The Marion Lake Story follows several years of a community’s efforts to get rid of an invader. Phragmites australis, a common reed of American wetlands, had overtaken Marion Lake on Long Island, New York. The highly invasive plant had grown very dense, sometimes reaching heights of nearly 4 m. Over 30 years, this species gradually formed a monoculture around the lake, choking the lakeshore and threatening to eliminate its rich ecological diversity.
Lori Luscher, a resident of the lake area and president of the committee to save the lake, wrote a grant request to the Department of Environmental Conservation to eradicate the nuisance reed. People in the community were skeptical and had lots of questions, but they established a goal to get rid of the phragmite and fill the wetlands around the lake with native vegetation so that wildlife would return to the ecosystem. The path toward rehabilitation posed...
University of California Press