'A hazard to children, a hazard to dogs,' Boise removes deadly Yew plant from parks

BOISE, Idaho (KBOI) — This winter, dozens of wildlife have died from eating a toxic plant called Japanese Yew.

Veterinarians say just a small handful of this plant or its berries is enough to kill elk, pets and humans.

Boise Parks and Recreation found the plant in four parks so far and have been working to remove it.

"So we have discovered that we do have some of the Japanese yew in a few of our park sites," Doug Holloway said.

After hearing about how toxic yew has been to wildlife this winter, Boise Parks and Recreation decided to remove the plant from any parks where they could find it.

They removed two shrubs from the rose garden at Julia Davis Park and one plant from the Ann Morrison Park. They are working on pulling it from Ivywild Park and Albertsons Park as well.

"Virtually all of our parks, especially our major downtown park locations do have quite a large number of mule deer that move and migrate from one park to the other," Holloway said.

However, Holloway says they aren't just removing it to protect wildlife.

"(It's) a hazard to children, it's a hazard to dogs, specifically, and cats, and so we do have a large population of dogs that utilize our parks," Holloway said.

He says yew wasn't on their radar before this winter.

However, as wildlife come down from the mountains to escape snow, he wants to make sure it's not in parks.

His team will continue to check plant inventory and search for the Japanese Yew into spring.

He also mentioned they are going to take a look at the inventory to see if there are any other toxic plants they should worry about.

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