CORNISH -- Every sticky summer morning, Amanda Czechowski puts on her boots and grabs a 12-pound "weed wrench," then heads into the woods to hunt killer plants.
Once she finds her prey, she shows no mercy.
"Whenever I do this, I have to be really vigilant to make sure I don't leave any of the root behind," said the 20-year-old Czechowski.
It's not that she hates plant life. In fact, she's pursuing a degree in environmental science at her college in Syracuse, N.Y. But the types of seedlings Czechowski searches for each day are choking the life out of New Hampshire's native fauna, and as an intern at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, her job is to prevent that destruction from happening.
Her nemesis is the Berberis thunbergii, or "Japanese Barberry." It is a thorny bush native to central China that can grow fast, thick and in low light, making it extremely adaptable and a huge problem for native wildlife.
It overwhelms forested areas and overtakes native plants on which deer and other mammals feed. Even worse, its bright red berries make it an attractive lunch for birds, which then spread the seed far and wide through their droppings.
For all these reasons, the Japanese Barberry is considered an "invasive species" in New Hampshire. The term "invasive" applies to non-native plants or insects that have become established in a new area, thrived in the absence of natural biological controls and begun out-competing native species. Invasive species can have devastating impacts on an ecosystem, eliminating food sources for native animals and insects and requiring intense control measures from foresters.
On January 1, 2007, the Japanese Barberry, "Burning Bush" and "Norway Maple" tree will join a list of 18 upland plant species banned for cultivation or sale in New Hampshire.
The catch is that the Japanese Barberry and Burning Bush are both popular ornamental yard plants, and the nurseries that sell them are more than a little reluctant to let them go.
"Both of them are very popular and, the Burning Bush in particular, will be tough to replace," said Dennis Kathan, owner of Kathan Gardens in Newport. "Nothing fills the bill like (the Burning Bush). It can take a lot of shade, and few other things can do that. There really is nothing that is going to replace it."
State efforts to control invasive species are relatively new, beginning after 1999 when the federal government passed legislation requiring all states to evaluate their invasive species problems and take immediate action for regulation. In response, New Hampshire's Department of Agriculture established a committee of representatives from various state agencies and interests to handle monitoring and enforcement.
The committee looked to "prohibited species" lists from 14 other states to get started and then, applying five criteria to each plant, figured out which ones New Hampshire would ban, according to Doug Cygan, an entomologist for the state and the invasive species committee chairman. Then there were public hearings and gathering comments from nurseries, all of which was taken into consideration in generating the initial list of 18 plants.
Enforcing it would prove to be another matter.
"There's only a couple of us doing field work, so it's difficult," Cygan said. "But the nurseries are aware of this, so it's been effective."
The troublemakers have been the big box stores, some of whom have blatantly ignored the ban, Cygan said. As an example, he pointed to an incident with Home Depot two years ago when he found the retail giant selling a prohibited species of honeysuckle.
After visiting Home Depot stores throughout the state, Cygan found 16 of them in violation of the new state law. He contacted the store's corporate offices about the problem, whose representatives said they would resolve it immediately.
"After two weeks, they still hadn't taken care of the problem," Cygan said.
Store managers were largely oblivious to the concerns and Cygan decided to take action. He fined the company $1,000 per store -- $16,000 in all -- for the violations. If he sees it again, Cygan said the fine will be $1,000 per plant, which could mean "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in penalties.
Home Depot Spokesman Yancey Casey blamed one of Home Depot's suppliers, who he said was aware of the rules but chose to ignore them. Casey said they have since removed the prohibited species from their shipment orders.
"It was really a mistake and we took steps to dispose of the plants as set forth by the Attorney General's office," Casey said.
The Claremont Home Depot on Washington Street had not yet been opened when those violations occurred and so was not among the penalized stores. Although it sold Japanese Barberrys at one time, the Claremont Home Depot has since stopped receiving all three species to be banned next year, according to Duane Churchill, a garden sales associate at the store.
Last year, the Claremont store lost over 100 Barberrys after someone alerted them it might be an invasive species, Churchill said. They quarantined the shipment, and by the time they were done investigating the matter, nearly all the plants had wilted.
Still, Churchill said he thinks most of the concerns are overstated and said managing invasive species should be left to the professionals.
"Personally, I think the government should just keep out of it," Churchill said. "Let the nursery business manage the nursery business. We are the ones who know what we are doing."
Kathan has around 15 Burning Bushes in stock and 50 or so Barberrys at his Newport nursery. He said he is not worried about selling off the rest of his stock, but the temptation to keep selling them up until the Dec. 31 deadline is very real. One wholesaler in Pennsylvania, where the plants are still legal, even sent out a memo this month to New Hampshire nurseries asking them if they wanted fresh supplies, he said.
"They were giving us one last shot to buy up and sell as many as we can," Kathan said.
That many of these species are decorative home landscaping plants has been, perhaps, the most significant challenge to combating them. The Norway Maple and Japanese Barberry were brought to the country in the late 1800s for that purpose, according to the Department of Agriculture. Even the famed sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, whose Cornish property is now infested with invasive plants, shares some of the responsibility.
Saint-Gaudens brought the Japanese Tree Lilac, which is not yet on the invasive list, to his Cornish home around the turn of the century, according to Steve Walasewicz, a Natural Resource Manager at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. The species has since spread uncontrolled throughout the forested grounds and, like the Barberry, begun choking out native plants. Walasewicz said they have removed "thousands" of them.
"I think it's invasive here," Walasewicz said of the Lilac. "I don't think there's any question about how it impacts the species here."
Czechowski's internship only lasts until mid-August, during which time she'll pull up as many Barberrys as she can. So far, she's removed about 1,300. But both she and Walasewicz admit to a certain feeling of Sisyphusian-futility as they scour the grounds, ripping up plants as nurseries continue to sell them.
Hopefully, that will change next year and foresters can start gaining ground, Walasewicz said. In the meantime, they'll take it one seedling at a time.
"It's difficult to see when we're out shopping and see a Norway maple," Walasewicz said. "Here we are trying to remove it and they're still selling it. It's a little bit frustrating, but it's their legal right."