JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The fall bird migration is winding down, and as the traveling birds cross the United States, many of them stopped at wetlands. Chances are they saw areas dominated by a tall reed with a big, fluffy seed head at the top. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce has this report on why this particular plant makes lots of people shudder.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: It's called phragmites, an enormous, non-native reed. You've surely seen it, like, along the edge of highways, but have you ever tried to walk through it? I did in Utah.
It's just, like, ugh (ph). Trying to work my way through here is just almost impossible.
KARIN KETTENRING: So phragmites is actually one of the most problematic invasive species in wetlands across North America. And it's a problem because it's so incredibly dense and tall.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Karin Kettenring is an ecologist with Utah State University. She says this reed came to the U.S. more than a hundred years ago.
KETTENRING: It was used as packing material - the original Styrofoam. You saw those big, puffy seed heads, and they were probably used in shipping.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Once it takes hold, it spreads, crowding everything else out.
KETTENRING: It's problematic in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, in the upper Midwest, where we have a huge amount of wetlands, in Minnesota and Illinois and, you know, throughout that whole area.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: It's bad in California and, of course, in Utah, where she works and where marshes are literally an oasis in the desert for migrating birds. She says what birds want is a diverse habitat, with different kinds of seeds and bugs to munch on, not endless phragmites. So land managers spend lots of time and money to battle it back. The trouble is it has this really deep and complicated root system.
KETTENRING: And to be able to reach that when you're trying to kill the plant, the only way to get down there is herbicide.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: That means poisoning vast areas of wetlands, leaving tons of dead stalks that have to be burned or mowed. What's left is a blank slate of mud.
KETTENRING: Which is the perfect habitat for phragmites to come right back in.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: She says what's really needed is research to figure out how to quickly get native plants back in there. I joined her team as they visited some experimental plots in Utah's Howard Slough waterfowl management area. This huge marsh is next to the great Salt Lake. It's crisscrossed with water channels and dikes. We drive on top of those dikes through a world of phragmites, passing waterways filled with ducks, egrets, a heron. When the car stops, we put on waders.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER SLOSHING)
GREENFIELDBOYCE: I can tell this is going to be fun.
KETTENRING: It's right here (laughter).
GREENFIELDBOYCE: We muck across a muddy field to reach their experiments.
HAILEY MACHNIKOWSKI: This area has been treated for multiple years for phragmites management.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Hailey Machnikowski is a graduate student. She says getting seeds to take root and grow is hard when water conditions can change a lot.
MACHNIKOWSKI: You would think, with a wetland and water being the defining feature, that you can plan to have consistent water when we find that that's not the case.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: So she scattered seeds from more than 20 native species. You can't buy this seed mix in a store. The researchers had to gather them by hand from wild plants, ranging from ones that like to grow up out of the water to ones that are resistant to drought.
MACHNIKOWSKI: Basically hoping that something within that mix is going to match what the conditions are. So you'll have some native vegetation re-establishing regardless of what the hydrologic conditions are.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Normally, when land managers try to reseed wetlands, they might use, like, five kinds of seeds. Plus, they typically put out seed in the spring. Montana Horchler has been testing the effect of seeding the ground in the late summer and fall, too.
MONTANA HORCHLER: So every two weeks, we come out here and we do visual estimations of cover by species.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Some seeds they've tried have been a bust, but others are doing surprisingly well, like a native plant called pickleweed, also a type of beggartick with bright yellow flowers. Later on, Karin Kettenring told me that restoration efforts at this site give her some hope that recovery after phragmites is possible.
KETTENRING: For the first time, we were seeing a much higher diversity of native species re-establishing. We literally had not ever achieved that before.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This is just one small place. Scaling up what they're trying in Utah would be a challenge, like getting growers to produce all the seeds needed for various parts of the country. Still, she thinks this approach is the way forward because, as satisfying as it may be, killing phragmites is just the start of restoring native habitats for the birds. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEAN CARNE SONG, "VISIONS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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