The use of Integrated Weed Management within a framework of Ecosystem Management
by
George Wooten
Twisp, WA
November, 1999
SUMMARY
The goal of this paper is to propose a rational approach to controlling
weeds based on ecosystem management. These principles are meant to be applicable
to pest management in general, and in this paper, specifically, to that
class of pests referred to as weeds, Noxious Weeds, non-indigenous plant
species, alien plant taxa, or plant invaders.
Invading species are used here to mean those species which are rapidly
increasing in an ecosystem without controls on their growth and spread.
Successful management of invading species is dependent on rational approaches
and long-term commitment such as that embodied in Integrated Pest Managment
(IPM, or specifically for plants, Integrated Weed Management, IWM)-It is
a decision-making process which selects, integrates and implements weed
control based on predicted ecological, sociological and economic consequences-G.
Hoglund, Integrated Weed Management, 1991. The biology of invading species
is based on models of the etiology of the spread of infectious disease
agents, and from an ecosystem point-of-view, invading species are the equivalent
of disease agents (Wooten and Morrison, 1995).
IWM is an implementation of ecosystem management, concerned specifically
with invading species, not just legally defined Noxious weeds. The control
of invading species requires comprehensive, holistic ecosystem management
beyond the reach of mere symptomatic treatments that have characterized
previous government weed management projects.
The need for this paper exists because of the recent release of flawed
government weed managment proposals, which have met with dismay and protest
from the public at large, due primarily to the failure of managers to understand
the broader implications of IWM within an ecosystem management framework.
PRINCIPLES
Social and Cultural Objectives
Education will be an integral part of weed management projects.
Public involvement will be open and welcome during the planning, preparation,
implementation, and if necessary, legal redress, of weed management projects.
Weed management projects will be designed in the interests of the general
public, without favor to special interests or chemical companies.
Proposed projects will include integration of cultural values with resources.
Proposed projects involving the use of pesticides or herbicides will include
risk analyses for public health and safety, and thresholds for health and
safety tolerance will be publicly available. Faulty analyses or risks exceeding
thresholds will be cause for rejection of proposals.
Proposed projects will describe and analyze the economics of manual control
methods without bias.
Proposed projects will describe and analyze costs/benefit ratios. Faulty
analyses or net losses will be cause for rejection of proposals.
Proposed projects will provide clear and concise definitions and terms.
Goals of proposed projects will be realistic and objectives will be measurable.
Monitoring will be incorporated in all weed management programs.
Ecosystem Management
Managers will describe weed control measures within an ecosystem managment
framework involving an understanding of the biology, demographics and etiology
of weed spread.
Managers will describe weed control measures within an ecosystem management
framework involving an understanding of the differences in ecology between
native and introduced species' ecology.
Damage thresholds will be established for invading species that activate
a process of strategic weed management.
Areas in which eradication of certain species may not be feasible will
be identified, and goals will be directed toward control strategies rather
than eradication in these areas.
Areas in which control or containment may not be feasible will be identified,
and management will not use funds in these situations until control mechanisms
have been established.
Use of native species for recovery will be encouraged. The use of introduced
forage grasses will be discouraged, as many introduced grasses are also
ecosystem invaders, and attract livestock into recovery zones.
Monitoring will be incorporated in all weed management programs.
Preferred Alternatives
Preferred alternatives will have clearly stated goals
Preferred alternatives will substantially involve the public.
Preferred alternatives will be long-term solutions.
Preferred alternatives will be economically cost-effective
Preferred alternatives will have clearly stated costs.
Preferred alternatives will be specific about dates and times.
Preferred alternatives will be site-specific.
Preferred alternatives will be species-specific, and will use scientific
nomenclature for plant names.
Preferred alternatives will incorporate effectiveness monitoring.
Herbicides
Decision documents will provide analyses of health and safety risks associated
with pesticides, and will do so openly and without bias. Descriptions of
potential hazards will be available to the public, and will include discussion
and analysis of potential effects on sensitive individuals, children, hazards
for which risks such as cancer can never be zero.
Decision documents will describe the affects of proposed treatments on
the environment, and will include discussion and analysis of potential,
but unknown effects of herbicides including above- and below-ground transport,
breakdown factors, food-web incorporation, nature of targets, synergistic
effects, and aquatic effects. If the balance of such effects are completely
unknown, herbicide use will be restricted to emergency cases in which eradication
is imminently attainable, and for which other documentation has been completed.
Decision documents will include worst-case scenarios including a discussion
of potential effects resulting from chemical spills, herbicide drift, off-target
contamination, and accidental over- application.
Permits for use on public lands will be rejected for chemicals containing
so-called "inert ingredients". Manufactured products containing trade secrets
for ingredients have no place on public lands.
All areas treated with herbicides will be posted for the duration of pesticide
residuals on the site.
Cumulative effects will be analyzed including the potential for development
of herbicide tolerance, chemical buildup, and selective changes in vegetation
structure resulting in loss of resources.
Only permitted applicators will be allowed to use herbicides.
The use of herbicides will be a LAST resort.
BACKGROUND FOR THESE PRINCIPLES
Both the National Forest System and the Washington state government
are now embarking on major programs to control Noxious Weeds on public
lands. In light of how this has been politically ignored for decades, this
should be viewed as a good thing. However, the public is concerned that
in their zeal to use newly available funds, government officials will rush
to embrace whatever herbicides are currently available without due heed
of the consequences. To do so is to proceed blindly, without an understanding
of the biology of invading species. Weeds are not the cause, but the symptom
of a lack of ecosystem integrity brought on by ongoing poor management.
Unless the ecological causes, or etiology, of the plant invasions are addressed
and understood within an IWM and ecosystem management framework, these
projects are doomed to failure.
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT
The following definition was taken from the Forest Service's Northwest
Forest Plan:
"The goal of Ecosystem Management is to sustain the productivity
and integrity of natural ecosystems on public lands."
The objectives of ecosystem management depend on having a definition for
ecosystems, for which a working definition is presented here:
Ecosystems are collections of all individuals within a defined
time and physical space, whose requirements for species viability are met
by processes and components provided by the environment.
This definition does not limit management to those species or processes
which management deems fit to consider, but rather to the biology of all
of the species within that environment.
A program of ecosystem management would consider the process of plant
invasion apart from whether a species is indigenous or not, and would manage
based on a defined, desired ecosystem integrity. Plants and animals within
an ecosystem would be managed as ecosystem components. Processes of an
ecosystem would be managed based on the biology and ecology of those components.
Land management agencies such as the Forest Service would propose projects
for subsets of ecosystems, for example specific areas of or times of projects,
or specific plant and animal species or species groups. Under ecosystem
management, these categories would be managed within the broader set of
associated life processes of their environment. More importantly, management
would deal with the causes of problems as ecosystem alterations, such as
in the recovery of suppressed stands of conifers, overgrazed meadows, fragmented
forests, or disturbed sites that have led to species invasions.
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF INTEGRATED WEED MANAGEMENT
The goal of an Integrated Weed Management (IWM) Program is to implement
a decision-making process to select, integrate and implement control methods
for invading plant species based on predicted ecological, sociological
and economic consequences.
Invading species are those species which are rapidly increasing in an
ecosystem without controls on their growth and spread. Public agencies
need to implement ecosystem management, including Integrated Pest Management
(IPM) and Integrated Weed Management (IWM), that manages invading plant
and animal species as pathogenic processes in unbalanced ecosystems. Solutions
to the weed problem involve holistic ecosystem management, not just symptomatic
treatment.
While legally defined Noxious Weeds can be specified and prioritized
as a target class, they still need to be managed as part of a multi-species
ecosystem. Targeted species groups will list the scientific names of all
taxa under consideration. Undefined, and value-laden groups of species
such as "undesirable species", "poisonous species" and "unwanted vegetation"
will not be acceptable as target classes.
For National Forest lands, the goal of an IWM program is bounded by
goals for sustainable agriculture and forestry specified in the Federal
Land and Policy Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA), the Forest and Rangeland
Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, and for protection of biodiversity
as mandated in the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), and in the standards
and guidelines established in individual Forest Plans. This proposal, however
is equally applicable to state lands which must meet goals for long-term
sustainability.
ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT PROPOSAL
This section describes suitable objectives for a comprehensive Integrated
Pest Management (IPM) Program using ecosystem management of invading species,
including Noxious Weeds, invasive native plants, and non-indigenous animals
such as nutria, cattle and sheep, on public lands.
Objective 1. Education. Weed management projects will include public
education about ecosystem and vegetation management involving cooperation
between federal, state, county and private entities. Cooperative agreements
will be entered into that provide information to interested groups about
vegetation management on public lands. Budgets for education about invading
species will include time for meetings, training, health and safety concerns,
and signing of project areas for management objectives such as control
treatments. Workshops will train government personnel on how to recognize
Noxious Weeds and other ecosystem invaders.
Objective 2. Social and cultural values. Proposed weed management projects
will reflect the social, moral and cultural customs of the local citizenry.
Cultural plants and animals will be identified and protected, local customs
such as hunting and wild-food gathering will be considered, and demographic
characteristics of the affected public will be considered, e.g., logging,
orchard- growing, and outfitting and guiding.
The interests of the community and social costs have to be taken into
account when making decisions. Directors and managers are accountable to
the community for the results of their work and for the way in which such
results are achieved. This is particularly true when using chemicals in
which hazards and risks cannot be eliminated, only minimized.
Objective 3. Public involvement. Weed management projects will be designed
in the interests of the general public, without favor to special interests
or chemical companies. Public involvement will be welcomed at all stages
of a project, and informed public opinion will be considered in decision-
making. Information about environmental effects will be made available
to the public before implementation of a project can begin. Biased or misleading
decision documents contrived so as to affect the decision outcome will
be grounds for rejection of a project. The public will have the right to
appeal decisions to a higher authority, and to seek damages arising from
the project actions.
Objective 4. Ecosystem Management. IPM will analyze projects in an ecosystem
framework, designed to achieve consistency with natural processes. Projects
will incorporate consideration for environmental requirements that protect
long-term site-productivity, and ecosystem integrity.
Ecosystem management would examine the biology of invading species and
their interactions within the affected environment, and then manage infestations,
first through preventive measures designed to stop further spread and prioritize
controls on small populations of new invaders. For different invading species,
different methods would apply, e.g., where the treatments would be more
harmful to the ecosystem than the weeds, or where no cost-effective treatments
presently exist.
As an example of how ecosystem management could improve the management
of public lands, consider how plant invaders become established. Initial
introductions often arise through the use of roads and trails in which
seeds are brought in on cars, livestock, hiker's boots, contaminated feed,
or contaminated seed mixtures. Natural and man-made disturbances adjacent
to those introductions then act as sites for further spread.
It is ineffective to treat roads in an area where new road building
will subsequently act as a spreading center for reinvasion of the treated
species. It is ineffective to herbicide a site where large populations
of weeds are adjacent to the site for reinfection. Similarly, it is ineffective
to treat overgrazed public lands through herbicide treatments when cattle
continue to spread the same weeds back to the site each year.
Treatments need to be consistent with the management objectives for
an area. Inappropriate seeding of forage grasses should not be combined
with cattle grazing unless pasture creation is specified in the management
plan. Such practices may be appropriate for farms with irrigation, yearly
plowing and reseeding, but are generally inappropriate on public lands
with limited management funds. Pasture grasses such as the wheatgrasses
and the bromes have been commonly used in the Pacific Northwest with a
number of undesirable ecosystem effects. Their high protein content acts
as an attractant to livestock, resulting in increased soil disturbance
and weed spread preferentially in recovery zones. Feed store lots are often
contaminated with seeds of the very weeds that the grasses are supposed
to replace. If successful, introduced perennial grasses often act as ecosystem
invaders, spreading without control across the landscape.
The premise of restoration needs to be based on informed judgment and
ecosystem management that treats the sources of the problems, which for
weeds are primarily grazing, roads, and logging. The literature is replete
with examples of how increased government funding without consideration
of real ecosystem effects has led to ecological disasters. For instance,
millions of acres of the Oregon interior were plowed and converted to crested
wheatgrass by well-meaning, but uninformed government programs, before
it was discovered that the wheatgrass did not survive, but once plowed,
the native plants would not return. These areas are now vast deserts visible
from outer space as the failed products of a technology gone awry.
Objective 5. Site- and time-specific analysis. Project funding will
be defined for specific areas and times. Projects with large acreages,
such as roadside spraying programs, need to emphasize long- term, sustainable
management practices designed to sustain ecosystems at a fundable level.
Projects may consider the historic range of variability or the desired
future condition, but these will be realistic models of the affected ecosystems.
Objective 6. Economic analysis and effectiveness. Costs of projects
need to be specified. Vague project descriptions are not a part of IPM.
The area, duration, effectiveness, funding mechanisms, direct effects,
indirect effects and cumulative effects will be documented in the design
of projects which impact the environment. Projects will specify the funding
necessary to accomplish the goals of a program, and will allot 5% of the
total funds to monitoring. Projects will not proceed until funding for
monitoring is secure.
Projects for weed management will not proceed without a budget, timeline,
and specific goals and objectives for specific areas. The effectiveness
of attempts to control Noxious Weeds depends on limited funding which should
be spent on areas of the highest priority, which would be new invaders
where the populations are still small and controllable, and where public
lands are adjacent to private lands. It is insanity to propose that the
government be given funds and the freedom to widely apply questionable
practices and industrial chemicals over large acreages of public lands
without an analysis of whether the treatments even work, let alone without
knowing the effects on non-target species. Most IPM treatments require
are a combination of techniques. Unfortunately, none of these come without
costs of implementation, follow-up, and in some cases, costly cleanup.
Objective 7. Prevention of undesirable outcomes. In cases where irretrievable
and irreversible losses of public resources will occur due to a project,
the project will not proceed without near universal public approval. Projects
which fail to meet goals will be discontinued.
In the case of invading species, it is insanity to treat the problems
of ecosystem alteration due to Noxious Weeds by the widespread and thoughtless
application of chemicals in an unsound program which does not treat the
causes of the problem: overgrazing, overroading and overharvesting of natural
resources. In implementation of projects on public lands, decision documents
need to address specific measures of prevention, such as removal of seeds
from boots and logging trucks, closing of roads, maintenance of cattle
fences, or yearly inspections of firefighting landing pads and camps. Use
of pelletized feed in wilderness areas might be useful, if such pellets
can be guaranteed free of ecosystem invaders.
Objective 8. Monitoring. Projects will adhere to the goals specified
in management plans for an area, and through yearly validation and monitoring
of the effects of management actions. In cases where monitoring reports
for a project indicate failure to meet goals or objectives, or if reports
are incomplete or falsified, projects will be discontinued until the reason
for failure is reviewed. If the program is ineffective or cost/benefits
are not realized, or environmental effects are considerably greater than
described in the decision document, then the projects will be redesigned
or discontinued.
Objective 9. Use herbicides as a last resort. Herbicides and pesticides
are a tool of last resort. There is no such thing as a completely safe
pesticide. Projects which fail to account for public health, public safety,
ecosystem integrity, community values, and fish and wildlife viability
are a breach of the public trust. This is not to say that herbicides do
not belong in any projects, but that such use needs to be designated by
informed decision, and implemented by intelligent, qualified personnel.
REFERENCES
Hoglund, Georgia E., J. Stiverson, H. Knorr and J. Stiverson. 1991.
Integrated
Weed Management, a Guide for Design and Implementation. Volunteer Contract,
Okanogan National Forest, Okanogan, WA.
Wooten, George, and Peter Morrison,
Biological
Invasions of Alien Plants in the Interior Columbia River Basin
(Excerpted from Key Elements for Ecological Planning: Management Principles,
Recommendations, and Guidelines for Federal Lands East of the Cascade Crest
in Oregon and Washington, a Report to the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem
Management Project, Cara Nelson, ed., Columbia River Bioregion Campaign,
Science Working Group, 41 S. Palouse St., Walla Walla, WA 99362, May 19,
1995).
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