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The Role of Roadside Managers
Bonnie Harper-Lore
Highway corridors crisscross North America, connecting neighboring parkland, farmland, and your land. Totaling over 12 million acres in the U.S. alone, the rights-of-way that border the highway pavement are highly disturbed landscapes, beginning with the original construction and continuing with upgrades, mowing, spraying, snowplowing, grading, and the placement of signs and utility lines. The plants likely to establish on disturbed lands are invasive. And so highway agencies across the country are often blamed for increasing the spread of invasive plants.
Native wildflowers planted along the Taconic State Parkway in New York delight travelers and provide food and shelter for wildlife.
State departments of transportation (DOTs) do bear some of the responsibility, because they became a conduit for invasives by often relying on plants perceived as problem solvers. During construction, the quick establishment of groundcover to stabilize slopes and ditches is a critical concern. Revegetation not only controls erosion but also minimizes runoff and sedimentation of nearby waters. When highway departments began revegetation they adopted an agricultural approach, routinely using mixes of legumes and grasses. What we did not know then was that many of these easy-to-grow and quick-establishing problem solvers would soon become invasive. During the past few decades, transportation policy and lessons learned from the 1970s energy crunch have encouraged an ecological approach to vegetation management, including the planting of native species along roadsides.
While it has become clear that invasive plants should no longer be used, finding alternate problem solvers has not been easy. Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants is designed to provide DOTs, as well as other land managers, designers, and gardeners, with a range of regionally native alternatives.