Green Terrors and Fight The Phrag!

On Saturday, October 20th, TFN members descended on the lower Don to help EcoSpark and the City of Toronto’s Community Stewardship Program (CSP) “Fight The Phrag” in the Beechwood Wetland. Participants received full training and equipment on site, learning a manual removal technique pioneered by TFN Walk Leader and phrag-crusader, Lynn Short – a protocol now used on all CSP sites to battle this dreaded invasive.

Prior to the stewardship session, volunteers spent an hour touring Beechwood and Cottonwood Flats on the “Green Terrors from Another Land” walk, led by Jason Ramsay-Brown. Along the way they experienced the “thrills and chills of Toronto’s unruly cast of invasive species,” discussing dog-strangling vine, Japanese knotweed, garlic mustard, tansy, Asian bittersweet and, of course, phragmites.

Special thanks to all of the TFN Members who came out for the walks & stewardship session. Together we removed 430 lbs of phrag! Great day – great work!

Toronto Field Naturalists wishes to acknowledge this Land through which we walk. For thousands of years, the Land has been shared by the Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, and the Anishinaabe. Toronto is situated on the Land within the Toronto Purchase, Treaty 13, the traditional and treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is also part of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum, a covenant agreement between Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Wendat peoples and allied nations to peaceably share the land and all its resources. Today, the Land is home to peoples of numerous nations. We are all grateful to have the opportunity to continue to care for and share the beauty of this Land.