Gorse removal has left large swaths of exposed hillside below Harris Beach Estates. Submitted photo

At least for now.

The spiny evergreen shrubs were making a steady march through Harris Beach State Park and the nearby Dawson Tract residential area as of December 2010. Then Brent Siebold brought out the heavy artillery.

“We found a piece of equipment that did a really good job,” the Harris Beach park manager said of a backhoe-type machine that dug the plants out.

A state contract with Rick Borello of Port Orford cost $8,000 but successfully cleared 7 to 10 acres of the troublesome plant. Meanwhile, about 40 residents in Dawson Tract attacked their own land after the city of Brookings sent notices requiring them to remove gorse.

“That partnership with private property owners and the state has been wonderful,” said city Building Official LauraLee Snook. “Things have been really successful.”

The city did its part, too, by ridding gorse from the rights-of-way along Pacific Heights Road and Ridgeway Drive. Snook said the original cost to hire the work was less than $1,000 with the city’s Public Works Department maintaining the parcels after that.

Brookings City Manager Gary Milliman said the assault on gorse “has been a major project.”

Siebold noted that gorse contains an oil that is highly flammable, making fires difficult to put out once they start in a gorse thicket. It also grows aggressively and displaces natural vegetation.

Because gorse can return so quickly, Siebold believes a 10- to 20-year eradication program will be necessary.

“We’re going to come back and spray,” he said. “We’re going to keep working on it.”

Where the plant has been growing on Harris Beach slopes, the state will plant native vegetation to protect against erosion.

Snook said that because erosion is such a potential problem, the city amended its gorse abatement ordinance to say removal was not mandatory on slopes of 15 degrees or more.

“With the heavy rains and a steep slope that is unprotected, we could create some problems,” she said.

For some reason, Dawson Tract has the biggest local infestation of gorse, according to Snook.

“There were some other scattered lots, but 99 percent of the (eradication) notices went out to those living in Dawson Tract,” she said.

Like Siebold, Snook emphasized the resilient nature of the invasive shrub that is native to  Europe and northwest Africa. The plant can grow to a height of 15 feet and 30 feet in diameter, and is listed as a quarantined noxious weed by the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

“The Department of Agriculture says if you keep treating it, cutting it and spraying it, eventually it will be completely eradicated but it takes several cycles to do that,” Snook said. “It is such a predatory plant.”

Both she and Siebold pointed out that Bandon has a particularly bad problem with gorse. It’s not clear why the plant took hold in Brookings, they said, but Siebold theorizes it might have begun from seeds carried by heavy equipment used in Bandon.

Pilot Editor Scott Graves contributed to this story.