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Millions of hectares in the U.S. Northwest are covered by nonnative, invasive plants. Since the 1800s, much western range land has turned from diverse native plants to basically weeds.
Spotted knapweed, Russian knapweed, leafy spurge, and sulfur cinquefoil have taken over much of the land of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation near Lame Deer, Montana. The tribe has mainly used herbicides to get rid of the weeds, but they need other options that will also restore native plant populations. The tribe, along with an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) weed ecologist, is trying to reintroduce the ecologically important, culturally significant native plants that had been in the area for hundreds of years.
Roger Sheley started his research of seed source islands-small areas of a field that are planted with the desired species so that the seeds will spread to the rest of the field-in 1998 as a scientist at Montana State University (MSU). Sheley has continued this research at ARS's Range and Meadow Forage Management Research Unit in Burns, Oregon. He is working with Kirk Denny, a member of the tribe as well as an MSU extension agent.
The area Sheley is studying was used for strip mining in the 1980s. It is located about 20 miles from the reservation, but the research Sheley and Denny conduct at the site will be applicable to the reservation and to millions of acres of rangeland across the western United States. Previous efforts to remove the invasive weeds met with minimal success because desired forbs were also removed during the process. The researchers are hopeful...