[APWG] Microstegium in West Virginia--get a truckload of moneytogether!

[Marc Imlay]

There are two shocking facts about Japanese stiltgrass.

1) It is relatively easy to control. It is extremely sensitive to
glyphosate,
for example.  We apply 2% glyphosate with virtually no impact on
native plants because we use our solo 3 gallon backpack sprayer very
slowly. We do not linger on each plant but we go very slowly and
avoid the natives very easily (spray-to-glisten). Used this way,
RoundUp does not migrate, and it biodegrades quickly. Most of the
seed bank is gone by the third year and hand pulling becomes appropriate.
(See attachment)

2) It is the worst alien invasive plant in this part of the country. Yet
most of the damage is still to come.

So let us get ready for this treatment season (July-August) and line up
our equipment and troops!


Marc Imlay,
Board member of the Mid-Atlantic Exotic Pest Plant Council,
Hui o Laka at Kokee State Park, Hawaii
Vice president of the Maryland Native Plant Society,
Chair of the Biodiversity and Habitat Stewardship Committee for the
Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club

----- Original Message -----
From: "Craig Dremann" <craig at ecoseeds.com>
To: <Patricia_DeAngelis at fws.gov>
Cc: <apwg at lists.plantconservation.org>
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 6:52 PM
Subject: [APWG] Microstegium in West Virginia--get a truckload of
moneytogether!


Dear Patricia and Russ,

Stiltgrass in West Virginia is becoming a tiny, little problem?

Unfortunately, everyone who is watching the Stiltgrass starting to get a
root-hold in WV in 2004,  is like the unfortunate Californians in
1769-1820 watching the annual European grasses smother about 100 million
acres of native perennial grasslands here.

And after 150 years, we're Californian's are barely making any headway
in figuring out how to manage any of these 1,000 exotic plant that are
now "naturalized", nor has there been any substantial economic interest
so far in making any serious investments in managing the exotics in the
California or the rest of the USA (with the exception of Rook's project
in Florida).

Plus, the Federal government is still developing (ARS, NRCS, etc.) and
releasing new invasive exotics every decade, and BLM and the USFS still
purchasing exotic invasive plant seeds by the millions of pounds
annually, and sowing them onto public lands.  You can read about that at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/juicy.gossip.six.html

We must start making the investment necessary to invent the processes
and technologies that can successfully convert each exotic
species-infestations back to local native ecosystems.

Otherwise,  I'm afraid that each State in the USA should pull up their
chairs, grab a box of popcorn and watch a rerun of the horror-film that
Californians saw 150 years ago---when our state (outside of the Mojave
desert) from sea level to 3,000 feet elevation was 99.99% carpeted by
about 1,000 exotics.

I gave a talk last year on this issue in Monterey at a BLM conference on
Weeds, that you can read about at http://www.ecoseeds.com/talk.html

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann, The Reveg Edge (650) 325-7333
Box 609, Redwood City, CA 94064


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