Emily Becker hunched over a patch of purple flowers in a public easement garden in Anchorage’s Airport Heights neighborhood. Some of the plants were irises and lilacs, but Becker carefully avoided those as she pulled out tangled clumps of bird vetch. Each handful made a satisfying popping sound as Becker ripped it from the ground, roots and all.
“To me, I can almost, like, feel this sigh of relief when you pull all the vetch out of it, the lilac is so thankful,” she said.
Bird vetch is an invasive species in Alaska. Becker first started noticing it in Anchorage about 10 years ago. Now, she said, she can’t unsee it. She spots its purple flowers and twining tendrils everywhere.
“The people that can go through life and not see it, I sort of envy them. I do see tourists taking pictures of it because it's beautiful. I mean, let's face it, it's beautiful! And I'm like, ‘No!’” Becker said, laughing.
Becker is among a number of Anchorage residents dedicated to pulling out the spindly weed, so it doesn’t choke out native plants or take over gardens or other green spaces. There’s even a Facebook page called “What The Vetch, Anchorage?!” where residents and ecologists alike post information on vetch and how to fight it around the city. The Anchorage Soil & Water Conservation District helps too, ripping out vetch in certain areas like trailheads and state parks. Other groups also organize invasive plant smackdowns and an adopt-a-patch program.
It really takes a team effort to keep the quick-growing bird vetch at bay, said Dan Ruthrauff, Becker’s husband.
“It's easy to think that the city should somehow take care of all this,” he said. “But the city's strapped for money, and so having these programs and encouraging the public to reach out, that's sort of what it takes, is that we all need to care.”
Bird vetch has a long history in Alaska. It’s been here since the early 1900s, according to Gino Graziano, an invasive plants instructor with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He said vetch first arrived as part of UAF agricultural experimentation. Ironically, it didn’t grow back vigorously enough after a harvest to be useful as cattle feed.
“And so it got kind of abandoned by the fence lines, so to speak,” Graziano said. “And people weren't thinking about invasive species in the early to mid-1900s much.”
From there, it started to spread. And spread. With its tiny, curling tendrils, vetch climbs native plants and trees, causing problems that reverberate across the broader ecosystem.
“Yeah, those trees that it grows around, you know, don't photosynthesize as much. It could potentially diminish the growth of new tree seedlings,” Graziano said.
Back in Airport Heights, in the garden called the Triangle, Becker pulled out clumps of vetch and tossed them into a big pile to be composted.
“The vetch grows so thickly you can just grab it here,” she said, reaching down to grasp the vetch as close to the soil as she could get. “And you’re trying to get as much as possible. It will regrow from the roots.”
To be clear, the goal isn’t to completely eradicate vetch in Anchorage. That’s impossible, because it’s already too widespread. In Becker’s words, it’s less about a war on vetch and more about what she sees as little skirmishes, like the one she’s waging in the Triangle, trying to protect the neighborhood’s honey berries and apple trees.
“You just pick a small space and defend that, and that will make you feel good, so you don't have to, you know, despair at the extent of it, because it's too much. But definitely, you can just start small and get something done,” she said.
Ruthrauff, standing nearby, knee-deep in an unruly patch of weeds, said that it feels good to do something about the city’s vetch problem, no matter how small.
“And there's not much you can control in this world, but you can pull weeds,” he said. “It’s cathartic for sure, lets it go. Just yeah, making progress.”
At the end of the day, those small pieces are what matter most to Becker and Ruthrauff. So, they said, they’ll keep going, one clump of vetch at a time.
