The TIP annual meeting was held on Tuesday February 18th at the Legend Lake Lodge. There were around 25 people in attendance.
TIP Coordinator Alix Bjorklund kicked the meeting off talking about all the work they accomplished over the 2019 field season. TIP treated over 120 acres of invasive species, reached over 16,000 people through outreach efforts, and completed two contracts. The main invasives plaguing the TIP area are garlic mustard, wild parsnip, honeysuckle, and buckthorn. Alix also talked about the partnership between TIP, Fox-Wolf, and Shawano County LCD to control Japanese knotweed in Shawano County. She wrapped up talking about the upcoming Citizen Based Monitoring Event being held on April 25th, 2020 at Navarino Nature Center.
 
Connecting Our Waters followed up with talking about project updates. Emily, regional Watershed coordinator, spoke about the Shawano Lake shoreline survey, the basin buzz, and the search for water quality volunteers. Anna, AIS coordinator, spoke about her outreach efforts, monitoring efforts, and the start of the purple loosestrife beetle rearing project. She also shared that the Skice Lake landing on Legend Lake is getting a decontamination station to help boaters clean the invasives from their boat.
Jeremy Johnson spoke next about the invasive species control work Menominee County has accomplished over the last twenty years. Their main focus has been common and glossy buckthorn, garlic mustard, bush honeysuckle, Japanese barberry, burning bush, autumn olive, and oriental bittersweet. Jeremy discussed how mowing road sides was a big spreader for invasives throughout Menominee County and through no mow and well timed herbicide treatments they were successful in stopping a lot of the species from continuing to spread.
Finally, Anne Pearce spoke about the tools available to citizen scientists. She discussed EDD maps as well as GLEDN maps; these apps can be used to help citizen scientists identify and report invasive species they come across. Trainings and help for these resources are available from a number of sources! Please consider using these apps to aid in the fight against AIS.
If you are unsure about identifying these plants, they offer a calendar here to help narrow it down.
For AIS questions: contact Anna
For more information on TIP and their work: contact Alix
For more information about the work being completed by Menominee County, contact Jeremy
Fore more inforation about the Wisconsin First Detector Network contact Anne