Jane Hargreaves

Partial Transcript: My name is Jane Hargreaves, and I'm an invasive plant specialist. I started working here at the Humphrey Farm on invasives the fall of 2013, back when we had huge chainsaw-sized plants all through the area. And we're finally down to just the handful and follow-up to clean up this entire bog and river area.

Partial Transcript: I've been doing invasive removal for sixteen years. Before that, I was in the nursery industry and saw that plants that I had been buying and selling to my clients were popping up in the woods, which was bad news. I knew they were from Asia. And my attention shifted into cleaning up the damage being done by invasive species.

Partial Transcript: Well, a lot of the invasives were brought to this country because they look pretty. What they do, though, is they have no natural predators in the U.S. So they take off and take over, and they crowd out the natives, and they totally change the environmental quality. And we're trying to restore that quality here

Partial Transcript: Well, I'm an invasive contractor. And I do work with federal, state, conservancies, several different places. This project started with—I had already done the work in the Forest Service, which adjoins. And Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy, who's now Conserving Carolina, hired me to work this John Humphrey property. And that was, like I say, was in 2013. And I've grown very fond of the land and the family, and so I just keep going [laughs 0:02:15].

Partial Transcript: Well, invasive removal is a forevermore thing. The seed is prolific on a lot of these invasives, so it will continue coming into this land. What we're trying to do is to get it cleaned up, so we're not producing seed ourselves here. But there will be continuous follow-up, forevermore, to keep the seedlings out, so it doesn't re-infest.

Partial Transcript: Oh. It greatly increases the quality of the forests, the bog. It brings it back into the natural balance that it was supposed to be rather than a totally different, alien world. And everybody's happier. The bugs, the fish, the turtles, everyone is happier.

Partial Transcript: Well, along the rivers—the invasive plants like to travel corridors, often, because the birds travel corridors. The seed's carried by the water. So when these seeds embed along the creek edge, it can totally crowd out the creek. For instance, multiflora rose will get huge and bushy, and it will totally cover the creek. So there is not good flow. The silt builds up there. It just turns into a very unhealthy situation.

Partial Transcript: This is a very important thing to be doing, and it's even more important that other landowners realize that this is a problem. Most people don't understand that—okay, it's nice and green out there; it means it's good and healthy—and don't realize that these are invasive species, mostly, from Asia. So once they realize this, then it's time to really get in there and do something about it. This awareness has increased, probably, as the invasives have increased. And there are more and more people. There's organizations focusing on this. There are many companies, now, or sole proprietors, that have made this their livelihood. And the nice thing is, it's also our passion. So there is a wonderful net of people helping people to clean up the land.