Weed and Pest reflects on a busy year

Crook County Weed and Pest had another productive 2021 and has been successfully carrying out our programs over the course of the seasons as best as possible. The district dealt with many of the same issues all landowners and business owners dealt with in the area, especially the severe drought, which had an impact on many aspects of our programs.

Wyoming statutes require the district board to hold a tour to annually evaluate programs. The board tour this year will be a mixture of an actual field tour to a prairie dog treatment site and a “virtual” tour of some of the weed treatments and other photos from the season.

This tour will be held prior to the regularly scheduled board meeting on November 20 and is open to the public. The field tour will be meeting at the Weed and Pest office around noon and leaving shortly after.

Carpooling/rides may be available but not guaranteed, please be prepared to drive yourself to the field. There is a 25-minute drive with some on a gravel road.

The virtual tour will begin at 4:30 p.m. at the Weed and Pest Office for a 30 to 45-minute presentation. There will also be a silent auction and barbecue.

While we would like all to be able to come to the tour, below is an outline of our programs for those who cannot make it. Please feel free to stop by the office any time for questions about weeds or pests.

General weeds and pests

Overall weed and pest pressures were arguably less than normal due to extreme weather. However, in most cases, the weeds were the only thing that did grow consistently with limited moisture.

This limited moisture also provided the benefit of reducing mosquitos, of which little complaints were heard. The extreme weather led to some inconsistent herbicide treatments, as plants were not metabolizing as they normally would.

Altogether, grasshoppers were by far the most common pest customers were seeking to kill throughout the course of the year, with people trying to save whatever grass, garden or green plant life that could grow this year.

Grasshopper program

The grasshopper treatment program was by far the largest program offered by the district in 2021. We protected over 600,000 acres of rangeland and forage across Crook County in a year that every blade of grass was needed.

The vast majority of treatments were in large blocks with a majority of landowners signing up to be treated. One of the truly great things about Crook County shone through in setting our program up as many people responded with, “if my neighbors are doing it, I suppose I will too,” understanding the importance of continuity to make sure everyone gets the job done well.

And on the large tract treatments, the job was done well. Grasshopper numbers dropped and stayed at acceptable levels through the summer in treatment areas, and outside of these areas like the Bearlodge mountains and farther north into Montana, the hopper numbers were much worse.

However, some of these untreated areas should never have been untreated in the first place. The district had planned to partner with USDA-APHIS on treatments in areas with large tracts of federal lands (mostly BLM).

The agency would give cost-share on private and state lands, and pay for 100% of the treatment cost on federal lands. This would have drastically increased the treatment area, and conversely provide an immense savings to the landowners and district.

However, this failed to materialize for several reasons, and the landowners were not provided the service they should have been. The district would like to sincerely apologize to all landowners affected by this.

While dealing with federal agencies is always difficult, we don’t want to see our taxpayers punished as a result. In the long run, many affected landowners still utilized cost-share on available insecticides and were able to fight the battle against hoppers as best they could.

County roads

The noxious weed treatments along the right-of-way shoulders were completed again by local contractors. Coops Spray Service (Jay Cooper) conducted treatments on the State Highways and Interstates, and S&G Services (Steve Geis) treated along all of the county maintained roads. All road shoulders have substantially improved from years past. Both the highways and county roads have seen a major reduction in treated acres of weeds over the last five years. We hope to keep this level of control on our road systems to prevent any new insipient weeds populations to spread onto our lands of the county.

In the next installment of our annual Weed & Pest review, we will take a look at special management projects over the year.