I just took a call from a woman named Jane in the Harlan Hills area who is concerned about weeds, garlic mustard in particular, spreading from the Seminole Trails to other neighboring natural areas. She contacted me because Good Oak has done some natural areas restoration work for both the City of Fitchburg and her neighborhood association.
This woman had spoken to the City of Fitchburg Forester/Naturalist Anna Healy about this issue. Jane was interested in some sort of bike wash station or boot scrubber that might help reduce the spread of weed seeds. I suggested that the compliance with using these methods would probably be low and the infrastructure for a bike wash station would be substantial (but a boot scraper and some signage about spreading invasive plants might not be bad). I tried to steer her towards having neighborhood volunteers pull garlic mustard along the trail as the most practice initial.
I don't know that anything is going to come of it, I just wanted to send the a heads-up that people are concerned.
