Holding The Line Project Background

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An Interview with Kyle Moore, District Range Management Specialist Caribou-Targhee National Forest, Janet Valle, State and Private Forestry State Noxious Weed Grant Coordinator, Bryce Fowler, Fremont County Weed Supervisor, Steve Hobley, Madison County Weed Supervisor, Dave Radford, Bonneville County Commissioner (Idaho), and (name pending), Fremont County Commissioner (Idaho). July 2010 Holding The Line Partnerships Tour.

Interviewer: Janet Valle

The Interview.

"Janet: We are at the days end following a release of insects on leafy spurge within the Holding The Line Project Area earlier. Can you give a background on how the project evolved?

Steve: About two years ago is when we first started this project. Actually the project hadn’t even started then. We just, as part of the county with Steve Smart leading it, collected about 100,000 bugs locally. We didn’t have to purchase anything. And, we redistributed them. What it was, it wasn’t a real big deal. We just did it, and found some bugs. Last year was the first year we really got going on the program. We went and collected over 3.5 million bugs locally, without having to purchase any. That was a huge change from anything we even suspected. So, we weren’t really quite ready for how big the insectaries were, and the amount of time and energy it was going to take to redistribute that many bugs.

All the bugs were in about five thousand-lots, so there were over five hundred bugs we put out at different locations with different drops. It takes quite a bit of coordination to try to figure out where those sites are going to be where we are going to put those bugs. So, that’s the thing we are still trying to work out where the best place is, trying to work with Fremont County and Madison County, we both have large areas of infestations. But, we are trying to work together to know exactly where to put them out to be the most effective right now. And, just keep building it out wider and wider.

Right now we have a crew of five people, who are five students, who are going out. Four of them are high school students. One of them is going to be a college student. They are out now surveying, mapping, and they are going to be collecting today. Yesterday, we just started our collections. And, they will keep going until we are done collecting. Then they will be mapping more, probably once they are back in school, maybe. I guess their season will end about the end of August, probably.

So, it is just a big project that just keeps getting bigger. We have a finite amount of people to do it in just a finite amount of time. There is only a small window of just about three weeks when we can collect the bugs. So, we really are trying to get more people to come in and help. Last year, we had probably a maximum of probably seven, seven or eight, people that came and helped us with collections. We didn’t have a team that would come and help us with collections. Pretty much, counting the Forest Service, some people at the NRCS came and helped us, and with Madison County’s crew, we all went out. We did a lot of the distributions last year in Madison County. And then, Bryce and the Forest Service did the one’s up there [Fremont County] in their jurisdictions. The same thing will happen this year (2010) also.

But, we have already done some collections this year, and we’ve given some bugs to Forest Service and the BLM [Bureau of Land Management]. We gave them 55,000 this morning from the bugs we collected yesterday. So, we’re able to start helping more of the other partners. They can see the results. Here in Madison and Fremont we have seen how it really works. The other partners really haven’t seen how effective it is. Once they come up and help, actually get on the ground and do the collections this year, I think they are going to get as excited as the rest of us this year about how easy it is and how effective it is.

That’s what we are working for, to get the excitement built with more counties and more agencies.

Janet: One technique you are using is called “bug bombs”. I know the Forest Service helicopter has been involved, and Forest Service is involved working as a partner with the CWMA [Cooperative Weed Management Area]. Can you explain how “bug bombs” work?

Kyle: Yes. Being the Forest Service, we are the recipient once the “bug bombs” are put together. I think initially, they had at least 5,000 bugs per each bomb. It could go up, to average 5,00-7,000. They put them together in biodegradable containers. They tape them together and put some flagging on them, so that when we are up in the air you could see where they went, and you could pinpoint where you wanted to drop them. There were also holes in the sides so that when you dropped the bugs they were able to go to the light, so they were able to do that.

This initial first flight happened rather quickly for myself. I was notified the night before that we were going to go up. And, we did do that. We used maps that Steve Smart had put together that identified some areas that they thought were infested with leafy spurge. We had a quick meeting with the helicopter pilot, and decided to go to the center of that area to the GPS coordinates in the helicopter. We went to that spot and did a zigzag pattern along what we call the Big Bend Reach Area above the Ashton Reservoir and actually located some areas of leafy spurge. We went back and started dropping and taking GPS coordinates. We took those [coordinates] back and gave them to Becca [Schneiderhan] so she could put them into her maps for the Holding The Line project.

I was just impressed with the fact that, how efficient that was, everything at the last minute, how organized everything was. This year we are in the middle of July. We are going to have a recon flight this next week and we will look for some additional areas to drop the bugs.

Janet: Why are we using the helicopters to drop the bugs?

Kyle: Well, one of the reasons, the main reason is, these areas are very remote. They are very hard to get to. It would take you all day to hike in or even if you had horses. Even if it was accessible to that, very remote areas, very steep country where we are seeing a lot of this spurge on the southwest facing slopes, and just the time involved, we can cover a lot of ground in an hour with a helicopter that would take you a month or weeks to get to with any other means to do so. The cost-benefit ratio, I think, is a great benefit associated with that and we are hoping to utilize more of that in the future. To do that you can just cover a lot more ground a lot quicker. You can get a lot more bang for the buck, so to speak.

Janet: We talked about some new mapping techniques. I know that Becca [Schneiderhan] developed a new website that county weed supervisors can access the information. There’s a photograph that tells you where all the information is. There is also a website for the public. You guys have done a web app [application] to address that.

Bryce: Its http://www.Helpholdtheline.com, is how to access that. And, if you get online, you can see everything that is going on. It is interactive. So, anyone can go on there and you can pull up pictures, spin them around so you can get a good look at what plants are and what leafy spurge is: how to identify it, treatment options for it. And so its really interactive helpful to everybody to put to good use.

Janet: I think this year the effort has been concentrated in the eastern half of Idaho, and at one time I heard that maybe it would expand into other states. Do you know if that is going to happen, if that is going to be part of this project?

Bryce: Our five-year plan, we hope that we will have someone in Montana to do this, as the general area is everything around Yellowstone Park. Yellowstone Park is going to be the center of this plan, this project. We actually have Wyoming on board a year early, which makes things much easier. We are working with people in Montana to get them on board. So, by the first part of next year we should have everyone on board, and geared up to start the program.

Janet: So, basically, leafy spurge is very prevalent in eastern Idaho. It is marching closer and closer to the Targhee-Caribou National Forest and toward Yellowstone. So you kind-of put a line, which is the main concept behind “Holding the Line””, which is to keep it from marching into areas that are clean of leafy spurge.

Bryce: That is the crutch of the project, to keep , although actually it works both ways. While we are trying to keep leafy spurge from going into the Park, too, we are getting the benefit of if they have something we don’t want, we keep an eye on that too. We can work together that way and help each other out keeping everything clean.

Janet: But how long will it take the leafy spurge insects to be effective? What are you seeing out there in the field?

Bryce: We are seeing that, you know, this whole new concept we are using, bio-saturation, it is pretty new, we are still exploring it and we are still learning from it. Back in the early days, you know, we would take 500 bugs out there and drop them in a spot and hope that they would take off. Now bio-saturation is, as Kyle mentioned, we are putting 5,000 to 7,000 bugs in an area and then, within a matter of a year or two, we are able to go back and collect and move those bugs somewhere else and keep growing these populations. Where as before, you would have to wait fifteen or twenty years before you would be able to do that. So you know, we are seeing a lot better results with more bugs.

Janet: How are you prioritizing the areas that you are putting the insects on and areas that you are going to treat with herbicide?

Steve: Generally, we look at what is accessible. If it is accessible right now, we spray. We will use herbicide because we know that is effective and it is right now. And, we have a lot of areas that are inaccessible to herbicide application unless it was a backpack. Even some of those [accessible to backpack] some of these steep canyons we can’t get into with any kind of equipment or personnel. And, we can’t do helicopter spraying in these areas. So, bugs are a better only option, sometimes goats might be able to be used; but, the biocontrol really is, seems to be the best and most effective method, because once we can get them established they will be there and they will be able to keep doing the job for us. So, we really just look at where the locations of the populations are, but leafy spurge and places where we are putting them right now, we have some huge issues with infestation. So, what we are doing now is just going into big areas that have a lot of spurge and we are starting to hit the outside edge of it and just try to help contain where its at right now and start working in on that. We are just going to keep adding to that population of bugs we put out there at those big areas, and then start picking up canal banks and other areas where we can. And, just try to expand it as far and as fast as we can.

Janet: We are trying to use an integrated pest management approach, so that includes livestock grazing. I know there are some wet areas where maybe biocontrol doesn’t work so well, and you definitely can’t use the herbicide. So is the goat grazing still part of this project?

Bryce: It is a part of this project. It is one of the tools. It is kind of hard in our areas. Being on the National Forest and with the Grizzly bear being around these areas and endangered species, it is hard to get grazing. But, where we are able to get grazing, we are grazing right now. In this project area, there is grazing going on with 510 goats in some pretty rugged country that, as Steve said, there are some of the same crewmen sent in with permits. It is too rocky for biocontrol to overwinter properly and so, grazing, goats going in there is the best option for that area.

Janet: Where will you guys be for monitoring? I know that the entomologist from the BLM [Bureau of Land Management] Joe Milan has developed some protocols. Are you guys implementing any of those protocols? Are they part of your monitoring process?

Bryce: They will be. We haven’t done it so far. It is as you said, bugs are just really starting to come on a little late this year. But we will be implementing that into our program. Everyone is on the same page. We aren’t going to be any different from anyone else. We will be following everyone’s protocols so everything’s being met.

Janet: How do the county commissioners and the other CWMA [Cooperative Weed Management Area] feel about this project? Do they see a benefit to it?

Steve: Our county commissioners in Fremont and Madison counties, they are all excited about it. They have all been to collections and they have seen how, and Bonneville County, they have a commissioner who is really interested in it, and they are fully supportive. They see the cost-benefit of, if you spent that money on herbicide on a one-time shot or if you spent that money on the bugs you can get a lot more bugs for the same amount of money and have them next year around, hopefully. So, they [commissioners] see the benefit of it and they are pretty excited about it.

Dave: As you know, Holding The Line project is a project that had its genesis in 1991 when an important body of water in eastern Idaho was protected by some biocontrol, or bugs. The thing about water and Idaho and the importance of water. It is natural for bugs to be used in weed control around sensitive areas. As county commissioner for Bonneville County, it is something I have always believed in. One of the things that I appreciate about the biocontrol effort it seems as though it is just a part of your overall weed plan of management. It ought to be a major part because it is so cost-effective. The return on your dollar for treatment from year to year, the fact that the bugs don’t ask for a day off, they never ask for a raise, they don’t go on strike. They just target those invasive weeds and that’s why it brings so many grasses back and really helps our wildlife, which is a major resource for the people of Idaho. In Bonneville County we have 616,000 acres of public lands. Weeds can actually create a problem with fire, they can create a genesis for fire that can burn a beautiful Forest like this from the oldest outskirts of the National Park in the United States National Park Service. Our High Country C&D has been a leader in the biocontrol effort to protect this great resource and Yellowstone National Park. You see how this river flows right through High Country RC&D service area. We are proud of the fact that we’re trying to protect private and public lands here in eastern Idaho, and the partnerships we have built on the fire plan is an ongoing effort for the rest of Idaho.

As you know, we get a lot of publicity, but we don’t care who gets the credit. Like Steve Smart, he looked at the bug project, and every year he talked to the council about biocontrol and about how cost effective it was.

And I count five county superintendents actively using biocontrol here in eastern Idaho. Of our Cooperative Weed Management Areas, we have got two in a ten-county area, that what I think people ought to know about eastern Idaho, you could ride across four states and not come across Idaho. So geographically you have a large area. Individuals truly can have an important part in partnership with landowners working with local government, state government, federal government. It takes that kind of effort because, you know, weeds don’t respect boundaries or fencelines. They just grow wherever they landed. It is one of those things that just design to fit the format of the plan. Using nature to protect these areas, it takes the individual, it takes the hands-on attitude by, you know, the Forest Service, BLM [Bureau of Land Management], the National Park Service. I think it takes people who are concerned about the resource for all of America in this fight against noxious weeds. So, I do believe you can be able to make a difference.

When biocontrol was first brought to my attention, as a county commissioner seven and a half years ago, I thought, “Well, what can bugs do to stop weeds.” Because weeds are so damaging to wildlife, to the quality of life for agriculture, for you know, even cattle and grazing livestock like horses that I raise. Weeds just aren’t any good for anything other than just to afflict and be noxious. My point on the biocontrol, back in the 1990s, when this project in eastern Idaho first had its genesis on biological control and bugs that were target specific for invasive species, it was brought to my attention that these bugs’ market value was about one dollar a piece in some areas of this country. And, when the 50,000 bugs that were turned loose in this area and started insectaries, we now have over 300 bug sites in eastern Idaho. In the ten counties service area that High Country RC&D serves through the NRCS [Natural Resources Conservation Service], you know the USDA program, we just recently last year released over 2.2 million flea beetles in one county and 1.7 million in the other county in a conservative estimate. That’s a $4 million on-the-ground value to the tax payers of all of the United States. I think it makes a lot of sense instead of having to buy chemicals every year that only last a year, treat the sensitive areas, like close to rivers, close to watersheds. You are able to treat with bugs right up to the waterfront, and not worry about any damage to the environment. But the return on the dollars has got to be one hundred to one. When you stop to think about the future of treatment for biocontrol here in eastern Idaho. And the nice thing about the private landowners' [land] that we have had these insectaries on, there is a kind of ongoing commitment or mutual understanding that these bugs will be used on your property, but we will be harvesting them for other areas so that other people can benefit by these same flea beetles. So, it is a great project. I think it makes a lot of sense scientifically, economically, and I am just proud to support it.

Fremont County Commissioner (name pending): Here in Fremont County, we have a program where Bryce secured a grant to pay for chemical and the private sector can call his office and schedule for the county crew to come and spray. The only cost is application. So for relatively few dollars per acre, they [county crew] will come in and apply whatever specific chemical is necessary to take care of the weed that is causing the problem. As I have been standing in this circle, I see federal, state, county, this is where the private sector isn’t represented [on the tour] and they need to be. They need to hear this because it is going to take an effort from all agencies and the private sector to control weeds.

For example, I personally called the weed department a week ago yesterday, told Bryce I had a punctureweed infestation on my private property, and wanted some help. The next morning 6 a.m. the county crew rolled in and two guys on 4-wheelers attacked about ten acres and was done in about 45-minutes. They put the proper chemical on, the proper amounts, and was back off and onto another job in short order. Minimal costs, they figured they sprayed about five acres. Five times fifteen, that’s not very expensive for the private sector.

Our [Fremont County Weed Control]budget hasn’t really increased that much, because Bryce has gone out and got numerous grants to support each one of these programs. The aquatic weed program is one that is being funded by the state of Idaho. In fact, legislature came out with a sticker to put on boats, and that sticker helps pay for the aquatic weed program. We get a significant amount of money from the state to run our aquatic weed program. Right now, I think there is like twelve, fifteen, people employed through the summer running the boat license program at Henry’s Lake; the Holding The Line project to keep leafy spurge out of Yellowstone Park; and this private sector program where he got a grant to help buy chemicals for the private sector to make it reasonable and encourage them to use the program. Besides his weed roadside program, he’s gone from once a year roadside treatment to twice a year. We pretty much give Bryce the equipment and manpower he needs because we realize it is very important.

Janet:' What do you believe should be the involvement level of County Commissioners with Cooperative Weed Management Areas?

Fremont County Commissioner (name pending): First I think commissioners have to have an interest in controlling those weeds. If you don’t have commissioners that care, then you don’t see it happening. We have a very active RC&D [Resource Conservation and Development – USDA NRCS program] to pull all the players together, and we have other programs like cloud-seeding and weather-modification. I have just been made Chairman of that committee. That’s a program where we do all of this in southeast Idaho, same players, but we are doing weather modification in the winter months, weed control in the summer months. We stay very active. But, I think you have got to have a desire. You have got to have somebody motivated to want to be involved. I think the RC&D is a great tool to make this happen.

Janet: How does this project help the program on the National Forest?

Kyle: Well, I think it has a lot to do with the Forest risks that we have. One of those is that we have to control the noxious weeds. We need to do that. We need to protect those areas that are free from them, and especially treat areas that may lead into Yellowstone, taking care of the vectors or byways that may cause some additional weeds to be spread. It is a very integrated approach. We don’t just focus on one thing. We do like the way that the bugs work. We like the way that the chemical work. It just depends. Every situation is different. But, it helps us work, not only with the Forest Service, but being involved with other counties and private landowners that border the Forest Service that we are all trying to reach a win-win situation where we are all focused on the same goal to try to get rid of these noxious weeds and to keep things not only for ourselves, but we are looking ahead to the future as well so that everybody can enjoy the resource and use it responsibly, and that it will be there and available for it to be used.

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