May is Invasive Species Month in B.C and the Coastal Invasive Species Committee is looking for help in finding and tracking invasive plants.
Executive Director Rochelle McElroy says there is an app to help track and report invasive species.
“Because your phone has an internal GPS, the location where you see the plant, you can take a picture, upload it to the Report A Weed app and then that goes to the province, where it’s verified.”
“If it’s one of our priority plants, then it goes into our database, we extract data from that to create our work plan for the year,” she says.
McElroy notes it’s also important to make sure you’re not adding invasive species to your yard as the gardening season gets underway.
She notes many native plants will have the same qualities you might be looking for, without posing a potential risk to the environment.
