Briggs students try to control purple loosestrife

A fifth grade students from John R. Briggs Elementary School try to determine if any of their attempts to control purple loosestrife were successful this year. COURTESY PHOTO Three students from Katherine Bennett’s fifth grade recently traveled to the University of New Hampshire to present their class’s ecology project entitled, “Chasing Aliens,” at the Kids Involved Doing Service-Learning (KIDS) Consortium Student Summit.

The students in the fifth grade class at the John R. Briggs Elementary School in Ashburnham researched the beautiful, but dangerous invasive plant, purple loosestrife, and with the guidance of Mary Marro, the education director of the Nashua River Watershed Association. The research was designed a scientific study to look at the efficacy of different methods used to control the rapidly spreading wetland plant.

The Student Summit is a twoday annual event during which over 300 students from across New England gather to share their service-learning projects and hear about what other students are doing to help their communities.

“When we work together we can get things done,” said student Keara Moulton. “I really learned the importance of teamwork.”

The theme this year was Going Green, and the students in Bennett’s class created a power point and a presentation board detailing their loosestrife study and presented for a large group of students and teachers from other schools. They also showed their presentation board at the exhibit hall.

The presentation received a very positive reception from the audience of students and teachers.

“They had a lot of questions, even the teachers!” said fifth grader Owen Napolitano. “No one had heard about the problem before.”

The trip to the Student Summit was sponsored by a grant from the KIDS Consortium.

The students looked at purple loosestrife, an invasive plant that establishes itself in wetlands, choking out the native plants, such as cattails, which provide the local wildlife with food and shelter. It can virtually eliminate an open water habitat that can be home to a variety of waterfowl and other species.

The students had the opportunity to be “citizen scientists and to carry out their study, two trips were made to a wetland in Ashburnham where loosestrife was identified recently. In September, the students set up six one meter square plots- three control plots and three experimental plots. The students counted the loosestrife plants and cattails in all six plots and in the experimental plots the students tried three different methods to control purple loosestrife- cutting and removing seed heads; removing loosestrife plants; and releasing the loosestrife eating beetle, Galerucella.

The class returned in May to count the plants in their plots again and found that none of the methods significantly reduced the number of plants in any of the plots.

“The scary part about their results is that there were loosestrife plants in the two control plots that had none last fall. That helped the students understand how rapidly this plant spreads and how difficult it is to control,” said fifth grade teacher Katherine Bennett.

The student power point can be seen on the Briggs website, www.awrsd.org/jrb.

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