Hello. My name is Geovany Esteban. I'm a certified crew supervisor and pretty much what we do out here is treating the melaleuca which is taking over our native plants here.

Hi, my name's Lisa Jameson. I'm the invasive species biologist for Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, and I was brought in in 2008 to work on their exotic vegetation management program here at the refuge. Melaleuca is the project we're working on today. The funding here at the refuge to do exotic vegetation management is from several different funding sources. The stimulus funding came down to us; we got $1.25 million to put out a contract for melaleuca work here at the refuge.

Geovany: As far as melaleuca goes, if it's a small tree we can hand pull it, or if it's not too thick we can cut it and put it up high on a tree so it won't fall in the water; that will prevent regrowth. If it's a big tree, we'll just girdle around it and spray the very bottom of what we girdle and that should take care of the tree. And it's just melaleuca after melaleuca. It's what we do out here.