Areawide Pest Management

Title: The Ecological Areawide Management (TEAM) of Leafy Spurge

Lead Project Director: Dr. Gerry Anderson, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Sidney, MT

The Need: Leafy spurge is an invasive weed of Eurasian origin, which infested more than five million acres in 35 states and Canada’s Prairie Provinces by 1997. It crowded out native vegetation, threatened biodiversity and wildlife habitat, and control costs reached $144 million annually in just four Northern Plains states (MT, WY, ND, SD). In addition, the most commonly used control tools (herbicides) often had adverse environmental impacts. TEAM Leafy Spurge (TLS) was a six-year integrated pest management (IPM) research and demonstration program begun in 1997 to curb the aggressive spread of leafy spurge in rangeland.

Image: Before (left) and after (right) of a field site with leafy spurge in South Dakota. Photo credit: ARS Archives.

New Partnerships: The program united federal, state and local agencies and private entities in a cooperative effort to systematically combat leafy spurge using ecologically-based IPM strategies across Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota. TLS was managed cooperatively by ARS and USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). Program partners included seven federal and ten state entities, a dozen private organizations, and numerous individual ranchers and land managers. Participating were the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, state departments of agriculture, land grant universities, county weed supervisors and Extension agents. TLS also aided two National Wildlife Refuges and two Native American Reservations.

Image: Beetles on spurge skeleton.

Accomplishments: Under the program, proven environmentally friendly and sustainable IPM technologies, emphasizing use of insect biological control agents as a base, were developed and shared with landowners and managers across the U.S. and Canada. As part of that effort, TLS funded 35 research projects to fill in knowledge “gaps” in leafy spurge management (e.g., weed and control method impacts on threatened and endangered species, ecological barriers to biocontrol establishment, rangeland recovery, and increased collection of native rangeland seeds). Research indicated that insects with sheep or limited herbicide use can produce effective control over the shortest amount of time.

The program achieved between 90% -100% control of leafy spurge at the program’s four primary research and demonstration sites. And a core group of ranchers and land managers began using the approach. The program benefits exceeded $6.7 million (1997-2003).

Impacts: The program distributed more than 48 million biocontrol insects in 13 states and 3 Canadian provinces (enough for 24,000 new insectaries), and developed more than 20 informational products, including a website, how-to manuals, CD-ROMs, newspaper articles and a documentary on using the insects and other IPM tools for successfully managing leafy spurge. These products reached a large audience. TLS officials traveled approximately 250,000 miles, gave 100-plus presentations, and distributed 65,000-plus how-to manuals and 10,000 plus educational CDs designed to bring the expert to the customer over the life of the program. Thousands more were distributed as part of TLS’s “Information Resource Center” binder delivered to every county Extension and weed district office in six states. Over 2,700 were distributed across the U.S. and Canada. In total, products developed under the TEAM Leafy Spurge program were distributed to 7 countries and 34 states.

In June 2008, the North Dakota Department of Agriculture issued a press release announcing that Leafy Spurge was no longer the number one weed menace in that state by acreage, falling to number two after years atop that state’s annual Noxious Weed Survey. The decline in leafy spurge acres was attributed to integrated control strategies, adding that the biological control program in particular “has been very successful in reducing spurge infestations.”

The foundation laid by TEAM Leafy Spurge continues to produce benefits. Annual collection and redistribution days remain a fixture on summer calendars across the Northern Plains, and biocontrol is a widely implemented and accepted tool against leafy spurge. Nearly twenty years on, ARS Sidney is in the midst of an extensive re-sampling of TLS sites and other areas where biocontrol agents were introduced to quantify the long-term impacts of the biocontrol program, understand how it may be changing through time, and identify options for adapting and augmenting integrated management strategies.

Image: Ranchers lined up for flea beetles at a TEAM Leafy Spurge Field Day. Photo credit: ARS Archives

Title: Areawide Pest Management Program Demonstrating Ecologically-Based Invasive Plant Management (IPM) of Annual Grasses

Lead PD: Dr. Roger Sheley, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Burns, OR

The Need: Throughout the Great Basin and surrounding rangeland ecosystems, a major factor detrimental to ecological function, wildlife and their habitat, and forage production is the invasion by winter-annual grasses, especially cheatgrass and/or medusahead. These pests dominate more than 130 million acres throughout California, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, and Utah and continue to rapidly spread.

Annual grasses dramatically reduce plant diversity and richness; reduce suitable habitat for wildlife; especially sage-grouse; remove livestock forage by 50-80%; and accelerate erosion. In addition, annual grasses promote out-of-control wildfires that facilitate the conversion of rangeland from a perennial-dominated to an annual-dominated system and near urban areas pose a serious risk to human life. In response, a group of representatives and stakeholders from around the western US convened “The Medusahead Challenge”.

The Medusahead Challenge involved over 140 stakeholders and spent 3 days designing a comprehensive strategy to initiate a long-term state of the art program aimed at managing annual grasses in the western US. From this initial thrust, the ideas and concepts were formed into an Areawide project that was funded by USDA-ARS. These representatives and stakeholders remained involved in the program for its entire 5-year duration.

New Partnerships: The project was initiated across five states in the Great Basin ecosystem of the western United States. Within each of the five states, extensive partnerships were developed with university researchers, extension specialists, ARS scientists, land managers, and producers. In total, more than 20 principal investigators or senior project associates were responsible for the development of demonstration, site research, and outreach for this project.

Image: Participants in the EB-IPM program in Oregon. Photo credit: USDA-ARS publication "EB-IPM of Annual Grasses" Brenda Smith and Roger Sheley

Accomplishments:  Ecologically-Based Invasive Plant Management or EBIPM was established for managing annual grasses in the western US. This was a change from the traditional approach where rangeland managers focused their efforts mainly on just killing weeds. However, EBIPM helps managers recognize weeds as symptoms to underlying ecological causes of invasion. To achieve sustainable invasive weed management, managers must learn how to modify the underlying ecological processes that control favorable vegetation dynamics. In the past, a decision-making framework has not existed to guide the development of causal-based management systems. The EBIPM model helps fill this void in providing land managers with a much-needed process to

• integrate an assessment of the current state of the land
• predict vegetation change with and without imposed management
• evaluate the outcome of management activities

By using the EBIPM framework, land managers have been able to develop integrated weed management programs. EBIPM helps managers recognize and modify the underlying ecological processes that shift plant community dynamics from undesirable to desirable species. The framework has been tested in the field and documented scientific publications [link to EBIPM guidebook].

Image: Successful seeding in rangelands. Photo credit: USDA-ARS publication "EB-IPM of Annual Grasses" Brenda Smith and Roger Sheley

Impacts: The number of land managers and producers directly impacted through field schools, workshop trainings and presentations has been close to 3,000. Another 12,000 managers have been indirectly impacted as a result of obtaining products offered at various venues, website visits or by word of mouth. The number of land managers directly reached are responsible for more than 1 million acres of land. Additionally, managers who indirectly learned of the materials, visited the website, or picked up products at various venues are responsible for another 5 million acres of land that have benefited from some aspect of EBIPM management.

To convert the benefits of these rangeland improvements into monetary values, Animal Unit Months (AUMs are the amount of forage to feed a mature cow for one month – approximately 800 lbs. of forage) are used with economist-developed formulas. The monetary increase from EBIPM improved rangeland is nearly $134 million in direct benefits and $200 million in additional indirect benefits 20 years after the project officially ended.

Image: An established stand of perennial grasses. Photo credit: USDA-ARS publication "EB-IPM of Annual Grasses" Brenda Smith and Roger Sheley

Title: The Hawaii Fruit Fly Areawide Pest Management (AWPM) Program

Lead Project Director: Dr. Roger Vargas, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Hilo, HI

The Need: For over a century exotic fruit flies – especially Mediterranean fruit fly, melon fly, Oriental fruit fly, and Malaysian fruit fly—have been devastating more than 400 fruits and vegetables in the Hawaiian islands. Susceptible crops include citrus, eggplant, guava, loquat, mango, melon, papaya, passion fruit, peach, pepper, persimmon, plum, star fruit, tomato, and zucchini. These fruit flies make it almost impossible for Hawaii’s farmers to raise crops without resorting to almost weekly applications of pesticides.

Fruit fly damage has cost Hawaii more than $300 million each year in lost markets for locally grown produce. Prior attempts to control these fruit fly pests had limited impact, but, in 1999, the Hawaii Areawide Fruit Fly Integrated Pest Management (HAW-FLYPM) program, which has dramatically curtailed fruit fly damage, reduced pesticide use by 90 to 100 percent, and remarkably expanded agricultural potential.

New Partnerships: The program built collaborations with Hawaii Department of Agriculture, industry partners, and the University of Hawaii Cooperative Extension.

Image: Mediterranean fruit fly. Photo credit: Scott Bauer