If you look at them from one perspective, you might consider phragmites a beautiful, majestic grass that grows in wetlands; so much so that some people consider them ornamentals.

But to natural resources managers, phragmites (frag-MY-tees) is a curse.

"It grows so densely that it crowds out native plants and displaces wildlife," said Brian Mastenbrook, a Department of Natural Resources wildlife habitat biologist in Gaylord.

When Mastenbrook got word the invasive plant was becoming established on Beaver Island, he wanted to stop its spread before it became a major concern.

Phragmites (Phragmites australis) is found around the world. Although native to North America, the more invasive strains are exotics from Europe and Asia. In the continental U.S., it is most extensive on the East Coast, though it is rapidly colonizing the Midwest.

The long-stalked, reed-like plants, which can grow to nearly 20 feet in height, not only take over territories occupied by plants that are beneficial to fish and wildlife, but, on Beaver Island, also were encroaching on a number of endangered plant species, such as Lake Huron tansy, Michigan monkey flower and pitcher's thistle.

"At Beaver Island the plant was just starting and the patches were relatively small and scattered," Mastenbrook said. "It expands fast. In Saginaw Bay, a strip of phragmites is reported to be a half-mile wide. We didn't want all the plants and animals that use the lakeshore to be displaced by it."

There was great cooperation among a number of groups, including the Beaver Island Association, the township supervisors and Central Michigan University, which has a bio-station on the island.

"We had a broad base of people who agreed it was a problem," Mastenbrook said.

The island association and the township started an education program and produced a video about the invasive plants to help the island residents and visitors understand the issue. As a result, Mastenbrook said they were able to work together to treat nearly all the infestations on the island.

The DNR, which is the single biggest landowner on the island, acquired a permit from the Department of Environmental Quality to use herbicides to kill the plant. The coalition made phone calls and sent letters to landowners, seeking permission to treat their properties. The Beaver Island Association raised money and held public meetings to inform the citizenry. And in 2007, the work began.

"We hired a contractor to treat everywhere we had permission to treat" Mastenbrook said.

"We treated 27 acres that first year and only three last year. And last year we even had more landowners give us permission. We knocked it back so much that we only had to treat one-ninth as much the second year."

The contractors applied herbicides using three methods: from a sprayer mounted on an all-terrain vehicle for large sites (up to an acre), with backpack sprayers in other areas, to actually hand-swiping -- dipping a glove in the herbicide and rubbing it on the plants -- in some places.

"We required a lot of (hand-swiping) because of the presence of endangered plants out there," Mastenbrook said. "We didn't want anything killed that wasn't supposed to be killed."

In addition, some folks cut the thatch and disposed of it, but that might not have been necessary, Mastenbrook said.

"It doesn't do the seed-bank thing like purple loosestrife does," he explained. "It mostly spreads vegetatively. Those runners can spread up to 50 feet in a year."

But despite the early victories, no one is declaring the Beaver Island Phragmites War won.

"It's going to require a lot of follow-up." Mastenbrook said. "We're going to do it again this year for the third year in a row and then we'll do a survey to see what we need to do. But we've got to determine if it's worth it to go back every year because we have to pay a contractor so much more per acre even if we only have a small area to treat."

Mastenbrook said the best part of the project was building a coalition of government and citizens groups to make the program work.

"The really neat thing about it was the way the group came together, working together, focused on the issue," he said. "We kept focused on the end result; no individual would have been able to pull this off, but, by working as a coalition, we were able to get it done.

"By getting this done in the early stages, you save tons of money and effort," he continued. "We were able to treat Beaver Island in 2007 and 2008 for about $23,000. That sounds like a lot of money, but when you look at what they're spending at Saginaw Bay, where they are spraying from helicopters, it's not that much."

The Beaver Island phragmites control project is an excellent example of what can be accomplished for conservation when it becomes a cooperative effort, Mastenbrook concluded. He considers it a model program.