Action plan targets threats to ecology

BOISE – Idaho is vulnerable to an array of invasive species, from lake-clogging water weeds to tree-killing insects and tenacious foreign mollusks, and it’s time for the state to take a new, coordinated approach to stopping the invasions, according to a new state action plan.

The state isn’t ready to set up checkpoints at its borders, according to the new Action Plan for Invasive Species, though other states have gone that far. Instead, the plan, which is now out for public comment, calls for new efforts to cross-train and coordinate workers for various state, federal and local agencies to spot the invaders as they go about their regular jobs.

“There is … the potential to train law enforcement personnel and others to identify high-risk vehicles and situations,” the plan says.

An example is to cross-train stream survey teams for the state Department of Environmental Quality to recognize and report new invasions of weeds or aquatic pests, according to consultant Joe Hinson, whose firm, Northwest Natural Resource Group, helped develop the plan.

“This would increase field surveillance by approximately 30 trained people who spend all summer in the field,” Hinson wrote in the action plan’s executive summary.

Gov. Dirk Kempthorne appointed an invasive species council in 2001, with representation from a broad array of state and federal agencies and tribes, to examine the state’s needs. The council commissioned an assessment of Idaho’s invasive species problem, prepared by Hinson’s firm, and then held an “Invasive Species Summit” meeting in February. Out of that effort comes the new action plan, which recommends 22 steps to prevent and control invasive species in Idaho.

In addition to the various cross-training measures, the plan calls for regulatory and legislative changes, and for creating a new state coordinator of invasive species, who would track the problem and help combine the efforts of the many agencies that deal with them.

Just in the past few months, a Coeur d’Alene tribal scientist noted an unidentified species of milfoil that’s infesting hundreds of acres in the southern end of Lake Coeur d’Alene. The aquatic weed could be a hybrid species similar to Eurasian milfoil, an invasive, lake-clogging weed that’s been found in Spirit Lake, Hayden Lake and Lake Pend Oreille.

Last spring, a commercial vehicle inspector at a weigh station between Post Falls and Spokane spotted live zebra mussels clinging to the underside of a large pleasure boat being hauled cross-country. Zebra mussels haven’t invaded Idaho or Washington yet, but in the Midwest, they’ve taken over lakes, killing off virtually all the other aquatic life by consuming all the plankton. That eliminates the main food source for many other species, including fish. The mussels are nearly impossible to eradicate once they take hold, and can become so numerous that they clog lake outlets and irrigation intakes.

State Agriculture Director Pat Takasugi noted that just as the draft action plan was being completed, Idaho officials identified “an extremely dangerous new forest pest in our state, the Asian gypsy moth.”

Workers for the state Department of Lands found a single Asian gypsy moth in a trap near Hauser Lake and confirmed that the moth is of a more-destructive species than other gypsy moths previously found in Idaho. The moths can kill native conifer trees, and the females can fly, spreading their kind widely.

Takasugi said the state wants anyone with knowledge of or interest in invasive species to review the action plan “and help us improve the final version with their common sense ideas and comments.”