Frequently Asked Questions
(1) What areas of Prouts Neck are included in your work, just public land or also private?
Public land, including the community roads, lanes, and pathways.
(2) How are the specific locations determined?
Priority locations are identified by our scientists, arborists, landscape architects and landscape professionals. After that, by working closely with the Prouts Neck Association (PNA), the Prouts Neck Improvement Association (PNIA) and abutting property owners, the specific locations are determined.
(3) When is the work done?
Primarily in the fall, winter and spring months.
(4) How many plants are targeted: the big 3 or 4 or is the plan to focus on all invasives?
Currently, there are 11 invasive plants that have been identified: Asiatic bittersweet; Burning bush; Black locust; Black swallow-wort; Common buckthorn; Japanese barberry; Japanese knotweed; Multiflora rose; Norway maple; Phragmites: Purple loosestrife; and, Shrubby honeysuckle.
(5) Is there active replanting of natives, or just clearing of invasives to help existing natives?
On a case by case basis, over time and based on the desire to return each area to its pre-invasive-plants-control appearance, active replanting of native plants will occur.
(6) Do you plan to tackle invasives on all private properties, & does funding influence priorities?
The question of Public/Community land versus Private land, is, perhaps, the more compelling of questions that the PNC is currently engaged in answering. Obviously, invasive plants do not recognize such property boundaries; and, for the sake of their control, we as the stewards of the land must do our best to understand their patterns. However, at the present time, the PNC Board does not feel as though it is capable of doing more on the private lands than educate the owners and guide them in the acquisition of the professional services that will help the private property owners control the invasive plants found on their land. Funding sources do not influence sequencing and/or priorities.
(7) What is your overall strategy for sequencing and timing?
Regarding overall strategy, it is critically important--it cannot be overstated--to appreciate that it is very difficult to find landscapers that will tackle the very painstaking work that invasive plant control requires. In other words, we plan to approach the work in as aggressive a way as practical restraints allow. Regarding where to start. to a great degree that has been and will continue to be determined by working in close contact with the PNA and the PNIA. The PNC would like to continue its work along the Cliff Walk. The 2nd tranche has been identified as that from the center path to Eastern Point. However, at the present moment, the PNIA is assessing that strategy. Our strategy, basically, is to tackle the worst of the work first. And, because the Cliff Walk is the furthest from the roads and lanes to which the biomass must be removed, the physical hauling of the plants makes it the most difficult stretch of the Neck. Relatively speaking, the great amount of work that is found along the other pathways and along the sides of the roads and lanes, is easier.
(8) Is there a detailed budget you can share as to how the $1m gets spent over the first 10 years?
(a) The cost of the work that we did on the 1150' of the Cliff Walk, from the church path to the center path and from the rocks to approximately 15' landward from the center of the path, was for invasive plant removal, $43,020, for herbicide application, $3,137.50, for a total of $46,157.50. (b) The cost of the work that we did on the section of the PNCC 442 Black Point Road property, across the road from the 5th hole, was for invasive plant removal, $8,500, and for herbicide application, $552, for a total of $9,552. (c) Based on those costs, on the 4 other equally long sections of the Cliff Walk that require comparable attention and on the attached PNC Comprehensive Invasive Plants Management Plan and its accompanying Map, the PNC Board is confident that the $100,000 estimate per year for 10 years will achieve the goal of the physical removal of the surface invasive plants and the control of their remaining roots and seeds found on Prouts Neck. (d) Obviously, there is a question about where Prouts Neck begins and ends to which reasonable people will find different answers. And, depending on what the consensus answer to that question may be, the estimate may vary.
(9) Are there examples of communities that have effectively mitigated invasives in a permanent way?
Regarding other NE communities, thanks to Hugh Hallward and Ogden White, Prouts Neck is on the leading edge of the work that has been and is being accomplished. Ogunquit ME has an active program of invasive plant control along its Marginal Way. However, as that land is owned by the Town of Ogunquit, its management is a great deal more restricted than Prouts Neck's. Without putting too fine a point on it, one of the great benefits that we enjoy is that the vast majority of the Neck is in private and/or community held properties. Also, an important aspect of our community that makes even the contemplation of such a project as the PNC is proposing possible is that we are a community with a history of cohesiveness. In every other community that I've heard of, it is usual to find an outlier or 2 who, for their own reasons, do not join and, in essence, derail the efficacy of such a plan.