City shares PC RIP group’s 2022 Weed Wrangler Award

Greencastle Mayor Bill Dory holds the 2022 Weed Wrangler Award from the Indiana Invasives Initiative as he’s surrounded by members of the Putnam County Remove Invasive Plants (PC RIP) task force including (from left) Greg Ruark, Allison Leer, Linda Hunter, Mayor Dory, Scott Zimmerman and Jim Woody in a recent City Hall presentation.

Banner Graphic/ERIC BERNSEE

With a tombstone as its logo, you’re dead right the Putnam County Remove Invasive Plants (PC RIP) means business.

And because of its determination to wrangle invasive weeds, the PC RIP has earned the 2022 Weed Wrangler Award from the Indiana Invasives Initiative. The local group’s members were on hand for the December Greencastle City Council meeting to share the honor with city officials.

The PC RIP is a group of county citizens formed with a mission of education, advocacy and action. Its members provide hands-on training sessions -- called Weed Wrangles -- of invasive plant on the fourth Saturday of each month to anyone willing to come learn and lend a hand.

In addition to their regular Weed Wrangles, they continue to offer training to professionals within the county upon request.

The Indiana Invasives Initiative notes that, “none of this would be possible without the county-wide participation held together by citizens and professionals that PC RIP has enhanced over the last few years. With a tombstone as a logo, they mean business and are deserving of this recognition for 2022.”

The Weed Wrangler Award is associated with a statewide and grassroots project with a vision to restore and maintain a natural landscape that is defined by healthy diverse and economically productive communities of native species, integrated within a mosaic of other land uses driven by an informed public.

“There’s a growing awareness of the impact invasive plants have on soil quality,” it was noted. “Invasives are non-native plants that tend to spread without propagation or encouragement and tend to create a monoculture where other plants are not as likely to survive. This last aspect is what degrades the soil, causing it to erode easily.”

In bestowing the award on the PC RIP, Indiana Invasives Initiative Project Coordinator Dawn Slack explained that “awardees are chosen annually by the III team members who are in the trenches and working with our citizens and conservation partners.”

“Although this award is through our small but mighty III grassroots project, it is given from a team that understands the dedication and exhausting level of effort necessary for effective conservation,” Slack added, noting that her organization wants to “showcase examples of work that will build the capacity for conservation.”