Long-Term Invasive Species Monitoring: Haliburton Highlands Land Trust Invasive Plants

Long-Term Invasive Species Monitoring: Haliburton Highlands Land Trust Invasive Plants

Kolten Hooper

Haliburton Highlands Land Trust, Greg Wickware

Tom Whillans, Environmental and Resource Science/Studies

2020

Online

Haliburton County

Environmental Science, Wildlife Biology

The Haliburton Highlands Land Trust recognizes invasive species as critical components of monitoring biodiversity. With this, they seek to determine which invasive terrestrial plant species have been sighted on the HHLT properties, which species could be present and and how the HHLT should be monitoring for invasive plant species. In order to become more informed in these areas, the HHLT has posed three questions that guide the research of the report. These questions are as follows;

1) What invasive species have been sighted on or in lands adjacent to the HHLT properties: Fred and Pearl Barry Wetland, Barnum Creek Nature Reserve, Dahl Forest, Smith Forest, and Norah’s Island.
2) What invasive species could exist on or in lands adjacent to any of the above-mentioned properties?
3) What monitoring protocols are used by similar organizations and could be implemented by the HHLT to monitor their properties for invasive species?

The purpose of this project is to answer each of the HHLT research questions in order to better inform the land trust of the threat of invasive plants and potential ways to approach monitoring them in the future.

Trent University