Cheat Grass removal

[jimss]

Starting from scratch with no native species in cheatgrass monocultures is not easy. We have quite a few sites that have been disturbed in the past by prairie dogs, overgrazing, floods, wildfires, taken out of crop production, etc. that have no remnant natives and were giant weed patches. In fact, we seem to purchase properties that have been neglected for years.

There is a 100 acre prairie dog town that just plagued out that we are in the process of revegetating. The bordering area around the parameter of the prairie dog town has weeds with remnant natives still intact, but the middle of the site has been hammered by confined prairie dogs for over 30 years and is nothing but Dalmatian toadflax, thistles, knapweed, curly dock, bindweed, horehound, and cheatgrass. Around 10 of the 100 acres is solid cheatgrass and I'm confident we'll have a great stand of perennial grass established shortly.

We've had really good luck reseeding areas we've controlled various weeds. We are obviously at the mercy of Mother Nature with timely moisture for seedling recruitment. It often takes several years of persistence for success. The trick is knowing what works in your particular area and sticking with it!

Please feel free to PM if you would like more information on what we've had success with.

We've had very good luck with bio-control for Dalmatian toadflax control. There tends to be years when toadflax goes nuts. We continue to keep an eye on Dalmatian and replenish bugs in problem areas.

 

[kwyeewyk]

They have, sort of. They did some bio control of the toadflax that worked, but it's back thicker than I've ever seen it. I've never seen them do anything serious on cheatgrass outside of ag fields. I unsuccessfully tried to find another pic of even worse areas, but there are places between Wenatchee and Entiat that simply don't have anything anymore. It's bare dirt and a sprinkling of cheat grass. Honestly, I think it's being overgrazed by bighorns too, but I doubt they'll increase the tags. It's just incredibly sad that we create wildlife areas that progressively offer less and less habitat value every year. I guess I would still rather lock the land up now before it develops, but I would really like to see some effort put into the quality of the forage.

The reason they focus on ag fields is because they can actually get equipment on it for seed bed prep and drill seeding, which greatly increases the chance of success. If you kill the weeds and have nothing but dirt, but your only option is to do aerial seeding with no way to incorporate the seed into the soil, your success establishing seed will be very low and the site will be reinvaded by the same weeds, or worse yet you open the area up to invasion by something worse like medusa head rye or yellow star-thisle.

The area you are talking about is steep slopes with southern aspects, about 10 inches of annual precipitation. The likelihood of successful restoration is very low and would cost about 1-2 grand per acre to attempt a treatment regime that would have any chance of success. Seed is very expensive and it takes about five years of intensive treatment to begin to re-establish a perennial community in an area accessible by equipment. Inaccessible south slopes slopes you're pretty much pissing in the wind.

Chelan PUD provides funding for WDFW, FS and BLM to do habitat improvement in the area surrounding the Rocky Reach pool, but it must be prioritized so the general order of operations is to maintain or improve areas that are still somewhat intact, treat areas that can be accessed with equipment, and aerial seeding is a last resort that usually doesn't occur on a large scale due to high cost, low success and lack of funding. There's a forum for the process that meets a couple times a year and it's open to the public so if you have specific areas of interest or suggestions for improvement you could participate.

The main toadflax biocontrol (Mecinus janthinus) releases in the area were coordinated by PUD, starting with the Mills cyn fire in 2012, using WSU extension office. The releases occurred up until a few years ago. The extension office has been saying there's enough biocontrol established in the area that new releases are not necessary. There's concern that unnecessary releases can spread disease among the control agents. I have felt like more releases could be beneficial but that's not the advice that is being given on the larger scale for the area. It will be discussed again this year, same story with knapweed and purple loosestrife biocontrols.

Bighorns definitely have a big impact on the vegetation as well, and they like to dig up the ground for dust baths and that helps spread weeds.

There's a lot of monitoring data from various fires and treatments in the area, and a recently established agreement between WDFW and BLM is helping increase treatments in the area because WDFW has a lot of restoration infrastructure and experience, but very limited funding, while BLM has more access to funding but extremely limited ability to implement projects.

The area is near and dear to me as well, if you're interested I can provide more specific info on past and upcoming treatments in the area.