KINGSVILLE — The University of Windsor has joined Kingsville in its fight against an invasive species.
Phragmites australis is a reed like plant that grows fast, chokes drain ways and overtakes wetland ecosystems. The town cuts them down, pulls them out, and even burns them, but they spring right back up.
Council agreed to send another call to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to urge the government to speed up the search for herbicide Tuesday night, but Mayor Nelson Santos says Kingsville has gained another tool to show how stubborn the plant really is.
"Tonight we were introduced to an update and support from the University of Windsor that is helping us locally better track and monitor the regrowth of the phragmites after we've tried to deal with them in a more hands on kind of way," he says.
Santos hopes the science provided by UWindsor will help sound the alarm.
"We’re going to be getting additional data now that the university is kindly going to be working with us so that we can continue to escalate and elevate this issue," he says. "Getting more science behind our efforts is something I think will give us stronger support in trying to get a solution from the Government of Canada."
He says the FCM will continue to push the federal government to find an acceptable herbicide to eliminate the invasive species before it's too late.