Invasive Species Effect On The Environment

On April 29th, I completed a volunteer service with EarthCorps at LaVilla Meadows in North Seattle. The organization is dedicated to improve the forests and parks in local cities. LaVilla Meadows is the restoring target for this time. In order to help create healthy forests, volunteers are asked to remove aggressive weeds, maintain areas where these weeds have been removed, or plant trees and shrubs. In this volunteer service, we were mainly responsible for getting rid of English Ivy, an invasive species in the area. Currently, a large proportion of the lands and trees in LaVilla Meadows are covered by English Ivy, making the area looks sole and dead. To eliminate vines that either cover the ground or twine around the trees, we either pulled them up by hand or used
Also, it is not enough just to remove the parts that stay above the ground. We also needed to pull out the rooted portions, which are the most important parts of the plants. They are still alive if their roots stay under the soil, and they can regrow vigorously. After the plant is completely pulled out, we stacked them into hills and used them as fertilizers when they dry out in the future. To better understand what I have done in volunteer service, it is helpful to understand two questions: what are invasive species and how do invasive species effect environment?
An invasive species is a type of species that is not native to a certain place and it has a tendency to spread uncontrollably to an extent that affects the local environment negatively. In this case, English Ivy is defined as an invasive species in Pacific Northwest, a region where Seattle is located in. English ivy is an evergreen climbing vine that natively ranges in Europe and western Asia. It “attaches to the bark of trees, brickwork, and other surfaces