A long its 18,000 kilometers of coastline, China has been taken over by a green invader. Smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) grows tall and thick across tidal mudflats, depriving endangered migratory birds of habitat, clogging shipping channels, and ruining clam farms. Now, China aims to beat back 90 of the weed by 2025. "This is a mammoth undertaking," says Steven Pennings, a coastal ecologist at the University of Houston. "It's audacious." The nationwide effort, launched last month, "is by far the largest action plan for wetland invasive species control in China and even in the world," says Bo Li, an invasion ecologist at Fudan and Yunnan universities who was "not involved in creating the plan. It won't be simple or cheap, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, Li estimates. And schemes to dig up, drown, or poison the weed all have side effects. "It's going to be really difficult," says Sam Reynolds, a biologist at the University of Cambridge. Spartina, native to eastern North America, was brought to China starting in 1979 to stabilize tidal mudflats and turn them into land for agriculture or development. The plan worked, but the Spartina kept spreading and now covers about 68,000 hectares, about the area of New York City. The government has realized, says Yihui Zhang, a wetland ecologist at Xiamen University, that "the harm of Spartina alterniflora outweighs its benefits." It dominates native salt marshes, outcompeting native plants that provide food for indigenous species such as the reed parrotbill, which has declined as a result.
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