County land in Washington’s city limits is seeing the spread of an unwelcome guest. Hayes Timber, a 33 acre woodland preserve, is dealing with an infestation of the invasive species Lonicera Maackii, a bush Honeysuckle. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, the intruders are a large, upright shrub that can reach 15 to 20 feet in height with flowers that change from white to yellow, and red berries. Washington County Conservation Executive Director Zach Rozmus tells KCII News that the Hayes Timber Management item has appeared on the conservation board agenda in the past and that they are taking steps to try to slow down or irradiate the uninvited visitor. He spoke this week about the steps that they are taking to execute their plan, “We had a district forester come in and give their diagnostic for what the problem was, what are we dealing with? We already knew going into that what they were going to us was ‘hey you’re dealing with bush Honeysuckle.’ We want to make sure that we’re always going through the peer review process to make sure that we have all our ducks in a row as far as the management side of it goes. So the next step is that we are actually going to go in there and removing some of that bush Honeysuckle to make sure that we are ensuring that Hayes Timber, 50 years from now, somebody goes in there and they are going to see those same beautiful oak trees that we are experiencing now.”

Rozmus says that he has reached out to descendants of Carolyn Hayes, who deeded the property to County Conservation to be managed as a preserve in 1925, and they are in support of these steps. The fear is without mitigation efforts the shrubs will begin to outcompete the Walnut and Oak trees currently on the land.