[00:00:00] Michael Hawk: Hey, Michael here. As I was putting this episode together, I couldn't help but think of a time about 12 years ago. I had no idea that the beautiful photo that I shared with my friends actually captured a devastating scene.

[00:00:12] Now, it showed a field of dense yellow flowers with vibrant green leaves. mirrored by the equally lush green hills in the distance, some of which were actually dusted with snow. I was new to California at the time, and I thought maybe this was one of those famed super blooms.

[00:00:27] But it turns out those mustard flowers were newcomers too, at least on an ecological time scale. But these newcomers were harming the environment in ways that the untrained eye could not see.

[00:00:39] Emelie Swackhamer: , humans move things around a lot and we're good at moving things that we don't intend to move because we're so mobile.

[00:00:45] Griff Griffith: That's Emelie Swackhammer, a recently retired extension educator for Penn State University And she's not talking about how deciding to move your reclining chair leads to the unintended consequence of reorganizing your entire house.

[00:00:58] She's actually referring to moving living things. Maybe you went for a hike and later realized that a bunch of prickly seeds hitched a ride on your pants and shoes. Or you purchased seeds online and got something entirely unexpected. Or you moved across country and took some garden plants with you, not realizing insect eggs, fungal spores, and soil organisms hitched a ride with you. Luckily, many of these examples turn out harmless, but sometimes it can be disastrous.

[00:01:26] Carl Klarner: a word I'm going to use a lot in this conversation is liana. A liana is, is a vine after it becomes woody, you call it a liana. A lot of people refer to it as the trunks of the ivy or whatever. I mean they get huge and I have like a trophy haul of these Lianas and I take them to events and show them to people.

[00:01:45] People just can't believe that it's Ivy. They're like, that's Ivy? Ivy grows in lots of different weird ways. For example, deadfalls. So, Ivy will get up in a tree and especially if it's a deciduous tree, it'll kill the tree. The tree will fall right down and a lot of the time the ivy doesn't die and it sends out octopus arms all over the place and they in turn root and it becomes this giant monstrosity of a plant that's just spread out over like a hundred feet or more it creates its own canopy and it's, a lot of times it'll send stuff out and go up other trees that are nearby.

[00:02:22] Griff Griffith: Carl Klarner is talking about English Ivy. You know, that docile, sophisticated looking plant that crawls up the walls of Ivy League school buildings and many other college campuses across the nation. European colonists brought this plant to the United States in the 1800s, maybe even earlier , looking to replicate the familiarity of their homeland.

[00:02:41] my own Welsh and Irish ancestors brought this plant to create wreaths during the winter that they believed would ward off evil spirits.

[00:02:48] But ivy escapes the confines of campuses and estates, and now it spreads wildly throughout many parts of the USA, creating the havoc that Carl describes.

[00:02:56] In fact, hundreds of plants, animals, insects, bacteria, fungi, and even viruses get spread around the country and around the world, and when they reach their destination, they can take on new and unexpected properties, spreading out of control, and wreak havoc on the areas they colonize, just like those mustard flowers Michael described a moment ago.

[00:03:17] Maybe you heard of some of these. Let's have an invasive species roll call.

[00:03:20] Kat Hill, Laura Schare, Preston Ernest: Zebra mussel, kudzu, emerald ash borer, tumbleweed, pampas grass, Asian carp, house sparrow, wild pig, Bradford pear, spotted lanternfly, European starling, tree of heaven, Japanese beetle, Argentine ant, salt cedar, eucalyptus, glassy winged sharpshooter, European core borer. Quagga, Asian citrus psyllid, Norway rat. 

[00:03:57] Griff Griffith: Wow, I know I recognize many of those. And I know they can impact everything from food production to water supplies to native plant diversity. Even wine and baseball bats are at risk. It sounds like an invasion. And in a way, it is. It is, but as overwhelming as it may sound, it is not too late. And as you'll hear, you too can help.

Add Intro Music Here

[00:04:19] Griff Griffith: I'm Griff Griffith, and welcome to Jumpstart Nature.

[00:04:31] Dr. Sara Kuebbing: How do you define an invasive species? You could do an entire podcast or series of podcasts just on this. But my preferred definition is a species that's been introduced by humans. So 

[00:04:50] it's not a species that migrates on its own or, you know, for whatever reason. Floats somewhere just sort of by happenstance, but moved by humans and generally moved by humans across either big distances, so it makes it less likely that that species would move it on its own, or over just barriers that would be hard.

[00:05:10] A mountain range, an ocean, something that is hard for that species to cross on its own. So a human, assisted migration of a species that once it arrives in its new location, it can spread very widely on its own. So that initial movement with humans and then spreading far beyond.

[00:05:31] One thing you may hear from a lot of especially policy focused organizations add on to that definition, is that there has to be an example of a harm, an ecological harm, a human health harm, an economic harm that that species poses

[00:05:47] Griff Griffith: Dr. Sarah Kuebbing is the Director of Research, the Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program.

[00:05:53] Dr. Sara Kuebbing: I have always been interested in understanding how we manage ecosystems and how we can manage ecosystems for multiple benefits. One of those benefits that I really love is biodiversity. Protecting nature for nature, but obviously humans use ecosystems for the services and the things, the commodities that they provide as well

[00:06:13] and so figuring out how do we most responsibly use these ecosystems in a way that doesn't just take for humans, but also prioritizes and values other life forms that are using them. So that's like the big broad arc.

[00:06:26] And that's really what brought me into being really interested in invasive species.

[00:06:30] Griff Griffith: As Dr. Kibbing said, an invasive species is brought to a new location by people, sometimes purposely, as with many garden plants, and sometimes accidentally.

[00:06:40] And these plants, animals, or fungi, escape control and cause harm to our ecosystems, crops, health, or property.

[00:06:48] So no, termites and aphids usually aren't invasive species because they are native and they've developed long term complexly important roles in their environment . 

[00:06:59] Yes, they might be a bit of a pest at times. Say if those termites have turned their sights on the wood frame of your home, but in nature or even just a few feet away from your house, they are decomposing dead wood, creating soil and cycling nutrients back into the ground.

[00:07:15] Carl Karner, who you heard from earlier, has taken a special interest in English Ivy and the negative effects it's had near his home in the majestic redwoods of Northern California. He was seeing ivy destroying habitats, not only in parks and public lands, but also on private properties.

[00:07:31] Carl Klarner: listeners are probably pretty aware of, that book, Nature's Best Hope. If nature is only in these protected areas and parks, that's it. We're done, 

[00:07:41] Griff Griffith: That's Nature's Best Hope by Dr. Doug Tallamy, who we featured in our very first Jumpstart Nature episode, The Yard of the Future. 

[00:07:49] By the way, Carl is not an ecologist by training. He's a political science professor and took special interest in invasive species.

[00:07:57] Inspired to do something, Carl founded RIPE.

[00:07:59] Redwood Invasive Plant Eradicators. More on that later. Let's hear from Carl about the impacts of ivy.

[00:08:06] Carl Klarner: English Ivy, it gets on the ground and it chokes out native plants. Invasive plants are the second biggest driver of biodiversity loss , the first is obviously habitat change, but, it's pretty expensive to buy land and set it aside for nature, but it's a lot cheaper to just whack invasive plants.

[00:08:23] It's also a great way to, promote native plants.

[00:08:28] English ivy all these native plants on the ground that are super important for the ecosystem.

[00:08:34] You know, like, all the things that insects eat and, the food chain all the way up from them is being affected by the ground ivy. , And, I've seen very large pieces of forest that are just nothing but ivy. The ivy is coming up literally to your knees. It's just everywhere, and it's growing over elderberry tree, you know, it's like draped over everything, it's all up the trees.

[00:08:59] And a lot of times it kills those trees, or it at least hurts the trees, makes them less healthy. It's not just because it steals the water from the trees, but it also blocks sunlight, can act as a sail, tree can blow down.

[00:09:14] It does so many other harms too, like, it does destroy structures. Right next door to me, actually, is a giant workshop that was, it's made out of brick and concrete.

[00:09:24] The whole roof is caved in because it's got literally thousands of pounds of ivy on it.

[00:09:30] Griff Griffith: There are plenty of invasive plant species from tree of heaven to tumbleweed to Bradford pear, which by the way, doesn't even produce pears. And much of the grass growing in the Western United States. And it causes more frequent and higher intensity wildfires, threatening many other native plants and animals, such as the sage grouse.

[00:09:50] As a quick aside, I want to be clear that invasive plants are very different from what we call weeds. Weeds are simply plants growing where we don't want them.

[00:10:00] You may not want a native goldenrod growing in the cracks of your driveway. So you might consider that otherwise very beneficial plant to be a weed in that case. Invasive species reach a much more destructive level.

[00:10:11] In the case of tumbleweeds and English ivy for example, it's easy to see how they are considered invaders, with their roots and leaves spreading across an entire landscape, but sometimes the infiltrators are much smaller and easily overlooked until it is too late.

[00:10:30] Emelie Swackhamer: They're often feeding on the trunks of trees because their mouth parts at that point are pretty strong and they can pierce right through the bark of the trunks. And you'll find them in big groups. While they're feeding they're withdrawing sap out of the tree and that's you know their energy is coming from the energy of the tree, but they are inefficient in how they digest that and they pass a lot of it through their bodies and they excrete partially digested tree sap and we call that honeydew.

[00:11:02] And this honeydew, allows the sooty mold to grow. Sooty mold is a collection of different fungi, and it looks just like this black mold, and that can be on anything that's underneath these insects.

[00:11:17] Griff Griffith: Emelie Swackhammer is describing an invasive insect that has been getting a lot of attention in recent years. The Spotted Lanternfly. Despite its name, it's not a fly at all. It's a type of insect called a plant hopper, which is why it has special mouth parts that allow it to pierce tree trunks to get at the nutrient rich sap underneath.

[00:11:36] Emelie Swackhamer: And they're really quite pretty even in the nymphal stage. In the spring the eggs will start to hatch. When they hatch, the nymphs that come out of the eggs are really tiny.

[00:11:46] They're black with white spots, and then they go through four nymphal stages. So going to that fourth stage, they're, black and white but they also have red coloration on them.

[00:11:57] Their favorite host is the tree of heaven. it's Latin name is a Ailanthus altissima and that tree has a thinner bark and a smooth bark. So they can certainly pierce through that and, and that's a, uh, we call it a sentinel tree.

[00:12:12] It's a tree to be watching. If you haven't found them in your area yet, that's where you might see them first.

[00:12:18] Griff Griffith: Tree of heaven. Some people in parts of the United States would call it the tree from hell. It's an invasive species and can spread and out compete native plants easily. So maybe you're thinking, Hey, the spotted lanternfly might actually help here by, you know, eating the tree of heaven.

[00:12:34] Well, unfortunately the lanternflies are not super picky. They're like a teenager who loves potato chips, or in this case, the tree of heaven, but will gladly eat many other snacks laying around.

[00:12:45] Emelie Swackhamer: I have seen them feed on all kinds of other trees. So what comes to mind are the black walnut trees. The adults can feed on black walnut tree trunks and they will pierce through like the valley of the bark.

[00:12:57] Griff Griffith: Dr. Kibbing adds

[00:12:59] Dr. Sara Kuebbing: they're of huge concern actually to the agricultural industry because, grape growers and, and apple orchard and plum orchard growers are really concerned about the damage that they could potentially do to their crop species.

[00:13:10] Griff Griffith: the spotted lanternfly invasion is still in its early stages, it's unclear how it will evolve. Certainly, the lanternfly will continue to spread. It's currently found in roughly 17 states in the Northeast and Midwest, and as it encounters new plant species, we may discover additional negative effects.

[00:13:29] As you might imagine, states like California and Florida, with their huge citrus, grape, and wine industries, are watching closely.

[00:13:36] In previous episodes, we've talked about the importance of native plants. As a quick recap, remember that plants are the source of nearly all of the energy the animals get. And unfortunately, you and I can't photosynthesize, so we either eat plants, or we eat other things that eat plants on our behalf.

[00:14:04] Of course those plants don't want to be eaten, so they defend themselves with toxic and bad tasting chemicals or even with physical defenses like thicker bark or super sticky sap. In turn, insects develop clever workarounds like higher tolerance for those chemicals or stronger mouths to penetrate the bark.

[00:14:23] This is sometimes called the evolutionary arms race. The plants and animals keep one upping each other, but also keep each other in check, each only gaining temporary advantages and both in the long run endure.

[00:14:37] Think about how monarch butterflies are able to eat milkweeds while most other insects and mammals can't. These types of specialized relationships exist all over the insect and plant world.

[00:14:48] Every so often, an insect is accidentally introduced from another region or continent, and it turns out that they already have a taste for our local plants too. But our plants haven't needed to develop defenses for these intruders. After all, they've never seen them before.

[00:15:03] A great example of this is the Emerald Ash Borer.

[00:15:07] It's a metallic green jewel beetle from Northeast Asia that has co evolved to use ash trees as their host trees. In other words, the emerald ash borer eats those Asian ash trees, but since they evolved together, neither the Asian ash trees nor the emerald ash borer have a particular advantage. They keep each other in check.

[00:15:27] Jumping over to North America, it turns out we have different kinds of ash trees, but they are closely related to those in Asia. And it just so happens that the emerald ash borer is able to eat American ash trees just fine.

[00:15:41] And as beautiful as those beetles are, their appetites can have devastating consequences.

[00:15:46] How so? For that, we'll need a quick biology detour. It's fascinating stuff, though, I promise.

[00:15:52] burrow beneath the bark to feed on the nutritious and sugary layers of the tree, called the phloem and cambium.

[00:16:00] The phloem is where sugars and nutrients are transported in the tree, and the cambium is an important source of cell growth. If these layers sound important for the tree, it's because they are.

[00:16:10] The ash borers meander under the bark, creating tunnels. And if enough borers are feeding on a tree, they can totally encircle the trunk of the tree, cutting off the flow of nutrients to the points higher in the tree. This is called girdling, and once this occurs, the tree will be dead in a few years.

[00:16:27] American ash trees don't have defenses against this exotic insect. So these beetles are able to grow and reproduce very quickly.

[00:16:35] As a result, an estimated 100 million ash trees have been lost to this invasive species. Areas with infestations have lost as many as 99 percent of their ash trees.

[00:16:47] So this means that all of the native insects that rely on ash trees, like how the monarch relies on milkweed, are going to struggle, if not disappear entirely, decreasing biodiversity and weakening the food web.

[00:17:00] The problem with talking about biodiversity is that it's hard to see, unless you're like me, someone who closely observes nature.

[00:17:08] Ash wood is popular in furniture and cabinetry because of its strength, flexibility, and attractiveness. And the loss of these ash trees has dramatically impacted the supply of of these ash products.

[00:17:19] If you're a baseball fan, you might know that the wooden bats used in Major League Baseball have traditionally been made of white ash. It was the wood of choice because it was lightweight and had a good ability to absorb shock while still being durable.

[00:17:43] A few players use maple bats, which is a harder wood but heavier, and the shift away from ash has been accelerated because of the emerald ash borer. But how did these invasive species get here and moved around?

[00:17:54] Dr. Sara Kuebbing: generally we can lump all of these introduced species that we bring in and just sort of two broad categories. There's the species we intentionally bring in because we like them. They tend to be plants and animals.

[00:18:07] Pets, plants, animals.

[00:18:09] Griff Griffith: Like English Ivy, House Sparrows or the Burmese python, which is causing problems in the Florida Everglades.

[00:18:15] Dr. Sara Kuebbing: And then there's the things that accidentally come in, usually as like hitchhikers on boats or on wooden pallets or other things hitchhiking as we move around planes. And so on the intentional side, of these things that we want to transport. We transport live plants all the time.

[00:18:32] Griff Griffith: Organisms find countless ways to hitch a ride, nestled in the soil of the potted plants we transport, hidden among shipments of fruits and vegetables. Clinging to firewood we take to a campground or stowed away in the ballast water of boats.

[00:18:47] Take zebra and quagga mussels. reproduce at astonishing rates, altering lake chemistry. Their shells clogging waterways and vital water infrastructure. They cover beaches in dense layers once inviting shorelines nearly impassable.

[00:19:05] Seeds and pathogens can even attach to our shoes and clothing. In fact, it's believed that the fungus that has decimated bats in North America by causing white nose syndrome was first brought to North America by people who visited European caves, bringing the fungus back on their gear.

[00:19:20] Each of these examples we've talked about today have had a big impact. For example, I mentioned that we've lost a hundred million ash trees in our Eastern deciduous forests.

[00:19:30] Now consider that chestnut blight, an invasive pathogen, wiped out nearly 4 billion chestnut trees. The American chestnut was once the most abundant tree in the forest of the eastern United States and now is virtually extinct.

[00:19:43] And we've lost 80 percent of American elm trees due to an invasive fungal infection. And other invasive species are affecting beech trees, hemlock trees, oak trees, and more.

[00:19:54] Today's Eastern Forests are a far cry from what they were just a few decades ago, AND we can tell similar stories of our lakes, rivers, deserts, grasslands, you get it.

[00:20:06] Wow. If you think too hard about this, it might lead to a case of ecodepression. But I wouldn't tell you about all this unless there was some hope in something you could do to help.

[00:20:15] Dr. Sara Kuebbing: It becomes very easy to be sort of nihilistic and be like, oh, there's nothing we can do about it. And that's just not true. And, and sometimes we can do, we can have our highest impact locally. And so even if the problem is very large and we don't have control.

[00:20:29] You can still remove an invasive plant from a forest within your town.

[00:20:34] right? I used to work up in Vermont, doing a lot of invasive plant both management and sustainability stewardship of lands, but also outreach and education. And there was an aquatic plant, called water chestnut.

[00:20:44] And there was a lot of outreach efforts in sort of the Lower Lake Champlain watersheds and Lower Lake Champlain to educate people on what it looked like. And the plant sort of just floated on top of the water and you could very easily pull it out , of the water and usually remove it. And they found, , a boy scout who had done a little unit on invasive species, found a water chestnut and a bigger water body where it quickly would've spread and caused a lot of, you know, economic impact of recreation and prevention of recreation and he prevented this whole invasion because he saw it and he had learned about it and he put in his canoe and he, you know, told someone at the dock that he had found it and people went out and found a couple others and that was a prevention of an invasion all through this like very local outreach and education.

[00:21:32] Griff Griffith: And this is exactly what Carl Klarner is doing with his group called RIPE.

[00:21:36] Carl Klarner: Redwood invasive plant eradicators. We're trying to fill some unmet, needs when it comes to, plant eradication. One is, existing organizations and, and the, the. people that are focusing on invasive plant eradication are almost exclusively focusing on parks, protected areas, so we go to private properties, lot of that time is like our most effective work.

[00:22:01] Griff Griffith: Carl told us that the most return on his investment is targeting fruiting ivy.

[00:22:06] That's because many birds and some mammals will eat the fruit and then we'll poop it out somewhere. Depositing seeds in a new location.

[00:22:13] Carl Klarner: and that's how it propagates.

[00:22:14] I've almost never seen it fruit, unless it gets up into a tree or some other place that's high like a fence or stump or something and then it takes it actually quite a while to produce the berries, even when it's in that tree like something like seven years or ten years or something like that, once it starts producing those berries it it goes into a hyperdrive.

[00:22:36] It's super easy to kill if it's in the trees. You just girdle the ivy around the base, everything above it dies. So, back to how many pounds of ivy are in a tree. Like a big infestation can have 2, 000 pounds, and in like 20 minutes I can kill 2, 000 pounds of ivy.

[00:22:50] If I'm pulling it out from the ground Which is important, it is important to do that, but you're only going to get like, I don't know, 50 pounds an hour.

[00:22:59] Griff Griffith: If you have ivy on your property, you might want to remove it and definitely do not let it climb and fruit.

[00:23:07] In fact, if you have any invasive plant, remove it as soon as you can. And there are several common backyard plants, such as tree of heaven, Japanese honeysuckle, Chinese honeysuckle, bamboo, wisteria, pampa grass, jubata grass, heavenly bamboo, kudzu, scotch, broom, and purple loose strife

[00:23:24] just to name a few.

[00:23:25] But there are so many more.

[00:23:28] I wish there was a simple resource that cataloged invasive species, but there aren't any comprehensive and user friendly sources, but a great place to start is the USDA's database at www. invasivespeciesinfo. gov. It takes some digging, but you can get lists for the most common terrestrial and aquatic invasives. And they have state by state maps under the resources section of the website.

[00:23:54] We'll link to those in our show notes.

[00:23:56] And you know that amazing app, iNaturalist, that we often talk about. You can use it to help identify plants and insects.

[00:24:02] They label species that are generally agreed to be invasive, so maybe go on a backyard safari with iNaturalist to discover the invasive species on your property.

[00:24:11] Dr. Sara Kuebbing: Almost every state has university extension service

[00:24:15] researchers at the State University that almost certainly will deal with the local invasive species that are causing problems in agricultural or rangeland or forested systems.

[00:24:26] Griff Griffith: Dr. Kuebbing brings up a great point. You can contact your local extension office and just ask them about local resources or specific plants or insects in your yard.

[00:24:37] In fact, Emily Swackhammer who you've heard from throughout today's episode is a recently retired extension agent. And speaking of extension offices, if you spot a spotted lanternfly, immediately contact your extension office. If you are confident in your ability to identify them, most places in the United States recommend that you kill them on sight. Here's Emelie.

[00:24:57] Emelie Swackhamer: It's important to identify them first. So we don't want people to be freaked out by every insect, indiscriminately killing everything. It's important to know that some insects are beneficial. There's a lot of native insects.

[00:25:11] But if you're positive that it's a Spotted Lanternfly, it shouldn't be here. We do want people to kill them. So there's a variety of ways to do that. Simply getting rid of Tree of Heaven, which is their preferred host tree, it's also from Asia, can help reduce populations in that particular location.

[00:25:30] Mechanically, , small scale, fly swatters. People have used vacuums like shop vacs to suck them off the trunks of trees. We have, developed traps - modified circle traps are great and you can catch hundreds of them and protect a particular tree with a trap.

[00:25:48] And then if you really need to, you think you need to use pesticide spray, don't use home remedies. Dish soap is not an insecticide that's labeled for use. It can burn your plants. Dish soaps have degreasers, fragrances, colors, often antimicrobial products; these are all things that you don't want to use as insecticides. but you can get some really, , soft, environmentally friendly insecticides, even some of the botanical oil insecticides work pretty well against spotted lanternfly. Certainly things like insecticidal soap and horticultural spray oil And then there's neem products. There's pyrethrum, which is an extract of chrysanthemums.

[00:26:32] Griff Griffith: We have a link to how to build one of those traps Emily mentioned in our show notes. But how can we prevent hitchhiking species from getting into new territories in the first place?

[00:26:43] One way is monitoring and inspection. Virtually every boat owner already knows that they need to have their boat inspected for invasive mussels before putting it in a new body of water.

[00:26:54] but also:

[00:26:54] Emelie Swackhamer: there's a lot of things coming in our ports all the time. And the people that work at the ports to inspect the goods that are coming in are amazing. They're so well trained and, you know, they're looking all the time.

[00:27:09] But you can imagine. how difficult that is if you have a barge full of products and you're the inspector of the day.

[00:27:18] Dr. Sara Kuebbing: I just wish we would put more emphasis on monitoring systems.

[00:27:22] to both detect things early on entry or even again like prevent those hitchhikers and that's more resources.

[00:27:29] I just like to think of all the amazing things that humans have done right like we've sent people to space. Humans can actually achieve really significant things and all these things we can do and we have actually a lot of the information and knowledge we need to do it. We just have to decide that we want to invest the time and the resources.

[00:27:47] in preventing it.

[00:27:48] Griff Griffith: And much of that can start with you, whether you're thinking of taking your garden plant with you when you move to a new state or considering transporting fruits and vegetables through checkpoints.

[00:27:58] Stop and think about the possible consequences. Always buy firewood locally at the campground so you don't mistakenly transport an invasive beetle and make sure plants and seeds you buy are not invasive and from reputable sources.

[00:28:12] Help educate your friends, family, and neighbors. Maybe even suggest this podcast to them.

[00:28:18] Your local county, state, national parks often need volunteers to help remove invasive species. Get out there and lend a hand.

[00:28:24] We just scratched the surface today, but without more education and without more people who care, the things we love in nature are at risk.

[00:28:33] What did you think of today's episode and what invasive species are you concerned about in your area? We'd love to hear from you. Seriously. You can email us at podcast at jumpstart nature. com, or leave a comment on one of our social media pages. You can find us on , Facebook, and Instagram at jumpstart nature.

[00:28:51] and big thanks to Dr. Sarah Kuebbing, Emily Swackhammer, and Carl Klarner for their insights in today's episode.

[00:28:57] And remember jumpstartnature. com slash podcast has a transcript and full show notes for today's episode, including links to topics we mentioned and additional resources to help you learn more about invasive species.

[00:29:10] Michael Hawk: Jumpstart Nature was created and is produced by me, Michael Hawk. Kat Hill was our associate producer for today's episode. Miles Ewell provided sound design and our host is Griff Griffith. Thanks for listening. 

[00:29:23] Griff Griffith: do you want me to do a bunch of varied voices or are you going to have a bunch of different people?

[00:29:26] Huh, that's a good question. Um, this probably isn't what you had in mind but I'm having fun so I'm gonna go with it, zebra mussel, kudzu. Emerald Ash Borer. Tumbleweed. Pampas Grass. Actually, it probably should be Jabata Grass. Asian Carp. House Sparrow. Bradford Pear. Spotted Lanternfly. European Starling. Tree of Heaven. Japanese Beetle, Argentine Ant, Salt Cedar, Eucalyptus, Glassy Winged Sharpshooter, European Corn Borer, Quagga, norway rat.

[00:30:09] Burmese python. Burmese python

[00:30:15]