Mount Fuji habitats threatened by foreign flora
The Japan Times | Sept. 15, 2013
Alien plants believed to have been unwittingly transported by tourists to Mount Fuji are threatening to destroy or damage the ecosystem of the nation’s newest World Heritage site and even its landscape, researchers say.
In a recent study of plants along the Fuji Subaru Line toll road, which winds 2,300 meters up to the fifth station and nearby trekking trails, researchers found 56 foreign species likely brought in from elsewhere...
... a nonprofit organization called Fujisan Club -- working with the governments of Yamanashi Prefecture and the town of Fujikawaguchiko -- has been extricating bur cucumbers from Lake Kawaguchi, one of the Fuji Five Lakes.
Bur cucumbers, which are native to North America, are fast growers that climb and engulf plants around them, often strangling them. In mid-August, the club launched its fifth campaign of the year to exterminate the species.
A total of 15 members and volunteers looked for the plants’ roots by the lake and pulled them up. In about two hours they had collected enough bur cucumbers to fill 20 45-liter plastic bags.
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