港中大学子福田生态公园“打绿怪” 清理外来入侵植物

Michelle Wang

wy_szdaily@126.com

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen) students joined an activity to remove invasive alien plants on Sunday at Futian Mangrove Ecological Park as part of the university’s third Social Good Festival.

A total of 27 students headed by teacher Huang Xinyi uprooted 50.8 kilograms of invasive alien plants, dubbed “green monsters” by the park, in an hour.

The eradicated plants are termed invasive alien species because they are imported to an ecosystem that is not their natural habitat, and once introduced, they establish, quickly reproduce and spread, and cause harm to the environment, economy, or human health, said a staff member of the Shenzhen Mangrove Wetlands Conservation Foundation (MCF) who led the day’s eradication action.

As invasive plants have affected the park’s biodiversity and displaced native trees and plants, the park has launched a popular science campaign against invasive alien species, including Bidens pilosa var. radiata, Mikania micrantha, Ipomoea cairica and Mimosa pudica, which has attracted the active participation of the general public, including volunteers, parents and children, community residents, and student groups.

The campaign, which gathered nearly 3,000 people to eradicate some 2,000 kilograms of invasive alien plants in 2018, has become the park’s most well-received social welfare event. In the first eight months of this year, it has been carried out more than 30 times.

“We felt it was very rewarding today to participate in the eradication of invasive alien plants,” said Zhuo Sihan, a third-year student at CUHK-Shenzhen’s School of Management and Economics. “We learned knowledge about invasive alien plants and I was glad to see the huge enthusiasm my fellow students showed toward joining such an event.”

The students discussed and carefully distinguished which plants are invasive and should be eradicated in the process and showed great excitement when they were told that they had eradicated a total of 50.8 kilograms of invasive plants in an hour’s time.

Zhuo, the initiator of the invasive plant eradication action, said she proposed the event as part of the university’s Social Good Festival, which focuses on the themes of environmental protection and sustainable conception.