It is natural to have concerns about doing free yard work for private property owners, especially if they appear to be capable of doing it themselves. We have been to numerous properties owned by individuals who have nice houses and appear to be upper-middle class.

 

When I’m out in the field working with volunteers, I want to focus my time on getting work done. I’m posting this discussion here so that when these concerns are voiced out in the field, I can refer people to this page and then discuss these issues with them later.

 

The worst case scenario is that we go to a residence where we girdle the ivy on trees, but the resident was about to do so themselves. In this scenario, we’ve literally accomplished nothing, because the ivy at the residence would have been killed anyway. We could have worked somewhere else instead, which would have resulted in more ivy being removed.

 

Another concern is that we’re working to improve ecological systems in areas that aren’t protected. The consequences of our labor are therefore less effective, because some proportion of the places we work will be destroyed in the future, to make new housing, a parking lot, etc.

 

Others might have concerns that we are giving free labor to someone who “doesn’t deserve it” because they are capable of either paying for the work themselves or doing it themselves.

 

These are all reasonable things to be concerned about, and I share these concerns, but on balance, I don’t believe they outweigh the compelling reasons to go to private residences and eradicate their fruiting ivy.

 

The biggest counter-argument to the above is that if a property owner has a massive infestation of fruiting ivy on their property, that’s evidence that they don’t care about it enough to either pay someone to remove it or remove it themselves.

 

The massive infestations we’ve taken out on private property are often twenty years old or more. We see this when we count the rings on the lianas. This means that the property owner has revealed their preference to not do anything about their ivy in the past. Perhaps their preference will change or perhaps they’ll sell the property to someone who has a preference for doing something about the ivy. These are all things that incrementally reduce the efficacy of what we’re doing. But the efficacy of what we’re doing is so high that it’s still high after being “deflated” by the probability that the ivy would have been removed anyway sometime in the future. Next, if that future is several years away, we are still preventing multiple years of berries from fruiting and being dispersed. It’s also possible that if the property is sold, it will be sold to someone who won’t allow us on their land.

 

It's also easy to see why property owners don’t have self-interested reasons to take out their fruiting ivy. The impact of what we’re doing extends far beyond the boundaries of a property. This is a good example of what economists call a “negative externality.” The cost of eradicating the fruiting ivy is born individually by the property owner but the benefit is spread over a very large area, defined roughly by the distance that birds fly. Even if the property owner doesn’t like ivy, most of the seeds are being disbursed outside their property.

 

Next, I’ve talked to realtors about the impact of invasive ivy on property values, and they tell me it has none. This means we aren’t financially helping the resident when killing their fruiting ivy.

 

The bottom line is that we aren’t doing that much work on any particular property. The amount of time it takes to kill the ivy up in trees is so short that we aren’t adding to property values. We aren’t laboriously taking out ground ivy.

 

Another reason it’s good for us to target private properties is because we are specialized at girdling the ivy on trees. Because we do it a lot, we are much faster at it than a property owner, or even an arborist or landscaper.

 

Another aspect of this is how cynical you are about people. Do you think an affluent person is going to have us do work for them when they were about to pay to have that work done anyway, even sub-consciously? My take is that the proportion of people who would do this is small. I think a lot of people care about the world and want to make it a better place. I think that going to peoples’ properties and doing work to get rid of invasive plants often inspires people to do more.

 

A recent anecdote supports this notion. On May 24, 2024 I stopped by two residences near Eureka High School to ask if I could take out their fruiting ivy. One resident said “yes” right away while the other said they’d get back to me, but never did. When I came back on May 30, 2024 to work on the first resident’s property, I knocked on the door of the resident who said they’d get back to me. She said her husband and a friend were going to do it, and when I went into the backyard of the other resident, saw that they had already girdled a large ivy infestation on a tree. Furthermore, the resident who allowed me to work on their land had also removed a huge infestation of ground ivy with some type of machine.

 

Many Americans’ identities involve having properties that are well cared for, and when someone draws attention to the fact that there are things that might be taken care of on their properties, they often get to it on their own. Having a “nice yard” isn’t essential, and is therefore a signal of affluence. Ivy infestations on trees are widely perceived as ugly.

 

Next, many residences we have been to are owned by elderly people who report to us they no longer keep up with their yard work.

 

There are also intangible benefits to us working on private properties. The educative effect for the property owner is great. We have done this for many people who are environmentalists and activists, but simply had no idea the damage the plants on their property were doing. Many people don’t even know what mature invasive ivy looks like, because its appearance changes so much when it matures. We are admittedly educating people just a few at a time, but word getting out that a group is going to private residences with this service helps educate the broader public.

 

We also often get referrals to other private residences when doing work on private property. When we go to a private residence to kill fruiting ivy, we emphasize that we would like the resident to “make a good faith effort” to refer us to other such properties. They often do, and word of mouth through community networks is the best way to get additional permissions.

 

There are other organizational challenges that occur because we are working on private property. It’s necessary to get to know volunteers in advance of taking them to a private residence, because it’s important to make sure they will be polite and not hurt the residents’ property. Similarly, volunteers have to feel comfortable going with us in a small group to a private residence.