Pennsylvania is losing wildlife habitat to invasive plants at an alarming rate. Some species from other continents reproduce rapidly, displacing native plant communities and the animals that rely on them.

Once a population of invasive plants establishes itself along a waterway, it easily spreads downstream during high water as seeds. Once these plants begin to dominate the buffer areas of stream corridors, they affect stream shading, pollution filtering, erosion, flooding and the stream's natural food chain.

Bucktail Watershed Association, covering the Driftwood Branch and First Fork of the Sinnemahoning Creek, has declared war on invasive plants. Members recently teamed with the State Agriculture Department to battle mile-a-minute vine, a thorny annual vine whose growth rate is tremendous. Members pulled vines in Sinnemahoning State Park and sprayed herbicide under state guidance below Wharton and at the mouth of Big Nelson Run.

Bucktail Watershed Assn. members have joined the fight against invasive plants along area waterways. They're volunteering their services to cut, pull and spray the fast-growing species.

Later, six members took the battle to one of our worst invasive plants, Japanese knotweed. That large, hollowstemmed plant forms dense thickets up to ten feet high. Locally, it's known by many as Moody cow feed.

Japanese knotweed was carried up into the Quehanna Wild Area by careless PennDOT road maintenance activities on Wykoff Run Road and through infected soil in 2004 when riprap was placed following Hurricane Ivan. In many locations it is growing on the banks of Wykoff Run. Bucktail Watershed Association hopes to eradicate this plant before it spreads downstream through Wykoff Run.

Volunteers cut down about 20 knotweed colonies using machetes and brush axes. The group will be coordinating efforts with the Elk State Forest District to apply herbicide to these knotweed colonies when they re-sprout in the coming weeks. Subsequent herbicide applications are planned for next year, as well, to kill off the root systems.

More recently, the Bucktail group moved on to West Creek, near the mouth of Towner Run. A large population of purple loosestrife -- a beautiful lavender colored invasive wetland flower that is illegal to grow on your property -- took root in a wetland there.

One purple loosestrife plant alone can produce 100,000 seeds. Once established, the species can dominate wetland areas within a few years.

Bucktail volunteers pulled purple loosestrife plants and cut flower heads in order to prevent seed production. They're hoping this isolated population can be eradicated before it spreads to infest the Driftwood Branch watershed.