speaker 1:

I love the bubble analogy Awesome. When's the best time for you to do a survey of a person's property?

Speaker 3:

It depends on property. If somebody has a whole bunch of grassland and everything I definitely want to come out like midsummer. I want to see is a cool weather and warm weather are both in the late dormancy emergence come out and all the all the invasives are still going to be very much there, um, but sometimes early spring is even good, uh, if we have like a mild winter. I had some really successful um uh uh surveys over the last few years because I went out in like March when all of our natives were still dormant everything green that's bad, it's in a bad place.

Speaker 3:

It's not a bad plant right, it's a plant in a bad place, but that's definitely invasive. I had, I had a woman who had just gotten a whole bunch of topsoil put in to have a garden for her chickens and it was march 3rd of last year or the year before and we got we were just gotten done with our whole survey. I did some invasive vines in her forest and everything. And we're coming out and I see her chicken coop. He's like oh cool, how old is that? I was like, oh, I just got it last year, I got chickens this year and I'm going to plant a whole bunch of stuff for him to just be able to free range on.

Speaker 3:

And we walk up to this plot of this rich, dark soil and I see a whole should be green. There's still snow on the ground. What's going on with this soil? So I start looking and looking. I was like did you plant carrots? She's like no, I haven't planted anything. Yeah, that's poison hemlock. You have about 33 poison hemlock plants in your chicken's food plot. She's like what's bad about that? It's like well, it's poison and your chickens will eat it because it's the only thing there and they will all die. Wow. She's like oh, let me contact the people who brought in my topsoil. I'm getting a refund. It's like yeah, that's probably a good idea, um, but you know so. So sometimes looking early in the year really helpful because these things will be green even when everything else is, when all of our natives are still dormant because it hasn't been the right sunlight, moisture, warm temperatures and everything. These things will, these things will already be coming up.

Speaker 2:

It's really easy to idea yeah, that happens sometimes in lake environments as well, as our non-natives will kind of wake up earlier in the the spring and may even stay actively growing later into the fall as well, and so you can tell a little easier that way too, yeah so dugan thinks there are no bad plants, they're just bad places for plants.

Speaker 1:

Is that your take on the plants and water too?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, these plants that are non-native here in our lakes are good in other parts of the world oftentimes and there's natural balance there, with certain things that eat them or kind of help keep them in check by competing with them for space or sunlight, whereas when they're in our lakes here, without that competition factor and without things to eat them and keep them in check, then they start to grow too aggressively and they take over other things and they don't provide the same services to those aquatic ecosystems like the other native plants do.

Speaker 1:

So thank you, Dugan, very much for being here today and thanks for the lovely display of greenery on our table and explaining invasive species to us, and especially thanks for that bubble analogy. That was really helpful in imagining how we relate to others.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's good Thanks.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Lake Doctor podcast. You can share your thoughts or submit a question by leaving a comment or sending an email to lakesatgraceedu.

Speaker 2:

Listening to this podcast is just the first step to making your lake cleaner and healthier. Visit lakesgraceedu for more information about our applied research and discover some tangible ways that you can make a difference on your lake.

Speaker 1:

We'll see you next time. The Doctor is In.