Missourians Making a Difference: Interview with Roxie Campbell

February 3, 2025 | Missourians Making a Difference

Missourians Making a Difference: Interview with Roxie Campbell

Throughout Missouri, many individuals are making significant progress in the early detection and control of invasive plants. MoIP is pleased to highlight their efforts. 

Rock Bridge Memorial State Park Naturalist Roxie Campbell took time out of her busy schedule to describe her work. Enjoy!

Callery Pear, Roxie Campbell, 12-13-16, by Lynne Hooper,
Callery Pear, Roxie Campbell, 12-13-16, by Lynne Hooper

How long have you been at Rock Bridge, and what is your professional background?

I have enjoyed a 38.5-year career with Missouri State Parks. I’ve been the park naturalist at Rock Bridge Memorial State Park for the last 33 years. Missouri State Parks are by definition, places that are “the finest examples of Missouri’s natural (and cultural) landscapes.” It’s great to work at such a place and to have a mission to take care of this park’s resources and help people understand and experience them. 

After I earned a B.S. in forestry from the University of Missouri, I worked at a historic site, Prairie State Park, and then at Rock Bridge, focusing on its caves, so it would seem I landed far from forestry! However, Rock Bridge has forests and woodlands, and my degree gave me a good foundation for furthering my love of and care for nature.

What are your responsibilities related to invasive plants?

In my early years at the park, I was just learning about invasive plants and began treating bush honeysuckle with the help of a few park volunteers, but as the problem of invasive plants increased, so did my time devoted to controlling them.

In recent years, I have supervised the park’s stewardship crew—a small group of seasonal employees, mostly college students, who work primarily during the summer months to control invasive plants and carry out other natural resource stewardship. I have found it important when interviewing candidates to look for individuals who care about nature, are familiar with physical labor and things like ticks, and can describe differences in leaf shapes. 

How do you keep staff and seasonal employees motivated when working on invasive plants?

It’s important to help them understand the threat that invasive plants pose to our ecosystem and show them what’s at stake—the wonderful diversity of native plants and wildlife that we currently have. I impress upon them that protecting the biodiversity of native species really does depend on them—that they and their summer at the park are links in a long chain of people who have worked hard to protect this special place. 

It can be discouraging to see how many invasives are present, so I show them areas where we have had success and give them realistic goals. We divide a large area into sections and cover them one by one so the overall goal is not overwhelming.

Over the years, I’ve learned other ways to keep crews motivated. I like to show employees how much their work means to me by taking the time to go out with them and show them the results I am looking for. It also helps them to be part of a crew and to have a crew leader. 

Still, the work can be mundane and uncomfortable (heat, ticks, etc.), so we adjust to the weather and mix it up as much as we can. Typically, the crew is out in the sun during the cooler morning hours, then go to the shade of the woods in the afternoon. This also provides a change of scenery and a change of the methods from backpack sprayer in the sunny grasslands to cutting woody invasives in the woods.

Within a work area, the crew leader gives each person a portion defined by landmarks or flagging so that each feels a sense of responsibility and ownership for his or her area. Spreading out like this also prevents employees’ exposure to drift, if spraying. At the end of each day, there’s a verbal check-in and a record sheet is filled out which helps to provide a sense of accomplishment.

As the summer wears on, we change the scenery and tasks even more. We’ll walk creeks and roadsides where the crew gets to learn new species of invasives such as Johnson grass, teasel, and perilla mint. What seems to be most rewarding for crew members is experiencing the very flora and fauna they are working to protect, things like seeing a turtle and identifying a native flower that is new to them.

Please share one of your favorite invasive plant control success stories.

I like to think of invasive plant control throughout the entire park, all 2,273 acres of it, as my success story, although the victory is only partial. I think of the park as a cancer patient who has received treatment and is in remission. Using this analogy, I remember when we performed surgery to remove a large tumor (cut a big patch of large bush honeysuckles) and returned a couple of years later to provide chemo (spot spraying the leaves of scattered small bush honeysuckles) in that area. We didn’t stop the cancer entirely; it had spread to other locations, but we followed up with MRI scans (hiking to find invasive plants) and treating each area with surgery and/or chemo.  Complications arose (new invasive species were found) so we brought in additional medical staff (increased our seasonal staffing and used the best equipment). Volunteers search the large acreage and pull small bush honeysuckle plants along the way or adopt an area to work in whenever they have time. Some areas of the body (burn units of the park) have received radiation treatments (prescribed fire) to knock out invasive plants hiding here or there. Unlike medical radiation, instead of having negative side effects, fire is a natural process that provides added health benefits to keep our patient’s immune systems functioning well. Health is a relative thing. We can’t say that our patient (park) is in perfect health. It still needs check-ups and follow-up treatments, but it is alive and functioning ecologically.   

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