Volunteers make stunning transformation eradicating dangerous plants from overgrown land: 'It was really covering the entire island'

Over one week in April, around 30 BC Marine Trails staff and volunteers helped clear a large amount of invasive English ivy on the coast of an island near Vancouver, British Columbia, Nanaimo News Now reported. With the group's restoration efforts, the island looks radically different than it did more than eight years ago, after decades without residents.

According to BC Marine Trails, Gerald Island was home to a 20th-century homestead, owned by a couple who were tragically separated when the husband died in a boating accident and the wife moved back to England. The island was abandoned in 1960, but their garden, containing English ivy and Himalayan blackberry — both invasive plant species — ran rampant.

Invasive plant species are fast-growing plants that tend to outcompete native plants for nutrients and other resources. Because they lack predators in their new environments, invasive species grow aggressively, sometimes even choking out mature and established trees, which could topple over and cause harm to people and properties.

In 2017, BC Marine Trails initiated a restoration effort to clean up Gerald Island and its coastline so that adventurers could safely navigate "the BC Coastline with minimal impact on the environment," per its website.

The Gerald Island Project has evolved into a twice-a-year tradition, with spring and fall cleanups to rid the island of invasive plants.

According to Nanaimo News Now, volunteers and staff at the most recent event cleared over 200 tarps' worth of invasive plant material, burning it on the shore so that the plants don't resurface or re-establish themselves.

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Invasive plant species can be persistent — you can pull them out of your yard and return to a garden patch full of them again just weeks later. This can be frustrating for homeowners looking to eliminate them from their yards.

Landscaping with native plants can help prevent the spread of invasive plant species, keeping them from taking hold in the first place. Native plants also make healthier environments for local pollinators to thrive, which supports plant reproduction and helps protect the food supply, keeping the local ecosystem in balance.

Native plants also tend to be slower-growing and require less water than invasive species, cutting down on your lawn maintenance and water bills. Buffalo grass and clover are alternative attractive lawn replacement options for homeowners who want to save more time and money on yard work.

"It really felt pretty impossible. The ivy was all the way down to the high tide line, it was really covering the entire island," BC Marine Trails spokesperson Sam Cutcliffe said, per Nanaimo News Now. "... Every time we're over there, we're kind of getting the sense of the end is in sight, which it definitely is, compared to when things started back in 2017."