Student Project: Mary S Young State Park Storymap

In 2020, as part of Dr. Catherine de Rivera’s Ecology & Management of Bioinvasions class at Portland State University, OISC members and invasive species professionals advised students on various invasive species topics. Kylee Church and Julian Roth created a Storymap about Invasive Species Management at Mary S Young State Park. Information and guidance was provided by OISC Member Dr. Samuel (Oregon Sea Grant), and Sherry Sheng & Dave Kruse (Mary S Young State Park). To learn more about the other student projects that were created in this class, please click here.

Storymap: Invasive Species Management at Mary S. Young State Park

*Note: The views and opinions expressed in the attached file(s) or link(s) are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oregon Invasive Species Council.

2020 Integrated Weed Maintenance Calendar

4-County Cooperative Weed Management Area’s Integrated Weed Maintenance Calendar has been updated! View/Download the 2020 Integrated Weed Maintenance Calendar here.

Thanks to Mitch Bixby (Botanic Specialist with the City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services and Vice-Chair of the 4-County Technical Committee) for providing us with background information about the weed management calendar, how it’s intended to be used, and where it will go from here.

One goal of Cooperative Weed Management Areas (CWMAs) is to create a space for organizations and agencies to partner together. This Weed Maintenance Calendar is one product of collaboration within the ‘Clackamas, Clark, Multnomah, Washington (4-County) CWMA,’ supporting the Portland metro area.   

Following a bond measure in 2013, Metro, Portland’s regional government and longstanding 4-County CWMA member, contracted with the City of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services (BES), also a 4-County member, to assemble a management calendar. The calendar would describe the current consensus about managing the weed species Metro staff expected to work on. Starting with King County’s weed management calendar, BES made adjustments based on interviews with local partners, and added some new summaries of the calendar.  In 2014, the Weed Maintenance Calendar arrived and the tool was, and still is, intended to reflect the prevailing opinion for managing the most common situations. The calendar was designed to be a starting point, requiring land managers to make case-by-case management decisions, which might very well diverge from the calendar. 

In 2019, the 4-County CWMA asked Metro to allow revisions for distribution to other land managers and Metro agreed. After a period of discussion (and also of pandemic), the Weed Maintenance Calendar has re-emerged! The revisions aren’t done, and won’t ever be -- we see this as a living document, with the capacity to adjust. As noted above, it’s fully expected that local conditions will require ‘a little more of this’ and ‘a little less of that’. 

While the Calendar might be useful to the general public, professional land managers have a range of opinions about many of these topics. Given the range of organizational priorities, goals, and missions, that is to be expected. 4-County CWMA urges folks who use this calendar to be aware of that range, and to build working relationships with local land managers: they are better able to advise you in your particular circumstances.

The 4-County Technical Committee will be asked to review this document each winter, and make changes as necessary. Please feel free to join the conversation, and watch for future updates. If you have any suggestions for the calendar, please contact Mitch Bixby (Mitch.Bixby@portlandoregon.gov).

2019 Invasive Plant Accomplishments Report for Pacific Northwest Region (USDA Forest Service)

The final 2019 Invasive Plant Program Accomplishments Report for the Pacific Northwest Region was recently released by USDA Forest Service. The report includes accomplishments of their State partners and lists the 170 different partners they collaborated with to control invasive plants on the National Forests in the Pacific Northwest Region. Check out the report here.

Flowering Rush Management in the Columbia Basin

Leslie J. Mehrhoff, University of Connecticut, Bugwood.org

Flowering rush is an aggressive, invasive aquatic weed that has been documented in Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Montana. This plant has the potential to invade and disrupt native marshlands in the Columbia River Basin and the impact of flowering rush on spawning habitat for native salmonid species is a growing concern. 

Achieving sufficient herbicide-plant contact time for successful plant control is one challenge when using aquatic herbicides to manage vegetation growing in flowing water systems. The US Army Corps of Engineers recently released a video that summarizes a unique approach to overcome this challenge by utilizing a bubble barrier system to curtail water flow, confine herbicide treatment, improve weed control, all while reducing impacts to non-target species: "Flowering Rush: Controlling an Invasive Species through Innovation and Partnership with the Walla Walla District".

Also related to flowering rush management in the Pacific Northwest is the Columbia Basin Flowering Rush Management Plan, which was recently released by the Columbia Basin Cooperative Weed Management Area. The Management Plan addresses the following topics:

• Ecological Impacts

• Distribution on the Columbia Basin

• Policy

• Management Options

• Implementation Strategies

• and more!

You can view/download the Management Plan here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58740d57579fb3b4fa5ce66f/t/5d800aea42bf0e112f156daf/1568672496264/2019-ISAN_Flowering-Rush_Report-FINAL-Low-Res-082019-1.pdf

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Citations: 

Columbia Basin Cooperative Weed Management Area. 2019. Columbia Basin Flowering Rush Management Plan: A regional strategy to address Butomus umbellatus throughout the Columbia Basin. pp 67

https://www.oregon.gov/ODA/shared/Documents/Publications/Weeds/FloweringRushProfile.pdf

Pretty Plants Create a Dangerous Threat

Columbia County’s The Chronicle recently published an article about the threat of invasive plants and shared some great insight from Crystlyn Bush, a Riparian Specialist with the Columbia Soil & Water Conservation District. Though this may not be new information to some of us, certain attractive plants or those that provide delicious fruit can be quite dangerous, posing a threat to biodiversity across the country. Specifically in our region, we have issues with Himalayan Blackberry, English Ivy, and Scotch Broom, among others. These plants arrived here by different methods; some came over inadvertently on ships with settlers, while others were intentionally introduced by people who weren’t aware of the long lasting impacts.

These plants not only affect biodiversity, but can have huge economic consequences. “The top 25 invasive plants are responsible for $83 million in costs to agriculture in the form of reduced production, the cost of controlling their spread, and degrading the native environment,” says Bush.

However, Bush gives us hope and a positive outlook on invasives: “There is not a bad plant, just a plant out of place.” While we may not be able to get rid of invasives entirely, we can attempt to keep them from spreading further.

Read the full article written by Morris Malakoff here.

To learn more about invasive plants in Oregon, check out the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s Oregon Noxious Weed Profiles page.

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