Weeds: ‘Explosion In Slow Motion’ Noxious Plants Slowly Crowding Out Native Plants To Create Soil, Wildlife Problems

A silent killer is sweeping across the Western landscape.

Noxious weeds are replacing native grasses and vegetation at a rate of 4,600 acres per day on federal lands.

In Idaho, on Bureau of Land Management land alone, more than 1 million acres have been lost to weeds.

In the Panhandle, according to county reports to the state Department of Agriculture, spotted knapweed has infested 86,500 acres from Latah County to Boundary County. Yellow Hawkweed has infested 355,000 acres.

Weeds spread at a rate of 14 percent a year if they’re not controlled.

“There is an explosion in slow motion under way right now,” said Jerry Asher, a BLM natural resource specialist. “So much so that there is a state of biological emergency in many areas.”

Asher delivered the call to arms at a “Weed Summit” last week in Coeur d’Alene that brought together 85 land managers from state and federal agencies, tribes, counties and private property.

The summit was a kind of grass-roots movement to bring back the grass and overcome the pernicious problem of weeds in the Panhandle.

“The risks today seem greater than before,” warned Glen Secrist of the Idaho Department of Agriculture. “We seem to be engulfed in a tide of weeds that’s everincreasing.”

The tide is real, Asher said.

“Many Western federal lands, including those in Idaho, are rapidly undergoing the greatest permanent degradation to ever occur in recorded history,” he said.

Idaho is 64 percent federally owned. The good news is, on federal lands, 90 to 95 percent of the land is not infested.

“The invasive plants continue to spread rapidly,” Asher said, as he showed slides of Idaho hillsides covered in blooms of yellow star thistle and other weeds.

Weeds crowd out native plants and grasses that provide wildlife and range forage. Wildlife managers have seen up to 90 percent reduction in winter forage for elk once knapweed moves into their habitat, a Montana study showed.

Noxious weeds also tend to have a tap root system instead of fibrous roots that hold the soil together. As a result, noxious weeds create erosion problems and turn meadows into deserts.

Some weeds are poisonous, and others are painful to walk through. They’re so resilient that they’re often the first plant to bounce back after a fire.

Weeds also cost a lot of money. Asher mentioned a 1,300-acre ranch in Oregon that was abandoned because of runaway leafy spurge. The economic impact of weeds is estimated to be $129 million annually in Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas combined.

“It’s like spitting in the wind,” mumbled one participant as he listened to the grim statistics.

But all is not lost, Asher and other speakers assured the group.

One solution, which the meeting was designed to jump-start, is a weed management area that pools the resources of different land agencies and owners to fight the infestations in a systematic way.

Idaho has three such management areas now: one in southern Idaho, one in the Hells Canyon area that includes land stewards in Oregon and Washington, and one called the Salmon River Weed Management Area near Grangeville.

When different groups combine to form a management area and develop a plan to fight weeds, they open the door to getting more funding for weed control.

At the BLM, funding priority for weed control is given to those agencies that are involved in cooperative programs.

A grant application from the Salmon River group was considered the top proposal among hundreds of applications for a federal “Pulling Together” grant, said Jim Olivarez of the U.S. Forest Service.

Steve Dewey, from Utah State University, talked about the successes of the Utah Cooperative Weed Management Demonstration Area. One key indicator of success, he said, is that all of the partners still are enthusiastic and more landowners are joining the effort.

Before this cooperative team approach, “there was an effort here and an effort there, but they fizzled and failed in a short period of time,” Dewey said.

In the past, one landowner might try to fight weeds, but would become discouraged when a neighbor didn’t share the same commitment.

The Salmon River team has found that private ranchers now realize they aren’t alone in the battle against weeds and they stay involved longer and treat more acres of land.

“Not all partners will be able to contribute equally,” Dewey said. “It’s a matter of everyone pooling what they have, money or time or staff. Persistence is the key.”

In Kootenai County, the county has had some success in coordinating efforts with state and federal agencies, and supporting private landowners in their efforts to fight weeds.

But more could be accomplished with a management area that pools resources and crosses county, state and tribal lines, said Sandy Daniel of the county weed division.

“Bonner County has a wonderful sprayer; we don’t. The Forest Service has work crews; we don’t have much of a crew,” she pointed out.

By the end of the summit, the participants had formed a 19-member steering committee that has agreed to meet again in December. Daniel, who is on the committee, said representatives from power utilities and timber companies still are needed to round out the group.

Daniel and Asher said all indications are that the Panhandle soon will have a coordinated plan of attack on weeds.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm and commitment,” Asher said. “People were demanding they move forward with the next step.”

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