Tom Zetterstrom receives award for work managing invasive plant species

STORRS, Conn. — “Tom Zetterstrom is a name that has become synonymous with advocacy,” said Jessie Mehrhoff-Peters while introducing the Leslie J. Mehrhoff Award, named after her father.

Zetterstrom, a North Canaan nature photographer and tree preservationist, received the honor at the 12th Biennial Connecticut Invasive Plant Working Group Symposium on Tuesday, Oct. 29. A crowd of naturalists, educators, and policy-makers filled the venue, a large auditorium at the Universtiy of Connecticut Student Union in Storrs, Connecticut, as Zetterstrom received the accolade.

“It’s the most tasteful award I’ve ever seen,” Zetterstrom said, holding the engraved slab of dark Connecticut cherry wood up for the audience to see.

The award is granted to individuals, groups or organizations that have demonstrated leadership in invasive plant management in Connecticut. Mehrhoff-Peters upheld in her introduction that her father, a renowned botanist and co-founder of the invasive plant group who died suddenly in 2010, was also a teacher. “Tom embodies this spirit of mentorship in his own work,” she said.

Mehrhoff-Peters listed Zetterstrom’s many accomplishments fighting invasive species in the Northwest Corner, including saving nearly 200 trees from invasive bittersweet on the Sharon Land Trust’s Hamlin Preserve and fighting Japanese knotweed in North Canaan. She also lauded his marriage of art and environmentalism, saying that his photographs and illustrations “serve not only as scientific documentation but artistic expression.”

“You embody the essence of this award,” she said to Zetterstrom as he sat at the front of the crowd.

After receiving the plaque, Zetterstrom gave a prop-intensive speech that was appropriately educational rather than self-laudatory. He used his brief stage time to relay the necessity of using more powerful — and more controversial — measures to combat invasive species spread, such as the use of herbicides.

“Nature can no longer take care of itself,” he said. “Human intervention has become essential.”

He showcased his arsenal of invasive species management tools to the crowd, including a “buckthorn blaster,” a tool used to apply herbicide to cut stems. He also held up calf-thick cross sections of bittersweet vines recently taken from the Hamlin Preserve.

“I have become a supporter of open carry,” he said to a flurry of laughs from the crowd, referencing the tool kit he keeps on hand to combat such formidable adversaries.

Zetterstrom said in a follow-up interview that his goal in his acceptance speech was to bring his experiences at the Hamlin Preserve to the Symposium audience. He said that the work that he and the land trust’s robust team of volunteers has been doing is “grabbing these trees from the brink of bittersweet death.”

He relayed a story to the crowd about his work saving a Chinkapin Oak on the land trust’s Mary Moore preserve from bittersweet. The tree, which was declared a state champion of its species by Connecticut Notable Trees, “would have been dead five years later” if not for the work he and a group of volunteers put into freeing the tree of bittersweet, he said.

Bittersweet, he said, poses an existential threat to New England’s forests, and must be addressed forcefully. “These are the trees and forests that we’re counting on to capture and store carbon, not topple and rot,” he said.

Christian Allyn, who owns and operates the company Invasive Plant Solutions out of North Canaan and who presented at a later session at the Symposium, agreed that herbicides were a major theme of this year’s conference.

“It’s not a question,” he said, referencing the necessity of using herbicides in today’s fight against invasives.

Zetterstrom expressed that many environmentalists have historically shied away from herbicide use due to concerns about ecosystem impacts, but his presentation emphasized the need for a shift in perspective. It seemed to work: Zetterstrom said that an herbicide skeptic approached him after the speech, telling him, “you may have convinced me.”

“Les Mehrhoff was not only a scientist and researcher, but an educator,” Zetterstrom said. “I’d like to think that my presentation was in the spirit of his profession.”