Seven days a week, Ludmilla Schneider walks her two dogs through Moore's Meadow, but this year her exercise is interrupted by irritation at an invasive species and what she sees as the city's failure to curb its growth.
Canada thistle is widespread throughout B.C. and "a major concern" in Peace River, Omineca and Skeena areas, according to the Invasive Species Council of British Columbia.
"The thistles are higher than I am. It looks like a pink carpet. It's so bad," said the 80-year-old. "Over the last few years, twice a year they have cut the grass. This year they haven't done anything.
"It's one of the most invasive weeds. It's blooming now, when it is finished blooming and the wind is carrying the seed away, all the neighbours will have their lawns full of thistles not only that the farmers up in Cranbrook Hill... they will have everywhere, thistles."
The wet weather has made for prime growing conditions and has kept city crews busier than usual with upkeep of its key priorities - sports fields. This year the city has mowed Moore's Meadow from treeline to treeline once, and two subsequent visits to clear pathways.
"We mow (thistle), we knock them down in the spring before they go to bloom, which has been the practice for as long as I've been here," said Shawn LeBrun, the city's parks manager. "This year the only reason it's been mowed the way it is because priorities are sports fields right now and boulevards. The meadow is way down on the list for mowing because it's a nature park."
With thistle throughout the city, it's impossible to control unless treated with chemicals, said LeBrun, but the city doesn't spray herbicides in its nature parks.
Schneider was insistent the meadow hadn't been mowed beyond the pathways.
"There is no way that they even cut once because I would have seen it," said Schneider, who with her husband owned a farm near Ness Lake for 28 years, where they bred horses and sold hay. "As a farmer I know."
Canada thistle can be very difficult to manage because of its growth habit and the way it propagates, said Northwest Invasive Plant Council (NWIPC) program manager Penni Adams.
In some areas, citizen groups coordinate weed pulls, like in the Hudson Bay wetlands, but that can take time before it has any impact, Adams said.
"It has to be done at the right time," said Adams, and when the plants are young before it develops the deep taproot. "The Canada thistle in Moore's Meadow is huge, and when you do it manually it takes four to five years of doing it year after year after year before you'll see really substantial reduction."
The NWIPC partners with the city to address invasive species as directed by the city. AiMHi work crews, for example, tackle more noxious plants like common tansy. It has not been asked to do any work on thistle, Adams said.
"We don't consider common thistle a noxious species in the sense that it doesn't harm, it's not harmful to health. It does have social impact because people don't like it," she said.
In September of last year, the NWIPC was before council asking for funds beyond the $10,000 a year it's received since 2011 to offer better local education and awareness. At the time, it noted Kitimat and Prince Rupert, with much smaller populations, offer the same level of funding.
Thistle was not on its list of eight species of concern, which included common tansy, spotted knapeed and toadflax.
