Removing invasive plants is a slow and personal process for the gardener who owns the land where the invasives grow or who tends the land in trust for the community.  We move one plant at a time, cutting or pulling, building piles of debris, and dragging them away for removal to some place where they can't pose a threat to the local biota.  We gather as we cut so that fallen leaves cannot impair the pH of the soil or slip away and grow anew in cleared soil.

This is difficult and time-consuming work.  Even if we set daily or weekly goals for removing invasives, we can look beyond those goals to all the other invasive plants and wonder if we will ever get ahead.  We can wonder, as some volunteers do, if we'd be better of with machinery that could rip out the invasives or if we'd be better off using herbicides.

Considering the scale of the damage invasive plants have caused, these are more than fair questions.  Working at Flanders Nature Trust and Land Preserve, my first thought is that our work can teach others about how to remove invasives from their land and what to look for in terms of plant diversity once they do.  We need to teach others to train their eyes that they might better understand what they see.  

My second thought is that herbicides have a role in controlling invasives, but using herbicides required us to have trained, ethical people using the poison in the most effective, least destructive to the natural environment way possible.

All of this is to say our actions must reflect a respect for the big picture--one we can't fully see and don't fully understand.  So we need to stay humble as we take action, take note, and reflect.  We are not clear-cutting invasives to make room for native plants; we are removing invasives from land where native plants are ready and willing to thrive.  Our job is to clear the way.  It's work.  It's hard work.  It's also the necessary work that connects us with others up and down the food web, so there is nothing better for us to do than this.