Meetup.com Invasive Species Hunters Group

     On October first I started the "Orlando Exotic and Invasive Species Hunters Group" on Meetup.com. The above plant is Cesar's Weed (Urena lobata). It is a very invasive plant and the main focus of this group.
     Our specialty is "manual control" which means removing invasive plants by hand rather than spraying chemicals.

Meeting one
10/3/12
     Heading out by myelf I entered our main base of operations, Jay Blanchard Park in East Orlando, Florida. I've been a volunteer here for over 17 years, picking up litter and fighting exotic/invasive plants. Today I took out 100 Cesar Weeds (leaf shown above), 275 Air Potatoes and a pile of Air Potatoe vines without roots and a patch of Japanese Climbing Vines.

Meeting Two
10/10/12
     Returning to Blanchard Park I took out 100 Cesar Weeds, 1 Small Chinese Tallow Tree, 1 South American Ear Tree and 14 Cuban Anole Lizards.

Meeting Three
10/17/12
    I schedule my environmental trip in late afternoon. This is to avoid the hot Florida sun and so myself and my volunteers are at a less risk of getting skin cancer. Today I took out 211 Cesar Weeds and 1 Cuban Anole Lizard. Today I was joined by one female volunteer who I met at the Wildlife Hospital I volunteer at.

Meeting Four
10/19/12
     In an odd twist of events my one volunteer went back to Blanchard without me and took out 450 Cesar Weeds.

Meeting Five
10/20/12
     We moved location and went to the Campus of UCF for a night hunt. But conditions turned out to be very dry, cool and out collection low. The two of us walked around for about an hour searching buildings. We got 7 Cuban Anole Lizards and one Green House Frog. This was the first time I was able to identify a invasive Green House Frog so this was a good day of learning for me.
     I was able to show my volunteer what a invasive Pleco/Sailfin/Armoured Catfish is. There is a small pond on the campus with two of them in it.

Meeting Six
10/24/12
     By myself I headed out into Blanchard Park. I took out 107 Cesar Weeds, 10 Water Lettuce plants and I girdled on huge Chinese Tallow Tree, see above picture. Hopefully this will slow it's growth if not kill it below the cut. I think to kill it I may need to poison it too. This tree has millions of seeds on it, but by next year it will be dead and I'll collect EVERY baby it drops.


 

Cuban Tree Frog Febuary 2012

On 2/17/2012 I caught this 4 inch female Cuban Tree Frog right in the middle of the day. It was sitting on a metal fence and I scooped it into a jar. I'm experimenting with it to see what it will eat. I know it specilizes in killing Florida's native Tree Frogs, but will it eat anything else?

Update:
I have witnessed it eagerly eat 2 large cockroaches and 10 or so live carpenter ants and several Cuban Anole lizards. A friend is going to give me a couple small Cuban Tree frogs and we are going to see if this large one will eat its own species. I'm not going to feed it a native tree frog, we already know from disected frogs that native tree frogs were found in their stomachs.

Update:
I took this Cuban Tree Frog to a Florida Native Plant Societ meeting. When the president of the club held up the container it was in everyone went "BOOOOOO! Cuban Tree Frog BOOOOOO!" Several people had never seen one up close, but everyone know what it was by name.

Update
I took this Frog to the Central Florida Herpetological meeting and no one there had seen one so big. But they did comfirm it was a Cuban Tree Frog.

Update:
I've had this big female Cuban Tree Frog for seven months now. In that time I've terminated 9 male Cuban Tree Frogs by freezing them. I've got this female trained to eat out of my hand. She has eaten live mice, blocks of scrambled eggs, a small dead bird, sliced turkey and a small live Green House Frog.

Will they eat their own species?
 She would not eat her own species that were living in the cage with her. I thought that since she eats only what I hand to her that I should hand feed her a small Cuban Tree Frog. But when I tried this, rather than aggresively attack she turned away and made a sour face. I tried again and she retreated to hide under water.

Indo Pacific Gecko Feb 2012

The other night I caught this Indo Pacific Gecko off the foundation of my house. I caught it by just grabbing it with my hand. It is now living in a fish tank in my house, I'll be showing it around to some environmental groups, then feeding it to my pet snapping turtle.

A few days off 2011-2012

Over winter class break I did some exoitc hunting.

16 Anolis sagrei
11 Chinese Tallow Trees
215 Cesar Weed Plants
1 patch of Japanese Climing Fern

I attened a Florida Native Plant society meeting last night. They have got me on a new habit of planting native plants after I pull out the exotic ones.