dan wrote:Mark the Biologist wrote:Invasive species are a major threat to biodiversity. I'd say any land manager, federal, state, non-profit, or other, certainly has a desire to tackle invasive species on the properties they manage. It takes an incredible amount of time and resources, though. First, the most effective chemical to treat buckthorn is $70-100/gallon. To contract the work out costs $450-650 an acre for heavy infestation, which means a grant is generally required to tackle any large scale project. Most land managers have a crew of only 1-3 people, and can maybe tackle 60 acres of buckthorn per year. Let's say a person is managing 15,000 acres of forest (a small amount in the northwoods) and has a 10% infestation rate (conservative in some areas). It would take them 25 years just to do an initial treatment. By the time they were done, the areas they first treated would be overrun again. Now consider that buckthorn is just one of many forest invasive species, along with honeysuckle, garlic mustard, Japanese hedgeparsley, and a host of others. Also consider many land managers are also managing wetlands and prairies, which have their own sets of invasive species. You could see how a person could get overwhelmed by invasive species management, and that's likely just one small part of their job. Sometimes you have to simply focus on what can be saved. Is the invasion still manageable, is the site rich in native diversity that should be protected, does the area have endangered or threatened species present? You have to make tough decisions sometimes based on the time and resources available.mibowhunter wrote:Hi Mark,
I spent the past week hunting in WI, and noticed that a lot of the public land I was on was overrun with buckthorn. Every woodlot I walked in was packed with it... I was wondering if the DNR has any desire or plan to deal with it?
[ Post made via Android ]
I don't really have a question, but wanted to comment on this... I do some hunting on a conservancy property that trades hunting for work, mostly invasive species removal. You get your name in the hat once for every 4 hours you work and before season they draw for hunting spots... Even with 2 or 3 dozen people averaging 20+ hours each of invasive species removal, we never catch up, we are always cutting where did a couple years ago...
IT WOULD PROBABLY NEVER HAPPEN, but its nice to dream, I could see a program where you let hunters earn an extra buck tag by putting in a certain number of work hours removing invasive species or doing other helpful work to state land during the summer.
Yeah that would be interesting if a public program would be started up to help maintain public land by the public. I could even see people working a certain number of hours to earn their park stickers, small games license, patrons license, fishing license etc... give back to the public lands you use and get a benefit in return. I suppose the economics would need to be looked at on this because there would be a cost to managing the programs, and buying the tools to use... etc...
