I arrive on a red-eye, it’s 2:30 AM in Anchorage, Alaska, 15 hours after my departure from Nashville International Airport. Through my blurried bloodshot vision I can see below what looks like a combination of clouds, waves, and glaciers in a never-fully-dusk dimness. The horizon is a dull rainbow….

Flying into Anchorage

My adventure began with a fantastically interesting week of training in Anchorage with fellow EPMT (exotic plant management team) members of Alaska, many of them SCA’s (Check out thesca.org for conservation oriented internships!). Plant identification, surveying techniques, and GIS/GPS use were topics of training, and we got first hand experience working with employees from the National Park Service regional office and the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Justin Fulkerson describes how to collect a specimen for future identification at UAA.

Before we knew it, we were all experts at plant identification and we were off to our respective parks, mine being the largest national park in the Unites States at over 13 million acres, Wrangell-St.Elias. The park gets its name from two of the four mountian ranges that exist within the park, and many of the Wrangell peaks were once active volcanoes. Today only Mount Wrangell, classified as a shield volcano, remains active.

Though it is located outside the park boundary, Matanuska Glacier was a beautiful sight to see as we made our way back from Anchorage to Wrangell-St.Elias.

This week we’ve started mapping and spraying some of the invasives around the administrative areas of the park, hoping to catch most of the plants before they have a chance to seed. We caught many, but those guys are sneaky, so we’ll have to keep an eye out the whole season to catch more.

Peter Frank doing his part to help keep the invasives in check!

One of the prevalent non-native plants at Wrangell-St.Elias, common plantain (Plantago major), breaking its way through asphalt into existence. The blue color is from dye used in the herbicide solution, making the plants easier to see after they’ve been sprayed.

We’ve just begun the fight against the evil invasives here at the park this season, but we’re ready to wrangle!