Volunteers Pull Weeds in Wilderness

By Alaina Abbott, 8-13-08

	Caption: Mitch Hall, a volunteer for the Wilderness Institute's weed monitoring project, identifies the invasive species St. Johnswort in the Gospel Hump Wilderness.

The goal was to find invasive weeds. The location was the Gospel Hump Wilderness in Idaho. The terrain was steep. The trails were littered with fallen trees. The task required climbing over rough trunks and ducking under creaking, suspended logs.

Despite the adversity, the backpackers in the final Volunteer for Wilderness trip of the summer successfully mapped patches of St. Johnswort, bull thistle and Canada thistle in the northwest corner of the wilderness.

“The goal is to walk on all the trail miles in the Wilderness,” said Mark Thompson, project leader, invasive weed specialist, monitor and educator with the University of Montana’s Wilderness Institute. “That’s kind of the mission—to have a complete map.”

For the past four years, the Wilderness Institute has been helping the Forest Service map invasive weeds in designated Wilderness areas as part of the 10-Year Wilderness Stewardship Challenge, aligned with the approaching 50th anniversary of the 1964 Wilderness Act.

Congress sets aside areas for wilderness to keep them in their most natural condition, free of human influence. Weed monitoring helps identify threats to wilderness character, which leads to restoration and maintenance of those areas.

“I really like the idea of the mapping weeds and finding out where they are and getting them treated,” said Norman Singley, a volunteer and systems administrator at Lone Rock School near Stevensville. He’s made a trip each of the past three years. “I’ve definitely gained a knowledge of invasive weeds and their ecology.”

For instance, St. Johnswort is native to Europe, like many invasive weed species here. Not only does it out compete native species, but it poisons livestock, causing sun sensitivity.

“I was kind of happy to find St. Johnswort,” said Mitch Hall, a hydraulics engineer for Catey Controls in Missoula and three-year veteran of the volunteer trips. “It gave me a sense of purpose.”

Each summer the Wilderness Institute offers four three-to-four-day volunteer trips. This year was the first trip to Idaho. More than 100 volunteers have worked in the Cabinet Mountains, Anaconda-Pintler, Gates of the Mountains, Selway-Bitterroot, and Rattlesnake Wilderness areas in addition to the Gospel Hump.

The high-elevation Gospel Hump is not heavily used for recreation, which keeps the weed count low. Areas with greater horse use and cattle at lower elevations tend to have many more weeds.

“There’s a direct correlation between the amount of use and the kind of use and the amount of weeds. The farther back you go, there’s fewer weeds,” Singley said.

Still, it’s a great educational experience, said first-time volunteer Timothy Lambert, a senior at Stanford University studying earth systems. “Learning about the weeds was great even though we didn’t see that many,” he said. “It was more about learning techniques, like the GPS.”

The GPS data collected is put on maps to be used by the Forest Service. It’s also being overlaid on Google Earth and eventually accessible to anyone. The Wilderness Institute will provide a link on its website.

This year, the monitoring work is being put to use immediately by the Nez Perce National Forest to inform its weed treatment plan.

“That’s a pretty good feeling,” Thompson said, “making a difference.”

The weed monitoring project is funded by the National Forest Foundation, the Cinnabar Foundation, and the U.S. Forest Service.