The War on Invasives

I started this blog last year and never got it finished. Then two weeks ago,  two summer techs and I went to a two day workshop on identifying and managing invasives.  The main thrust was learning when and with what to spray invasive plants. I learned a lot, even though I've been working on managing invasive plants for many years in different parts of the country. The class was in the town of Whitehall, Montana which was a cute little town with a beautiful mountain backdrop

One of views on my walk to breakfast

Out classroom had about eighty students

I was excited to get a prize for answering a review question and even more excited to pass the two tests, even though I hadn't even looked at one of the study books.  I may now be able to take better selfies, with and extra forty-two inches of reach.

My selfie stick and test report

Why, you ask are invasives such a big deal?  Can't these aliens just live among the natives?  No, the local food chains require native plants for the native bugs for the native birds.  But the invasive plants replace native plants, sometimes forming huge monocultures that are like deserts to the native animals. They don't have insect pests that would help keep them in balance. Some of them are poisonous to birds or mammals, including livestock.

In Montana, invasive plants are assigned to one of four classes. Priority 1A weeds are not yet present in Montana, but people are watching for them to arrive.  Priority 1B weeds are only found in a few spots and are to be eradicated where they are found and people  educated to watch for them elsewhere.  Priority 2A weeds are common in parts of Montana and 2B weeds are abundant across Montana. It is the law that you may not allow any of these weeds to go to seed on your property.  Every  private or government entity has a weed management program in place and has spray crews. We have several entities in the valley that have spray crews. Several times during the summer, we will all come together to fight one particular weed at one location.


 Last year, one of our valley wide weed battles started at Red Rock Pass and came down into the refuge. Some of the crew sprayed but the people I was with pulled hoary alyssum by hand, filling a pickup truck full of black garbage bags.

Our target - hoary alyssum

The early arrivals catching up with each other

We wander through the grass in a semi organized fashion, looking for the distinctive plants

I, of course, was easily distracted and stopped for butterfly pictures

And flower pictures

This guy looks like he is really enjoying his job

This is my boss, Bill West, and Jessica Zapata, the leader of the Fish and Wildlife Strike Team.  She visits all the national wildlife refuges in Montana with several workers.  They spray from ATV where there are extensive infestations. We see her here a couple of times during the summer. 

I love these group efforts, because I know many of the people, having met them in previous years. At some of the meetups, we get a catered lunch and take time to visit.

Kara, head of the Centennial Valley Association, sets out lunch. 

Great food and company

Bill took us down a short trail to a wolverine trap.  The trap sends a radio signal when it is tripped- a top built of logs closes .  The trappers have to rush to the trap because the wolverine can chew through the logs pretty quickly.  Sometimes, they chew out but hang around to chew a bigger hole to get up the deer leg used for bait. 

This week, I  spent my first full day of this year working on weed control.  Two techs, Kyle, and Micky. and I went to an old homestead site and cut down Russian Pea, a shrub that makes edible peas, planted by the settlers.  Then we painted the cuts with an herbicide to prevent resprouting.  The kids also dug up two bags of houndstongue.

A houndstongue plant (internet image) - toxic to livestock

Micky cutting back new sprouts of a Russian pea

The tiny stumps in the middle was the only living part. We painted them with herbicide

The victors admiring their spoils

The foe completely routed

The houndstongue on the way to the burn pile

I'm late with this blog because I didn't get a day off this week.  We have had mostly rainy days, except for weed day.  It was too cold and wet to open the bluebird boxes on Monday, so I spent a long day on Tuesday on that.  I only worked 5 hours on Monday, so planned to work a few hours on Friday to catch up.  But on Thursday, Bill told me he had paid for me to go to the Wilderness First Aid and CPR class.  He thought he was reminding me. The class ran from Friday noon until 5:15 today (Sunday).  So I'm trying to get my Sunday blog out before Monday gets here. I totally enjoyed the class and learned that a lot of standard stuff has changed. We don't even use backboards any more and transport people with suspected spinal injuries on their sides.

We are supposed to have a valley wide spray day Tuesday. But we are supposed to have rain continue through Tuesday, so I expect that will be canceled.  I will probably take most of the day off tomorrow but will have to take a load of water to the horses by Tuesday. I also have to work around the wet, as there are a couple of places where the truck may get stuck if the ground is too soft.


Happy Father's Day to all you fathers.

New Doings on the Range

I'm really digging my jobs with the biologists.  I get to work with Amy and Kelsy.  Yesterday, I thought we were going to a workshop and didn't take my camera.  It turned out we were going on a collection mission to collect some fighters against the evil invader, Dalmation Toadflax, Linaria dalmatica.  The warriors are very tiny weevils whose scientific name is Mecinus janthinus.  We went to  the University of Montana campus in Missoula  and climbed a steep hill up several switchbacks, then took a little side path and went around looking for the Dalmation Toadflax. Then we bent it over a plastic shoebox and tapped it.  This caused the weevils to drop into the shoe box. From there we dumped them into cardboard containers and put a lid on them. While doing this, we had wonderful views of the entire city below us.

The evil invader, Dalmation Toadflas, Linerea dalmatica

The fighting wevils, Mecinus janthinus -  at least a few are in fighting form.  I dumped them out on the lid of their container straight from the refrigerator and quickly took a picture before they warmed up.

This picture from UM's web page shows the hill behind the campus where we did our collecting.

After about an hour and a half of this hard work, it was time to break and go to the Taco Shop for a huge fish burrito. Then we came back to the refuge and put the weevils into the refrigerator to await transporting them to their battle stations this morning.

This morning, it took a while for Amy to get through her e-mails and other work but Amy, Kelsy and I finally went out to find areas with a lot of toadflax - and not much evidence of weevil attacks -  ato introduce the weevils. Before we left, we got sidetracked again because Amy asked if I wanted to certify to drive the ATVs and UTV's by taking a course offered by Darren this afternoon .  Of course my answer was "YES", so we had to go back to the bunkhouse and get my long-sleeved shirt and high topped work boots, then go to the chemical building and pick up a helmet and find some gloves.

My job on the dispersal of the weevils was to take pictures. We climbed a barely-there rocky two-track trail, that was hardly wide enough for our truck, to one of the highest places in the refuge, then turned around, came back down, and stopped at several locations to release the weevils. I also changed to my riding shirt and boots and grabbed a cereal bar I found in my pack for lunch and was ready to be dropped off for my training down at the maintenance building.

Kelsy is checking a Dalmation Toadflax for signs of weevil damage

Deciding that this place needs weevils, she releases about 500 of them

Amy(R) is getting the GPS coordinates while Kelsy is filling out the record

Finally they put a label on a little white board and take a picture of it.

Why, you ask, are we messing around with bugs and plants.  Invasives, including Dalmation toadflax usurp the native plants that bison eat.  So the amount of food on the range is severely diminished. Every manager of government and private lands, the Indians on their reservations, and landowners all are fighting a massive battle against invasives.  It seems to me that fighting invasives takes the bulk of the time here at the refuge, especially in the summer months when they are pulled,  cut,  sprayed, and bio-controls are introduced and spread on new infestations. During the winter, the lands are burned to help control invasives.


At the ATV/UTV training, we got a lot of safety information and then learned to drive on the flat, around cones in various patterns, on the side of a hill and down through a gulley that was supposed to have water in the bottom of it, but was dry today. Then we had to load a UTV on to a trailer and the unload it. Finally we had to take a test of about thirty multiple/true/false questions. We all passed. I had two male classmates, both younger than my children. So passed another hard day of work.
 

Me certifying to use off -road vehicles

Tomorrow, I need to transfer the  materials I've set up to order for the bee survey to an official order form and then Kelsy and I are supposed to try to collect more weevils and transfer them to other places. These guys do pretty good at working their way up the hills, but not at coming back down.  So we want to collect them near the top and and then release them at the bottom of hills infested with the toadflax. I'm not supposed to work tomorrow but had a terrible sinus attack and didn't work Monday so decided to help out tomorrow.