The ‘Berry Queen’: Environmental activist fights invasive plant species in local parks
Eileen Ahlquist is known as the "Berry Queen" because of her passion and enthusiasm for removing invasive plants that are threatening the ecosystems of north central Florida parks.
Ahlquist, 60, regularly joins with the environmental group Gainesville Greenway Challenge, a volunteer-led initiative, that removes such invasive species as coral ardisia, ferns, flowers and other plants from parks every Thursday and first Saturday of the month. The parks include Sweetwater Wetlands, Green Acres and Serenola Forest Preserve, she said.
Invasive species can harm both the natural resources in an ecosystem as well as threaten human use of these resources, according to the National Ocean Service .
In 2021, Ahlquist, a pastry chef for 41 years and who now owns her own wedding cake bakery, received the city's annual star volunteer award. She earned the award after having recorded 150 volunteers hours and for educating people on environmental issues, she said.
WUFT recently spoke with Ahlquist while she was removing invasive species, at Cofrin Nature Center on Eighth Avenue in Gainesville, to ask about her hobbies, bird watching, cleaning creeks and filling buckets with gallons of coral ardisia berries.
Q: What type of invasives might you find yourself removing on any given occasion?
: I just saw swordtail runner fern, which most people call Boston fern. You can still buy it in the stores, which appalls me. There's Caesar weed, some of which is literally right next to us, right behind us. That's an invasive, another ornamental plant people brought in here on purpose because that is a beautiful little flower, and it gets these seed pods that stick to everything.
Coral ardisia is here. We have done a really good job getting it out of here earlier, say, over the last five years or so, but every berry that falls has a 98% germination rate. So if that berry is under the leaf, it is just a future plant waiting to happen. And those plants have come up, and they've had berries, and they've had babies, and I can see three generations out here, so that's at least three years that those were dormant and then growing.
Q: Were you always environmentally active?
: I grew up in South Florida, and my Girl Scout troop – we would go out in the Everglades and remove invasives. I have been doing this since before I was 10. The first protest I ever went to, I dragged my mom along because she had to drive me. (She wanted to go, too.) It was to protest phosphates in soap, because all that was doing was just essentially fertilizing all the things you didn't want to fertilize. It was just like in your laundry detergent. Enough people got together that it got banned in the state of Florida, which was great.
Q: Are there any environmental issues in Florida that you want to bring more attention to?
: I have been here so long, these springs used to be clear, used to be sand bottom. Everything looked like it was blue. And now, every spring you go to, every river you go to, there is something we just call slime weed, and it grows because of the nitrogen levels that are so elevated. So it's all connected. So right now, where we are, there's a creek down here. There's a road right there. We are surrounded by neighborhoods. These people are all using fertilizers. It's an older neighborhood. It might be in septic tanks. All of that winds up in the runoff. It goes into the creeks that all flow into Hogtown Creek, that all go down into the Floridan aquifer, and then they come up through the springs, and that's where we get our drinking water.
Q: Why are you passionate about environmental causes and volunteering?
: Because if people don't do that, the only plants that are going to be out there are going to be the invasives. And I don't think that's a good future, and actually – I kind of hate to even go there – but with global warming, it's actually more conducive for the invasives. It's getting harder and harder for the native plants. And I, as you know, I'm an avid bird watcher, and the birds need the native plants, too.
Q: How do you encourage others to be more aware of environmental issues?
: I know some people are more receptive, but some people just have not had the education. Like when I was just walking with my friends here, I was showing them the various invasives, and they did not know. And these are people I have been walking with for four years, and my brain's like, "How did you not know that was invasive?"
But they want to learn, so that was encouraging. They're not really thinking they want to go out in the summer with me and remove the invasives. But you know, every time I do it with a group, we can usually get one more person to join us. And if you keep doing that, it really, really adds up. If you have a small group of dedicated volunteers, you can do wonders.
