Seeing results from weeds treatment

During the 2017 legislative session, the Montana Wildlife Habitat Improvement Act (WHIP) was passed into law. The act made federal Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration funds available to restore priority wildlife habitats by managing noxious weeds. Priorities for funding include landscape-scale projects lands that are open to public hunting and involve priority wildlife habitats, noxious weed infestations that directly impact habitat functions, broad partnerships involving multiple landowners, and projects that retain or restore native plant communities. The Blackfoot Community Conservation Area (BCCA) encompassing 41,000 acres of mixed public and private ownership in the heart of the Blackfoot watershed, and the 5,600-acre BCCA Core, owned by the Blackfoot Challenge and managed by a 15-member community council, checked all the funding criteria boxes. During the historic first round of funding in 2018, the project was awarded just over $30,000. The grant helped fund over 300 acres of contract spot treatment herbicide applications to control six noxious weed species sparsely dispersed across an 866-acre project area. Spot spraying, versus broadcast herbicide applications, is very labor intensive and therefore costly. Twenty-seven biological control insect releases were implemented to help control yellow toadflax and spotted knapweed, treating approximately 135 acres at an estimated five acres per release. Completed in the fall of 2022, the project directly benefited critical wildlife habitat through the successful reduction of several noxious weed species and a notable increase in the abundance, diversity, and density of native plant communities utilized by a significant population of wildlife.

On June 28th of this year, WHIP Advisory Committee members, FWP employees, including Grants Coordinator Smith Wells, and other interested parties toured the project area with Blackfoot Challenge Land Steward Brad Weltzien and Vegetation Coordinator Karen Laitala. The tour of the BCCA project in the Blackfoot Valley highlighted the successful use of WHIP grant and matching BCCA And Powell County Weed District funds to hire local contractor, Michael Pecora of Native Restoration Solutions, to be selective in their herbicide applications and timings to maximize effectiveness and limit damage to native species and other potential off-target effects. In conjunction with the implementation of WHIP weed treatments were corresponding habitat restoration projects including prescribed fire, forest thinning, aspen regeneration, prescriptive, rotational livestock grazing, and the replacement of barbed wire fencing with wildlife friendly electric fencing.