NJ pushes for native plant comeback to combat invasive species

🌼Native plants are important for the health of NJ's ecosystem

🌼One NJ lawmaker is pushing legislation that focuses on habitat rehabilitation

🌼Native plants offer so many benefits

Native plants are key to making New Jersey’s ecosystems healthy.

That’s the premise behind the legislation proposed by U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J. 11th District.

The bill is a “lead-by-example” bill, says Anjuli Ramos, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. Sherrill is a champion of encouraging federal facilities to utilize the space around them for native habitats instead of ornamental plants, which tend to be invasive.

Environmental advocates joined Sherrill last month for a roundtable on the importance of native plants, Ramos said.

The Benefits of Native Plants

Native plants offer so many benefits from resiliency against climate change to habitat creation for different types of other vegetation and animals, and also water quality because they filter toxins and pollution out of the water, Ramos said.

Native plants also help prevent flooding, she added. They make the soil a lot healthier, and that brings many benefits to the region.

Ramos said native plants are adapted to a region’s ecosystem, weather, and climate. Once they are established in the region, that is key especially for a place like New Jersey because it’s densely populated and overdeveloped.

“Historically, all of our lands have been touched. They’re not historically how they used to be,” Ramos said. So, it’s important to re-establish native plants in our soil and make sure invasive species do not return.

Native plants strengthen the soil which ultimately avoids mudslides. Plants absorb water and reduce water infiltration which could weaken the soil and cause these slides.

“It actually helps water to percolate. It filters the water back to aquifer's groundwater, or rivers, or any water body, and it really holds in tight that soil,” Ramos said.

For example, Atlantic White Cedar in the Pinelands is essential for that ecosystem. It thrives just in that South Jersey region bringing with it so many benefits. The most important is less flooding and filtering the water that goes to one of the most important aquifers in the state, Ramos said.

Besides helping to alleviate flooding, native plants do so much more, particularly habitat for different types of animals.

“We are experiencing two types of crises. There’s the climate change emergency and there’s a lot of endangered species. That’s because of the climate change impacts on habitat and the loss of native plants around our entire country. Native plants provide us with the tool of combatting climate change while at the same time providing the native ecosystem and habitat for animals that are so crucial to our circle of life,” Ramos explained.

Besides Atlantic White Cedar, milkweed is the “poster child” of native plants in New Jersey. They are the host plants for monarch butterflies, which have been declining in numbers in the state. Goldenrods are also popular native plants, as well as joe-pye weeds, and oak trees.

Other examples of natives can be found here.

Japanese Barberry is a beautiful plant and is often planted, but it is considered invasive in New Jersey, Ramos said.

How can we help?

To help tackle the problem, instead of planting invasive plants just because they look pretty, find out what is native to the area, and ensure that what you’re planting belongs to that actual ecosystem.

It will flourish and it will look beautiful, Ramos said.

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