Browse Invasive Species Stories - Page 4

As outdoor enthusiasts start making their pack lists for spring camping trips, it’s a good time to think about what shouldn’t be taken on camping ventures: invasive species.

Daniel Hillel, the 2012 World Food Prize Laureate and a 1950 graduate of the University of Georgia, spent the better part of his career perfecting arid- land farming methods in Israel and sharing them with farmers across the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia. On Nov. 8, Hillel will return to Athens to deliver the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences’ 2012 D.W. Brooks Lecture at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education.

A new insect thought to threaten Georgia's pepper production at the moment poses a greater danger to lantana - a popular landscape plant.

Goats and sheep have a reputation for eating vegetation that most other grazing animals would not touch. This trait makes them invaluable to people who need to raise livestock in tough climates, but it’s also made them popular for landowners who need to clear brush or invasive plants from overgrown parcels.

The Conserve Research Program helps landowners protect their land – a precious natural resource. But landowners can’t participate if they don’t know about the program.

The University of Georgia Grounds Department, in collaboration with several UGA colleges and departments interested in the potential of a novel invasive plant management strategy, has enlisted the help of a shepherd and her small sheep herd to improve access to a major waterway that runs through the UGA campus in Athens.

From Burmese pythons to Nile monitors, exotic reptiles are a growing problem in Florida, where they destroy fragile ecosystems. A University of Georgia center in Tifton, Ga., recently developed an iPhone application for a fast, accurate way to identify the invasive animals.

This spring marks the fifth year that the Georgia Cogongrass Task Force has been educating landowners and land managers about the risk cogongrass, a highly invasive Federal Noxious Weed, poses to our forests, roadsides, fields and natural areas across the state.

Florida weather is not just a tourist attraction for humans. Large constrictor snakes, like the Burmese python, find the state very comfortable, too.

For decades, non-native invasive species have caused billions of dollars in damage in the United States alone. Many are well known, such as the Asian longhorned beetle or kudzu. Others are less famous. A University of Georgia center will create an online video resource to train people to learn more about the invaders and what can be done to stop them.