Bye-bye buckthorn
Stories this photo appears in:
Bye-bye buckthorn
As part of their invasive species study, James Williams Middle School's Mark Jacobson and Kim Bowman's eighth-grade students got hands-on removing buckthorn from the school's woods late last month. Buckthorn is an invasive species that chokes out native plants and spreads quickly. The students learned about the plant, saw the density and worked on removing it. The classes will work on this each year in hopes of managing the plant. In the first two hours they removed 85 pounds of buckthorn and Jacobson said he expected they would easily surpass their goal of a couple hundred pounds."It's a nice way to incorporate getting outside and having the kids connect with it live rather than just studying it in the classroom," he said. Bowman added that the students were shocked to see the density of the buckthorn.
