Kansas City WildLands Sites
About Kansas City WildLands Sites
With the ongoing challenge of controlling invasive plants in native habitats, along roadsides, on working lands, yards, around businesses, schools, and in parks, we can all use some good news!
We hope that in reading these stories, you will have an added spring in your step as you carry your lopers, backpack sprayer, or other control tools to your work site. Many thanks to MoIP Associate and City WildLands Program Manager Hunter Moore for contributing the success story below.
The Kansas City metro area is home to stunning landscapes, wide prairies, sunny woodlands, shaded forests, and rich wetlands. Bridging The Gap’s Kansas City WildLands (KCWL) program is a coalition of resource professionals, private conservation organizations, and conservation-minded citizens that works to preserve and restore the healthiest and most diverse of these ecosystems in the area—public lands that are open for all to enjoy.
Kansas City WildLands has been battling invasive plants throughout the Kansas City metro for 25+ years. Restoration is a tortoise and the hare situation—slow and steady often wins the race. By using a variety of management tools including volunteer outreach, prescribed fire, and cut-stump treatments, this year, several remnant native ecosystems are really “showing out” after last year’s efforts.
Kansas City WildLands has many invasive plant control volunteer opportunities. To learn more, visit Volunteer – Bridging the Gap.
Enjoy the success story photos and remember what you do makes a difference!
Great spangled fritillary purple milkweed Hunter Moore KC Wildlands
Great spangled fritillary butterflies (Argynnis [Speyeria] cybele) nectar on purple milkweed (Asclepias purpurascens) in an area cleared of bush honeysuckle.
Trillium Hunter More KC Wildlands
The trillium population, as well as other spring ephemerals, are becoming denser and denser as more bush honeysuckle is cleared from this mesic woodland.
A riparian woodland recently cleared of bush honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) responded enormously to management—this bluebell (Mertensia virginica) is the first to sprout in the area for almost a decade, and it came back all by itself.
A red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) superbloom in an area that was burned a few months prior, opening up the area and seed bank to thrive.