Restoring Biodiversity: Bamboo Removal at Appel Nature Preserve

By Keith Williams, Vice President of Engagement & Education

A bamboo patch used to cover an acre of hillside at the Appel Nature Preserve in Martic Township, Lancaster County. Lancaster Conservancy staff and volunteers are removing it, restoring native habitat and biodiversity where this monoculture of an invasive species once dominated.

A stand of invasive bamboo at Appel Nature Preserve (Photo by Keith Williams)

As we planned for this ecological restoration project, Lancaster Conservancy Forester Eric Roper and I peered into the depth of the bamboo stand. It was well established, and individual stalks reached 30-40 feet tall. It formed a thick stand with stalks too close together to allow navigation between them. This dense monoculture didn’t allow any sunlight in whatsoever, so there wasn’t anything else growing there – just a big, concentrated patch of bamboo.

Bamboo was brought to the US in the 1880s as an ornamental landscape plant. I’ve seen bamboo forests in China, where the plant is native, and they are stunning – diverse and complex, lush and green at all levels from the canopy through the shrub and herb layers. But here, where it is not native, bamboo does not have diseases or herbivores to control it, so it can grow unchecked and become invasive.

In this acre of Appel Nature Preserve where bamboo reigned, no other plants grew except for a few half dead walnuts that were losing their fight to survive in the shadow of the invasive species. The ground was covered in bamboo leaves and spent stalks, nothing else.

The decisions we make shape nature, and we decided that, though challenging, removing the bamboo was necessary to restore as much diversity as possible at the preserve. Biodiverse ecosystems are stronger and more resilient. They are also better at rainwater filtration and infiltration back into groundwater, food pollination, soil formation, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration. This bamboo removal was the first step in restoring biodiversity, and the ecosystem services that diversity provides, to this site.

This project would not have been possible without our Volunteer Land Stewards. For the first day of bamboo removal, a group of 10 of them gathered, freely giving their most valuable resource: time. Some knew each other well, others were new to the work, but a community formed around this task.

We cut the 30-foot-tall stalks as close to the ground as we could and hauled them off to a disposal pile as we went. Bamboo stumps and stalks become leg-snapping trip hazards, so we had to be neat and methodical with our work. Some of the older, taller stalks were bent over 90 degrees to the ground, which put the lower part of the stem under a lot of tension.  We had to slowly cut these and anticipate the point when all that built up stress would be released with a gunshot snap of the remaining wood and a skyward jettison of the cut end. The bamboo held large branches and trunks that had fallen over the life of the grove, which presented hazards from above in addition to the force of bamboo under tension. It was like using a chainsaw on Pixie Sticks, cutting one piece to see how the load would move, predicting where the force was and choosing the right stems to cut in the right sequence to slowly bring the hung branches to the ground in a controlled way.

This is a daunting eco-restoration project. Bamboo removal is slow, hard work, and it doesn’t end when the stalks are cut down. The patch needs to be revisited multiple times after the mature stand is eradicated since one of bamboo’s strengths is its tenacity – it resprouts quickly after being cut.

Appel Nature Preserve after the bamboo was removed (Photo by Keith Williams)

Within six months, the part of the patch we first started to cut began to green up with other species. Granted, many of those were other invasives like bittersweet, garlic mustard, and tear thumb. But there were also some natives like pokeweed, and there were some locust and walnut seedlings in there too. Animals – likely fox and groundhog – started to burrow on opposite ends of the removed patch. Already, we were seeing signs of biodiversity returning.

The restoration of this acre is ongoing. Our stewardship team will evaluate the site to see what comes back and what needs to be planted, and volunteers and stewardship staff will continue to cut the bamboo resprouts as they pop up. But together, we are making progress for our environment.

The last stick of bamboo fell unceremoniously, though it needs to be celebrated. This is how change and hope start – one acre at a time, one patch of invasives at a time, the community coming together to make this work happen.

Learn how you can volunteer with the Conservancy and be part of restoration projects like this at lancasterconservancy.org/volunteer.