The Central Westcoast Forest Society welcomed locals and visitors to a community planting day event at Ucluelet’s Big Beach Park on Saturday.
The society is tackling Japanese Knotweed in the area using a three-year herbicide approach to get rid of the invasive species and promote native plant growth, according to CWFS staffer Emily Grubb.
“We’re now doing some planting to help bring back in some of the native shrubs that the japanese knotweed took over and celebrating the first steps in this three year project,” she told the Westerly News at the event.
“Japanese Knotweed, over the past few years here, has outcompeted all of our slow growing native trees and shrubs…That’s why we’re here planting them in hopes that they can grow up big and strong now that the Knotweed is starting to die back.”
She added it was exciting to see community members come out to participate.
“We wanted to invite the community to this event today because Big Beach Park is something that is right in the heart of the community,” she said. “I’m sure everybody in town uses it so it’s good to come out here and give back to the area where people live, hang out and play.”