Invasive plants are a major issue in Hastings, causing structural damage, crowding out native plants, destroying ecosystems, and being a general nuisance. Using funding from a HoH Youth Climate Action Fund micro-grant, we addressed the problem of invasive plants in Hastings by raising awareness and boosting community removal efforts.

We decided to accomplish our goal in multiple ways: we created a crowdsourced map of invasive plants in Hastings, a website to hold that map and other information about invasives, and are organized an invasive removal session in an area highlighted as having a large amount of invasives pressure according to the data.

We created the map through a crowdsourced effort, reaching out to the Hastings community to gather data, with the help and support of Haven Colgate, chair of the Hastings Conservation Commission. The website is currently in progress, and will be made public in October. We conducted an invasive removal session on October 5th, 2024.

Process

• Throughout the summer, we worked on planning how to create the map, figuring out how we would collect the data, and creating a program to turn it all into a comprehensive map, dealing with some technological setbacks. Eventually, in several communications sent out to the Hastings community, we spread the word about our project, and began collecting data. We included this list of common invasive species in our communications to assist people in their scouting. 

• After closing submissions, we worked over the course of several weeks to incorporate the data and complete the map, and it took additional work to perfect it. We then began working on our website. We’ve registered and bought a domain name, and hired a professional website designer to help us. The will be complete in October and will remain up for a year, showcasing the map and other helpful information about invasive plants.

• Drawing from the data in the map, we planned an invasive plant removal session on the aqueduct, in a section shown to have a large amount of invasives. The event took place on October 5th.

• We will continue accepting any submissions to the map in the future, and continue updating it to fill in more and more data.

Outputs, Outcomes, and Impacts

We sent out our original email to gather data to a total of 322 people, and collected a total of 50 data points to include in the map.

We have reached a very wide audience for our project, spreading awareness about invasive plants in Hastings. Outreach has included:

• An email from the chair of the Hastings Conservation Commission to the Hastings conservation community to collect data

• A mayor’s message sent out to the entire village about the YCAF micro-grant projects

• A news article published in the Rivertowns Dispatch about the YCAF grants that included our project

Once the website was finished, we publicized it to drive traffic to the site and map, so that more people can learn about invasive plants and see where they are in Hastings. 

The invasive plant removal session helped make a bit of a dent in the problem, and hopefully inspired people to do more removal work with use of the map. We showcased the invasive plant map we created as a helpful tool, and our hope is that it will continue to be used by as many people as possible.