What Weeds Have Wrought

As the homesteaders trickled out of this canyon before World War II, big cattle ranches consolidated the small holdings and ran tens of thousands of beef, equal numbers of sheep and at least one hog farm.

But that industry eventually fizzled, too, and most were pulling out by the 1980s. Ranching is a tough way to make a living, especially in a place as steep and bony as this canyon, so it’s really no surprise that overgrazing took a toll. That’s what stressed the native plants and gave the noxious weeds a toehold. Now they cover thousands and thousands of acres, and they’re trying to take it all.

It’s hard to resist thinking of these weeds in human terms, to keep from using words like sneaky and insidious and greedy. Give them their head, and they’ll eat your lunch. Dinner, too. They can turn a productive landscape into a monoculture, something with the biological diversity of a putting green.

They encourage erosion, and they change the role of wildfire in a landscape. They snatch food from the mouth of grazing wildlife, and they can devalue property for agriculture, encouraging cash-strapped farmers and ranchers to get out of the business and take those calls from subdividers.

None of this is new. The dangers of noxious weeds are well-known. Much of Montana smothers under blankets of knapweed, which has spread as far east as Michigan. Dixie has all that kudzu. The Southwest is parched from the tamarisk that saps its riparian zones. The list is long, and dealing with noxious weeds costs billions of dollars annually.

The renowned Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson ranks invasives as the second-leading cause of species extinction, trailing only the loss of habitat. Examine the list of threatened and endangered species in America and you’ll find that for half of those creatures and plants, invasives contribute to the decline.

That’s why The Nature Conservancy is so busy here, putting time and money, sweat, and even some blood into weed control in Hells Canyon. The Conservancy has hundreds of projects geared toward stopping the spread of weeds. Sometimes the organization pushes for policies that stop invasive species at the border; other times it tries to whack new invaders as soon as they appear, hoping to thwart future problems.

In Hells Canyon, neither strategy suits. Here, the Conservancy is focused on stopping the spread and saving the best of what’s left, which, it turns out, is quite a bit.

“For me, it’s all about holding the line,” says Art Talsma, who runs the Conservancy’s weed project in Hells Canyon.

Talsma is intense and rangy, a hands-on biologist and self-described “type-A personality” who likes to tackle problems head-on. And he has a big problem here. Fortunately, he’s also got access to that bright-red helicopter. The chopper has become a critical component in the Conservancy’s mission to scout weeds here and put a leash on them.

For four years, Talsma has been coordinating the helicopter flights and the information collected about the location of invasive plants. He hires and manages SWAT teams of weed killers and oversees the gathering and dissemination of exotic insects that eat specific weeds.

It’s hard work and occasionally dangerous. In 2005, Talsma was rooting up a weed patch with an all-terrain vehicle and a small disc when the whole assembly went tumbling down the hill. The fall cracked his head and forced a blood-soaked evacuation in a medical helicopter. But he went back to work as soon as he could and says he doesn’t worry about it much, just tries to keep the sun off the scar on his brow.

Working with a long list of federal, state, tribal and private groups, Talsma’s team is involved with projects touching millions of acres in Idaho, Oregon and Washington; his crew is also learning from others and sharing the technology, techniques and information that Conservancy staffers are gathering here in Hells Canyon.

Standing on the east rim of the canyon, the river thousands of feet below, you can see a lot of that ground, and it’s all at risk, particularly from a weed called yellow star thistle.

“It’s nasty stuff,” Talsma says. “It’s just a crying shame.” 

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Nature picture credits: Photos © Karen Ballard