[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
LOSING GROUND:
THE WAR ON BUFFELGRASS
IN THE SONORAN DESERT
=======================================================================
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS
AND PUBLIC LANDS
of the
COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
Saturday, April 10, 2010, in Tucson, Arizona
__________
Serial No. 111-50
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
or
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----------
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COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, Chairman
DOC HASTINGS, Washington, Ranking Republican Member
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan Don Young, Alaska
Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American Elton Gallegly, California
Samoa John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee
Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey Jeff Flake, Arizona
Grace F. Napolitano, California Henry E. Brown, Jr., South
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Carolina
Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington
Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam Louie Gohmert, Texas
Jim Costa, California Rob Bishop, Utah
Dan Boren, Oklahoma Bill Shuster, Pennsylvania
Gregorio Sablan, Northern Marianas Doug Lamborn, Colorado
Martin T. Heinrich, New Mexico Adrian Smith, Nebraska
George Miller, California Robert J. Wittman, Virginia
Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Paul C. Broun, Georgia
Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon John Fleming, Louisiana
Maurice D. Hinchey, New York Mike Coffman, Colorado
Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Jason Chaffetz, Utah
Islands Cynthia M. Lummis, Wyoming
Diana DeGette, Colorado Tom McClintock, California
Ron Kind, Wisconsin Bill Cassidy, Louisiana
Lois Capps, California
Jay Inslee, Washington
Joe Baca, California
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, South
Dakota
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire
Niki Tsongas, Massachusetts
Frank Kratovil, Jr., Maryland
Pedro R. Pierluisi, Puerto Rico
Vacancy
James H. Zoia, Chief of Staff
Rick Healy, Chief Counsel
Todd Young, Republican Chief of Staff
Lisa Pittman, Republican Chief Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS AND PUBLIC LANDS
RAUL M. GRIJALVA, Arizona, Chairman
ROB BISHOP, Utah, Ranking Republican Member
Dale E. Kildee, Michigan Don Young, Alaska
Grace F. Napolitano, California Elton Gallegly, California
Rush D. Holt, New Jersey John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee
Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam Jeff Flake, Arizona
Dan Boren, Oklahoma Henry E. Brown, Jr., South
Martin T. Heinrich, New Mexico Carolina
Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon Louie Gohmert, Texas
Maurice D. Hinchey, New York Bill Shuster, Pennsylvania
Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Robert J. Wittman, Virginia
Islands Paul C. Broun, Georgia
Diana DeGette, Colorado Mike Coffman, Colorado
Ron Kind, Wisconsin Cynthia M. Lummis, Wyoming
Lois Capps, California Tom McClintock, California
Jay Inslee, Washington Doc Hastings, Washington, ex
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, South officio
Dakota
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire
Niki Tsongas, Massachusetts
Pedro R. Pierluisi, Puerto Rico
Nick J. Rahall, II, West Virginia,
ex officio
Vacancy
CONTENTS
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Page
Hearing held on Saturday, April 10, 2010......................... 1
Statement of Members:
Grijalva, Hon. Raul M., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Arizona........................................... 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 2
Statement of Witnesses:
Brock, Dr. John, Brock Habitat Restoration and Invasive Plant
Management, Tempe, Arizona................................. 43
Prepared statement of.................................... 45
Frost, Herbert C., Associate Director, Natural Resource
Stewardship and Science, National Park Service, U.S.
Department of the Interior................................. 3
Prepared statement of.................................... 5
Huckelberry, C.H., County Administrator, Pima County, Tucson,
Arizona.................................................... 36
Prepared statement of.................................... 38
Krueger, Faye, Deputy Regional Forester, Southwestern Region,
U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture........ 10
Prepared statement of.................................... 11
Mack, Dr. Richard N., Professor, School of Biological
Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington. 28
Prepared statement of.................................... 30
Norris, Dr. Ned, Jr., Chairman, Tohono O'odham Nation, Sells,
Arizona.................................................... 13
Prepared statement of.................................... 15
Smallhouse, Sarah Brown, President, Thomas R. Brown
Foundations, Tucson, Arizona............................... 22
Prepared statement of.................................... 25
Additional materials supplied:
List of individuals submitting documents for the record that
have been retained in the Committee's official files....... 48
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING ON ``LOSING GROUND: THE WAR ON BUFFELGRASS IN
THE SONORAN DESERT.''
----------
Saturday, April 10, 2010
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands
Committee on Natural Resources
Tucson, Arizona
----------
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m., City
Council Chambers, 255 West Alameda, Tucson, Arizona, Hon. Raul
Grijalva [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representative Grijalva.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. RAUL M. GRIJALVA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA
Mr. Grijalva. I'll call the Subcommittee to order. Today
we're having a hearing here in Tucson, a field hearing, on the
buffelgrass issue.
And I want to thank all of the panelists for being here and
all of you who have taken the time on a weekend to join us
today. Thank you so much.
I just realized why I never made it to the City Council. I
would probably have needed a booster chair. But having said
that, there are some students here that I want to acknowledge
before opening statements, middle school students who have
volunteered on the buffelgrass eradication. They are in the
back of the room somewhere, and I'd like to have them stand up
so we can acknowledge them and thank them. Are they here yet?
OK.
Like I said, thank you for taking time on a weekend. It's
tough to sit inside on a day like today, but I believe that the
business at hand is vital to not only this region but everyone
in the State.
The issue we will address today, from our panelists, is
helping us formulate what the Federal response needs to be,
both in terms of resources and in necessary legislative
initiatives.
It's home for all of us and it's home for me. I grew up
here. Ramona and I raised our family here. Our grandkids are
being raised here, and like most people in the room, it's not
only my home but it's the landscape and what this area means to
all of us that is not only important, but part of our lives.
And as you came over today, you saw the palo verdes are
blooming. There's that fragrant, nice desert smell out there
that's so good, and the prickly pears on the side of the road
are starting to flower. That's the beauty of this region and
that's why it's so special.
And everybody has that picture in their minds of Arizona,
that kind of draw for millions and millions of people to come
and visit us and to spend their tourism dollars here in our
region.
Yet there's imminent danger to this beautiful land. For the
last 50 years, buffelgrass has spread so rapidly that large
portions of Pima and surrounding counties are now covered with
this invasive weed. Throughout Southern Arizona, this noxious
plant flourishes wherever it grows.
And buffelgrass burns hotter and more frequently than
native grasses. Small isolated fires of native plants are not
likely to harm saguaro, but if a fire takes hold, if it's a
large forest, with a large infestation of buffelgrass, the
forest will be completely wiped out.
And climate change will only make matters worse. It will
create conditions that encourage buffelgrass and it will spread
farther north and literally march across the State.
If we fail to fight this invasion, this exotic weed could
forever change our landscape that we all love so much.
Many of us have played a critical role in slowing the
spread of this weed, and you have my thanks for all of you who
have been volunteers, both working with the agencies, thousands
of hours spent pulling weeds, protecting our homes, preserving
our desert.
I know the city and the county, as well as our friends in
the Saguaro National Park and the National Forest and the
Bureau of Land Management, not to mention hundreds of
homeowners and residents, continue to work in addressing this
problem collaboratively and in earnest.
Today we will hear from many of those out on the front
lines about methods they have found to be effective in the
battle against the weeds, and I look forward to their
recommendations on how to better coordinate and support these
efforts.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Grijalva follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Raul M. Grijalva, Chairman,
Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands
On a beautiful day like today, it's tough to sit inside, but the
business at hand is vital to everyone in the State. The issue we will
address today truly hits home for me. I grew up here, my wife and I
raised our daughters here, and like most of the people in this room, I
know this landscape very well.
As you made your way to City Hall today, you saw why we chose to
call this place home: the palo verdes blooming along the Santa Cruz,
fragrant desert willows lining the washes, prickly pears flowering by
the side of the road. This is the natural beauty that makes Tucson so
special.
This splendor in our own backyard is vital to Tucson and southern
Arizona's leading industry--tourism. Those saguaro cacti covering the
hills and mountainsides near our homes--that is what people everywhere
picture in their mind's eye when they think of Tucson. Arizona's iconic
beauty continues to draw millions of visitors to this paradise every
year.
Yet we face an imminent threat to this precious landscape. For the
last 50 years, buffelgrass has spread so rapidly that large portions of
Pima and surrounding counties are now covered with this invading weed.
Throughout southern Arizona, this noxious plant flourished wherever it
has gone.
Buffelgrass burns hotter and more frequently than native grasses. A
small, isolated fire in native plants is unlikely to harm many
saguaros. But if a fire takes hold in a saguaro forest with a large
infestation of buffelgrass, that forest could be completely wiped out.
And climate change will only makes matters worse--it will create
conditions that encourage buffelgrass to spread ever farther north, as
if marching across the State. If we fail to fight this invasion, this
exotic weed could forever change the landscape that we so love.
Many of you have played a crucial role in slowing the spread of
this weed and you have my thanks. You have spent thousands of hours
pulling weeds, protecting our homes and preserving this desert. I know
that the city and county, as well as our friends at Saguaro National
Park, in the national forests and the Bureau of Land Management, not to
mention hundreds of home owners and residents, continue to work on
addressing this problem collaboratively and in earnest.
Today, we will hear from many of those on the front line about
methods they have found to be effective in the battle against this
weed. And I look forward to their recommendations on how to better
coordinate and support those efforts.
With that, I think we are ready to begin hearing from our
witnesses.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Let me thank all of you for being here today.
Let me welcome our first panel. The rules of engagement are
five minutes oral presentation.
Any written material that you may have will be
automatically part of the record as will your full statement
and then there will be time for me to ask questions.
And I would also encourage all the panelists and other
members of the community, if they have testimony or additional
information that they want to be made part of the record, that
it be provided to the Committee staff and it will be
incorporated as part of the record of this hearing.
We have regrets from colleagues. Some of our colleagues are
conducting a field hearing in Las Vegas right now. For some
reason they had a higher draw. And so their regrets, and they
look forward to the testimony, the information that's generated
from this field hearing so that we can, at the Federal level,
begin to respond much more proactively than we have.
Let me welcome the first panel and begin with Mr. Frost,
the Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and
Science, National Park Service. Good to see you again. I had
quite a good time in the Grand Canyon the other day, and thank
you for being here today. I look forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF HERBERT C. FROST, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, NATURAL
RESOURCE STEWARDSHIP AND SCIENCE, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Mr. Frost. Good morning, Chairman Grijalva. It's good to
see you again too. I'm glad we all made it down the road
safely. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify this
morning. On behalf of the Department of the Interior and the
challenges followed by an unprecedented spread of invasive
species on Federal land in the Desert Southwest, the Department
appreciates the Subcommittee's interest and the support of
efforts to address the impact of invasive plants on the Sonoran
Desert.
Our protected areas are no longer protected. Over thirty-
nine million acres of land managed by the Department of the
Interior are infested with invasive plants. Preventing the
introduction of additional invasive species and controlling the
spread of those already present is one of the most significant
challenges.
Invasive species have the ability to displace and imperil
native species, alter entire ecosystems, damage critical
infrastructures, impact visitor experience and result in a loss
of productivity to private landowners.
Isolation and careful management do not insulate our public
lands, and recognizing that invasive species cross geographic
and jurisdictional boundaries, collaborative efforts among
Federal, State and local entities with landowners are highly
effective.
Our testimony today will focus on buffelgrass. Buffelgrass
is a fire-adaptive perennial bunchgrass introduced from the
African savanna that grows in dense stands, produces large
quantities of seeds that readily germinate in both disturbed
and undisturbed desert sites.
Scientists have been studying the impact of invasive plants
on native species and lands throughout the Southwest.
Researchers have determined that there are increased risks to
the survival of native species, including the iconic saguaro
cactus, in desert forests, by exposure to the fires carried by
non-native grasses.
Fire is an infrequent occurrence in the Sonoran Desert,
which is frequently estimated to be greater than 250 years.
Buffelgrass and other invasive species increase the fine fields
which carry fire throughout the desert.
Buffelgrass stands can burn at over 1400 degrees
Fahrenheit, almost three times hotter than fire generated by
native vegetation. In addition, buffelgrass reestablishes
readily with each burn and progressively increases the
frequency, intensity and extent of wild fires.
Buffelgrass is impacting public and tribal lands throughout
this area. In Arizona, currently two national park service
sites, four refuges and BLM Ironwood Forest National Monument
are being impacted.
Because buffelgrass spreads aggressively, we can expect
several other impacts in the Desert Southwest. In response to
buffelgrass invasion, land managers, scientists and local
communities have formed the Southern Arizona buffelgrass
Coordination Center and the buffelgrass Working Group.
Over the past decade, control efforts have culminated in
the treatment of thousands of public lands in rights-of-way in
2008.
In the spring of 2009, over 100 volunteers pulled
buffelgrass in the Tucson Basin in each month and a similar
volunteer effort is well underway in Phoenix.
In addition, volunteers in Saguaro National Park
contributed over 3,000 hours mapping and hand-pulling
buffelgrass in 2009.
The Ironwood Forest National Monument local volunteers,
Friends of the Ironwood Forest and Tucson Weedwackers and other
groups are conducting regular buffelgrass removal projects.
The Save the Waterman Project has nearly eradicated
buffelgrass in the Waterman Mountains. Building on this
success, BLM is helping in planning for a new Save the
Silverbell Campaign, which would target buffelgrass in the
nearby Silverbell Mountains.
Other collaborative efforts include the Bureau of Indian
Affairs and tribal partnership that are addressing buffelgrass
in over three million acres of tribal land; local cooperative
weed management areas; local weed organizations and
partnerships between DOI and the U.S. Forest Service on
management, aerial mapping and research projects.
The ecological transformation we've experienced in the
Southwest are also occurring across the border in Mexico.
Buffelgrass has been widely planted as a pasture grass in
Mexico, and populations are expanding North across the border.
In addition, a new variety of buffelgrass that can
withstand colder temperatures was recently released and planted
in South Texas and Mexico. This cold tolerant variety has
adapted to a much wider geographic range and could expand
buffelgrass populations northward into Arizona and beyond.
Illegal border activities and associated national security
measures are resulting in conditions that make control of
buffelgrass more difficult. And increased border activities
create ground disturbances and pathways for dispersal of
buffelgrass along the border.
Researchers are only beginning to understand the changes in
the Southwest desert as a result of the invasion. The problem
of non-native plant invasions and our increased fire frequency
are interrelated and require innovative research programs
required for managers.
Southern Arizona has already organized around this issue
through cooperative efforts, local business, citizens,
academia, conservation organizations, fire departments and
local and state governments. The Department will continue to
actively participate in all endeavors to help combat this
problem. Thank you.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Doctor.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Frost follows:]
Statement of Herbert C. Frost, Associate Director, Natural Resource
Stewardship and Science, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the
Interior
Chairman Grijalva and members of the subcommittee, thank you for
this opportunity to testify on behalf of the Department of the Interior
(Department) on the challenges posed by the unprecedented spread of
invasive species on federal lands in the desert Southwest. We
appreciate the subcommittee's interest and support of efforts to
address the impacts invasive plants are having in the Sonoran desert
ecosystem.
My testimony will focus on three main areas: the current threat
from invasive plants to native ecosystems, the Department's response,
and how we are addressing the threat posed by buffelgrass through
cooperation and collaboration with our partners.
Background
Executive Order 13112 defines an invasive species as ``an alien
[with respect to the ecosystem under consideration] species whose
introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm
or harm to human health.'' Invasive species proliferation is considered
one of the greatest threats to our natural and cultural resources,
food-producing systems, agricultural commodities, and human health. The
United States is experiencing an increase in the number of invasive
species crossing our borders through various pathways, and, given the
global nature of our economy and transportation systems, we expect this
trend to continue. EO 13112 charged all federal departments and
agencies to prevent and control invasive species and created the
National Invasive Species Council (NISC). NISC provides high-level
interdepartmental coordination of federal invasive species actions.
NISC is co-chaired by the Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, and
Commerce.
The introduction and spread of invasive species is fundamentally
changing our natural and cultural landscapes. Isolation and careful
management do not insulate our public lands. Collaborative efforts
among federal, state, and local entities and willing private landowners
can be highly effective in managing a shared problem when we recognize
that invasive species cross geographic and jurisdictional boundaries.
Our protected areas are no longer protected; over 39 million acres
of land managed by the Department are infested with invasive plant
species (US Department of the Interior, 2010). Managing invasive
species is one of our most significant challenges, and preventing the
introduction of additional invasive species and controlling the spread
of those already present is an important focus of the Department.
Buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare), is a fire adapted, perennial
bunchgrass introduced from the African savanna. Buffelgrass grows in
dense stands, producing large quantities of seed that readily germinate
and is able to invade both disturbed and undisturbed desert sites. It
is spreading rapidly across Arizona's deserts, threatening the
ecological integrity of the Sonoran desert ecosystems and public as
well as private lands.
Conversion of the Sonoran Desert into non-native grasslands will
significantly affect biodiversity, including not just threatened,
endangered and at-risk plant and animal species, but also iconic
species including the saguaro cactus. Species dependent on the desert
community and threatened by buffelgrass invasion include cactus
ferruginous pygmy-owls, desert tortoises, lesser long-nosed bats, and
many other species common to desert life. Effects include loss of
habitat as the desert converts to grassland, the inability to move
through dense stands of buffelgrass, and the direct effects from fire
(Rice et al, 2008; Flanders et al, 2006; Esque et al, 2003; Burgess et
al, 1991; Morales-Romero and Molina-Freaner, 2008; Wilson et al, 1995;
Williams and Baruch, 2000; Clarke et al, 2005; and Burquez-Montijo et
al, 2002).
Unlike some other areas in the U.S., fire is an infrequent
occurrence in the Sonoran desert, with fire frequencies estimated to be
greater than 250 years (Humphrey, 1974; McLaughlin and Bowers, 1982;
Schmid and Rogers, 1988; and Schussman, Enquist, and List, 2006).
Buffelgrass and other invasive grasses like red brome increase the
combustible materials or fine fuels, which help carry fires through the
desert. Buffelgrass stands can burn at over 1,400 degrees--almost three
times hotter than fires generated by native vegetation. A low intensity
fire in 1994 in Saguaro National Park killed 11 desert tortoises and
25% of saguaros (Esque and Schwalbe, 1994-1996); mortality is expected
to be much greater from fires where buffelgrass is present. In
addition, buffelgrass reestablishes readily with each burn at the
expense of less-fire adapted native species, inducing a grass-fire
cycle that progressively increases the frequency, intensity and extent
of wildfires (Cardille et al, 2001; D'Antonio et al, 1992; Thomas,
1991; Esque et al, 2007; and Burquez-Montijo et al, 2002).
Climate induced changes in temperature and precipitation patterns
will further stress native communities and will likely increase natural
disturbances, such as drought, flooding, fire and temperature extremes.
These disturbances can weaken the ability of native ecosystems to
compete with invaders. We are already beginning to see some of these
changes in the southwest, where buffelgrass has been able to respond
more quickly to recent variations in climate (Ward, Smith, and
McClaran, 2006).
Buffelgrass Impacts and Management Response on Lands Managed by the
Department of the Interior
National Park Service (NPS)
Buffelgrass is impacting most parks in the southwest, but effects
are the most pronounced at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (Organ
Pipe) and Saguaro National Park (Saguaro) in Arizona. It was first
detected at Organ Pipe in the mid 1980s, but was initially dismissed by
southern Arizona land managers as primarily a roadside weed, not well
adapted to expanding to the native desert environment. In the early
1990s, an active management program based on manual removal was
launched in response to the rapidly expanding buffelgrass population.
Despite early success, the populations continued to expand along with
other invasive grasses. It is now viewed as one of the most serious
threats to natural and cultural resources in the park.
Buffelgrass was first observed at Saguaro National Park in 1989,
and NPS land managers estimate that buffelgrass populations are
doubling in size every two years. Inventories between 2002 and 2004
indicated that buffelgrass covered 175 acres of the park and was
expanding. Buffelgrass is now found on 2,000 acres of park land (or
2%), and current estimates have buffelgrass increasing in area by 35 %
per year and potentially covering 60 % of the park's desert habitat by
2020.
In response, the park developed an aggressive management control
program, by using a combination of manual and chemical methods. In
2009, these treatments included 3000 hours contributed by local
community volunteers. The park has also joined with the local
communities, the University of Arizona, the Forest Service and BLM in
investigating aerial and other state-of-the-art application methods.
US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)
Buffelgrass is an existing and potentially widespread threat to FWS
refuges in Southern Arizona and beyond. The introduction of a cold-
adapted variety in Texas and Mexico is expected to begin to impact
desert grasslands and woodlands upslope and in higher latitudes, and
climate change may exacerbate this spread. Specific threats include the
saguaro cacti, the iconic symbol of the Sonoran Desert landscape and
the Arizona tourist industry. Imminently threatened are the Sonoran
Desert and desert grassland refuges in Arizona and New Mexico including
the Cabeza Prieta, Kofa, Leslie Canyon, San Bernardino, San Andres
National Wildlife Refuges and refuges and protected areas throughout
the borderlands region into south Texas. The Service has responded to
this threat on many levels through increased interagency and partner
coordination, monitoring for early detection, integrated buffelgrass
control measures (e.g., herbicide, mechanical and manual removal), and
through buffelgrass Burned Area Rehabilitation projects to restore
sustainable native habitats. Effective control continues to be a
challenge due to the abundance of buffelgrass seed sources that invade
from adjacent lands and Mexico.
Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
The BLM is working to control infestations of buffelgrass which
occur on an estimated 14,750 acres within the Tucson Field Office. Most
of this is on the Ironwood Forest National Monument. The need to
control and manage these existing infestations is part of the BLM's
early detection and rapid response program, which is coupled with
control and management of the species. To do so, the BLM applies an
integrated pest management approach using various treatment methods
such as manual, mechanical, and chemical control methods. Even more
importantly, prevention is of the highest priority to ensure that
infestations of buffelgrass and other weed species are not introduced
or spread into other fragile parts of the Sonoran Desert and north and
west into the Mohave Deserts. Control of buffelgrass is important to
prevent its movement to the north and west where the BLM is trying to
control and manage other invasive annual grasses that have become
detrimental to the Mohave Desert and the Great Basin.
On Ironwood Forest National Monument, the BLM, along with local
volunteers, Friends of the Ironwood Forest, Sonoran Desert Weed
Whackers and other groups conduct regular buffelgrass removal projects.
For example, The Waterman Mountains, which contain rare and unique
vegetative communities, have been the target of the ``Save the
Watermans'' project. This project has nearly eradicated buffelgrass
from the Waterman Mountains following a concerted three-year effort
which is aimed at completely controlling the species in this area by
the end of 2010. In recognition of the remarkable success of the
project, and their unrelenting efforts, John Scheuring and the Friends
of the Ironwood Forest have been selected to receive the BLM's 2010
``Making a Difference'' National volunteer award.
Building on the ``Save the Watermans'' success, the BLM and its
partners have now begun planning for a new ``Save the Silverbells''
campaign, which will target buffelgrass in the nearby Silverbell
Mountains, also located on the Ironwood Forest National Monument. The
BLM will treat 285 acres of buffelgrass on the Monument in 2010. This
is a combination of first-year, second-year and third-year treatments.
Forty of the 285 acres of buffelgrass eradication treatment planned for
2010 will be a third year treatment, and we expect to have buffelgrass
completely eradicated from this 40 acres by the end of 2010.
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
The Bureau of Indian Affairs, along with Arizona tribes, has the
responsibility for managing invasive species on over 3 million acres
within the Sonoran Desert region. In addition to the Tohono O'Odham
Nation, consisting of 2,789,047 acres, there are five urban tribes with
a land base of about 350,000 acres susceptible to buffelgrass invasions
within the vicinity of Phoenix. The Sonoran Desert Museum 2006
Buffelgrass Survey Report stated that distribution of buffelgrass is
along all major highway routes including Interstate 10 west of Phoenix
to the California border. It is present north and east of Phoenix near
several Indian reservations (Van Devender, Thomas, and Dimmitt, 2006).
Since 2006, the spread of buffelgrass has increased and weed
specialists are concerned. Recent rains in Phoenix have turned vacant
lots and disturbed areas into carpets of buffelgrass (Morrison, 2010).
Foresters and range specialists align the buffelgrass invasion with
the cheatgrass problem on tribal and public lands. Both are extreme
fire hazards, disturb the natural ecosystem and are serious problems
within the wildland/urban interface.
United States Geological Survey (USGS)
USGS scientists have been studying the impacts of invasive plants
to native species and lands in the Southwest desert. In collaboration
with the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management, USGS
researchers have determined that there are increased risks to the
survival of saguaros and tortoises by exposure to the more frequent
fires caused by nonnative grasses. Fires are a rare occurrence in the
saguaro-palo verde plant communities that characterize this desert and
losses are considered to be catastrophic among long-lived species
(Esque and Schwalbe, 1994-1996; Esque and others, 2007). Researchers
are only beginning to understand the changes in Southwestern deserts
that result from these plant invasions and fires. The problems of
nonnative plant invasions, increased fire frequency, and restoration
are interrelated and require an integrated research program to gain
valuable information for managers. In addition to fire related impacts,
researchers are also studying the seedbank characteristics of
buffelgrass and native plant species to assist in restoration efforts
following successful buffelgrass control efforts.
Interagency Cooperation
The growing concern for buffelgrass invasions has galvanized area
land managers, scientists and local communities into action, forming
the Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center and Buffelgrass
Working group. On February 9, 2007, more than 120 representatives from
state and federal agencies (including NPS, FWS, BLM, USGS and USDA-
Forest Service), county and municipal governments, academia and private
conservation organization from across southern Arizona joined concerned
citizens at the first Buffelgrass Summit. Together we developed and are
implementing a 5-year Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Strategic Plan for
regional buffelgrass control that includes identification of
buffelgrass sites using GPS mapping for purposes of monitoring,
control, management, and eradication. In addition, the Invasive Species
Advisory Committee (ISAC) which is the Federal Advisory Committee Act
chartered group of nonfederal stakeholders that advise NISC, met in
Tucson, AZ in May of 2009. This group toured buffelgrass areas and had
extensive discussion of this issue within the larger context of
invasive plants contributing to the frequency and severity of
wildfires.
In 2005, Arizona declared buffelgrass a noxious weed. Local
governments followed with ordinances to encourage utilities,
developers, and private landowners to control buffelgrass on their
properties and right-of-ways. Both the public and private sectors are
quickly ramping up to meet the buffelgrass challenge, and, over the
past decade, control efforts have accelerated, culminating in treatment
of thousands of acres on public lands and right-of-ways in 2008. In
spring 2009, over 100 volunteers pulled buffelgrass in the Tucson Basin
each month, and a similar volunteer effort is well under way in
Phoenix.
The non-profit Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center was
established in November 2008 to educate the public about buffelgrass
infestation and eradication. Other collaborative efforts include local
Cooperative Weed Management areas, local weed management organizations,
Bureau of Indian Affairs and tribal partnerships, and partnerships
between DOI and the U.S. Forest Service on management, aerial mapping
and research projects.
Ongoing Challenges
The ecological transformations we are experiencing in the southwest
are also occurring across the border in Mexico. Buffelgrass has been
widely planted as pasture grass in Mexico and populations are expanding
north across the border. In addition, a new variety of buffelgrass
(Frio) that can withstand colder temperatures was jointly released and
planted in South Texas and Mexico. This cold tolerant variety is
adapted to a much wider geographic area and could expand invasive
buffelgrass populations northward into northern Arizona and beyond
(Hussey and Burson, 2005).
Illegal border activity and associated national security measures
have resulted in conditions that make control of buffelgrass more
difficult. Movement of goods and people and increased border activity
creates ground disturbances and pathways for dispersal of buffelgrass
and other invasive species along the border, and increasing security
concerns make it difficult for land managers to detect and control
border buffelgrass populations. Finally, even if we can eradicate the
invasive plant species from an area, the damage they cause together
with the extremely arid environment makes restoring native species very
difficult.
Conclusion
While this hearing is focused on buffelgrass we must consider the
many invasive species that threaten desert ecosystems in the southwest.
Species such as red brome, schismus, fountain grass, and Sahara mustard
threaten upland sites, while other species are impacting riparian areas
along rivers and streams. More than 100 non-native species have been
recorded in parks in the southwest and more than 10% of the flora is
not native to the parks. The explosion of buffelgrass and these other
invasive species is a major concern to land managers in the Sonoran
desert ecosystem.
There are current and developing tools that will allow us to
address this growing problem, but only with a sustained and increased
commitment to the problem. All solutions must be based on a coordinated
landscape approach that includes all the land owners and jurisdictions
in the area. The approach must include all invasive species and look
past control to restoration of sustainable native plant communities.
Southern Arizona has already organized around the issue through
cooperative efforts involving local businesses, citizens, academia,
conservation organizations, fire departments, and local, state and
federal governments. The Department will continue to actively
participate in this regional effort.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I welcome any
questions you or the subcommittee members may have.
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______
Mr. Grijalva. Let me now ask Ms. Faye Krueger, Deputy
Regional Forester, Southwest Region, U.S. Forest Service.
Welcome again and thank you.
STATEMENT OF FAYE KRUEGER, DEPUTY REGIONAL FORESTER,
SOUTHWESTERN REGION, U.S. FOREST SERVICE
Ms. Krueger. Good morning, Chairman Grijalva. Thank you
again for this opportunity to appear before you and provide the
Department's perspective on losing ground to the war on
buffelgrass in the Sonoran Desert.
At the Forest Service, we are also very concerned about
invasion of noxious weeds on National Forest Service land.
Buffelgrass is an invasive grass species from Africa that
was first introduced into the United States, in the 1930s, as
livestock forage and for soil stabilization purposes, where it
was often planted on hillsides.
It often competes with native vegetation using water,
nutrients, sunlight, and it forms dense stands that allow fire
to spread across the landscape.
In the Sonoran Desert, the saguaro cactus are fire
intolerant. Almost all our native communities can be destroyed
by a single buffelgrass fire. Buffelgrass is a fire-adaptive
species that reestablishes in these burned areas and
effectively becomes a dominant species.
Comprehensive research to evaluate effective combinations
of mechanical and herbicide treatment is needed; also re-
evaluation of the feasibility of biological control, such as
insects or fungi, that could depress or slow the spread of
buffelgrass.
Both the Coronado National Forest and the Santa Catalina
Ranger District have been affected by buffelgrass. The Santa
Catalina Ranger District, on the Coronado National Forest, is
seeing about three thousand areas along the southwestern
foothills of the Santa Catalina mountains.
Also new stands of buffelgrass are being established,
within the forest, through transportation of seeds by vehicles,
humans, human activities and animals.
On the Nogales Ranger District, in southernmost Arizona,
isolated populations of buffelgrass have been introduced by
activities between Mexico and the U.S. Border.
The Santa Catalina Ranger District has a hefty volunteer
program for treatment of buffelgrass. They also have been
working with the Arizona State Department of Forests to treat
buffelgrass at new elevations along the Mt. Lemmon Highway.
Coronado National Forest employees were involved in the
formation of the Buffelgrass Working Group, which developed the
Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Strategic Plan, which turned into
the Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center, and we
are active participants.
Buffelgrass is also found on the Tonto National Forest in
central Arizona. The noxious weed coordinator on the Tonto
National Forest devotes nearly half of her time to buffelgrass
control with help from volunteers.
Buffelgrass is now common throughout the greater Phoenix
area, and buffelgrass moved onto the Tonto National Forest from
the interstate highway as well as other highways.
The Forest Service is working closely with the Arizona
Department of Transportation to control infestations that will
occur around the highway during construction projects.
The Forest Service is currently working with several multi-
agency projects at the regional level. We worked with the
National Park Service and did aerial surveys to map locations
of buffelgrass infestations on public lands.
The Forest Service recently provided funding to investigate
the effectiveness of several herbicides on buffelgrass, in
conjunction with the University of Arizona.
The Forest Service is also part of a multi-project
feasibility test to use helicopters in the Sonoran Desert. It's
about a 12-acre area in Pima County that we're working to put
herbicide application on to understand the rates needed to
control buffelgrass and minimize damage to the native
vegetation.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I will
be pleased to answer any questions you might have.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Krueger follows:]
Statement of Faye Krueger, Deputy Regional Forester, Southwestern
Region, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Chairman Grijalva, Ranking Member Bishop and members of the
subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today to provide
the Department's perspective on ``Losing Ground: The War on Buffelgrass
in the Sonoran Desert.''
At the Forest Service, we are very concerned about the aggressive
and persistent nature of invasive and noxious species colonizing
National Forest System lands. We view the establishment of buffelgrass
stands on National Forest System lands in Arizona as a direct conflict
with the Forest Service mission ``to sustain the health, diversity and
productivity of the Nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs
of present and future generations''. Indeed, the establishment of
buffelgrass stands in the Sonoran Desert ecosystem has become a direct
threat to the iconic saguaro cactus, one of the defining plants of the
Sonoran Desert and a grand symbol of the American West.
Buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare) is an invasive grass species from
Africa that threatens broad areas of the Sonoran Desert ecosystem
through its expansion into southern Arizona and the State of Sonora in
Mexico. Buffelgrass was first introduced into the United States in the
1930s as livestock forage and for soil stabilization purposes.
Buffelgrass has invaded roadsides and other disturbed areas, and it
also occupies relatively steep hillsides of the desert landscape. The
threat from buffelgrass comes from its ability to outcompete native
vegetation for water, nutrients, and sunlight, and its formation of
dense buffelgrass stands that allow fires to spread over the landscape.
The Sonoran Desert evolved without fire and most of its native plants
such as the saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea) are fire intolerant.
Nearly all of a native plant community can be destroyed by a single
buffelgrass fire. Since buffelgrass is fire adapted, it reestablishes
in these burned areas and effectively becomes the dominant species.
There is a concern that a cold-tolerant buffelgrass cultivar newly
developed and recently released for use for forage will allow the
invasive species to grow at higher elevations and extend its range
further northward thereby increasing the potential for buffelgrass
invasion and ecosystem degradation.
Although buffelgrass is possibly the greatest current threat to the
Sonoran Desert ecosystem, it is only one of a number of invasive
species that can impact the desert. Invasive species such as the cactus
moth (Cactoblastis cactorum), sweet resinbush (Euryops subcarnosus),
and fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum) also threaten the Sonoran
Desert. Red brome (Bromus rubens) is another invasive grass that has
converted large areas of native desert vegetation on alluvial fans or
outwash plains locally known as bajadas in the upper Sonoran Desert
through the introduction of a fire cycle.
Complete eradication of buffelgrass in the Sonoran Desert is no
longer feasible due to the extensive spread of buffelgrass over the
landscape. There is still a lack of knowledge on cost effective
techniques to control buffelgrass over a broad-scale desert environment
as outlined in USDA's principles for integrated pest management. A
particular need is for comprehensive research to evaluate effective
combinations of mechanical and herbicide treatments that will control
buffelgrass in desert conditions. Although small scale efforts
involving volunteers have been successful in reducing localized
buffelgrass populations on a short-term basis, there is less
understanding of the costs and effectiveness of treatment options that
could be accomplished on a larger scale. In the long term, there is a
need to evaluate the feasibility of biological controls, such as
insects or fungi, which would suppress or slow the spread of
buffelgrass within the Sonoran Desert ecosystem. The Forest Service's
Research and Development branch could play a role in developing these
technologies.
Both the Coronado National Forest and the Tonto National Forest
have been infested by buffelgrass. In particular, the Santa Catalina
Ranger District on the Coronado National Forest is heavily infested
with about 3,000 acres of relatively dense buffelgrass along the
southwestern foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson.
These foothills have patches of buffelgrass of about two acres in size
that serve as a highly flammable fuel that threatens populations of the
unique saguaro cactus within the Pusch Ridge Wilderness and homes in
the wildland-urban interface bordering the Forest. New stands of
buffelgrass are being established within the Forest through
transportation of seed by vehicles, wind, and animals. The Nogales
Ranger District (Coronado National Forest) in southernmost Arizona has
isolated populations of buffelgrass that have been introduced in part
by extensive human activities along the U.S.-Mexico border. As a
consequence of buffelgrass seed being transported by these various
mechanisms, existing populations of buffelgrass on the Forest are
expected to continue to spread. Once treated buffelgrass stands need to
be monitored and re-treated as necessary for several years.
Since buffelgrass was first detected on the Santa Catalina Ranger
District near Tucson in 1969, the Coronado National Forest has
conducted activities to control it including one-time events for
community service by local service organizations such as Eagle Scouts
and schools. The Forest sponsors ongoing annual events such as ``Beat
Back Buffelgrass Day'' and ``National Public Lands Day.'' Community
interest and involvement have been high and targets for buffelgrass
removal have been exceeded each year. The Forest also uses crews from
the Arizona State Department of Forestry to grub buffelgrass at mid-
elevations along the Mount Lemmon Highway to minimize a fire hazard
along the road. Follow-up treatment must be done periodically to keep
the highway free of buffelgrass.
Along with other concerned organizations, the Coronado National
Forest participated in the Buffelgrass Summit that was held in Tucson
in February, 2007. Forest personnel were also involved in the formation
of a Buffelgrass Working Group and subsequent development of the
Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Strategic Plan. This plan led to the
establishment of the Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center
(SABCC). The purpose of the SABCC is to serve as a regional information
center on buffelgrass that emphasizes an integrated management approach
to control this invasive species. The center is supported by
organizations and agencies concerned with buffelgrass management in
southern Arizona including the Forest Service.
Buffelgrass is also found on the Tonto National Forest in central
Arizona with infestations occurring on four of its six Ranger
Districts. Most infestations on the Forest have not been mapped, but
buffelgrass plants are scattered over thousands of acres on the Forest.
If left untreated, these small infestations are expected to become
denser over time and cause problems similar to other areas with heavy
buffelgrass populations such as the Santa Catalina District of the
Coronado National Forest. Control is time consuming and expensive. The
noxious weed coordinator of the Tonto National Forest devotes at least
half of her time to buffelgrass control together with help from
volunteers. However, new infestations are occurring in remote areas on
the Tonto National Forest at such a rate that mapping or controlling
the spread is not feasible at this time.
Buffelgrass is now common throughout the greater Phoenix and Tucson
metroplex, and the urban ecosystem can serve as a major source of seed.
This invasive grass grows along urban, suburban and rural streets and
roads and populates parks, yards of residences and industrial areas,
which are sometimes not in the forefront of control efforts. The
Arizona Legislature has enacted a series of statutes to address,
prohibit and control the impact of all invasive and noxious species in
Arizona and has identified the Arizona Department of Agriculture and
the Arizona Department of Transportation as leads for prohibition,
eradication and control.
In general, people within the metro area are unaware of the
potential for buffelgrass to impact wildland areas. Although a
volunteer organization (the Phoenix Weedwackers) does exist to remove
buffelgrass in mountain preserves of Phoenix, the city itself does not
currently have a specific program for buffelgrass control. Northward-
bound traffic from the city continuously brings buffelgrass seed onto
the Tonto National Forest. Buffelgrass has moved onto the Forest from
access roads originating from Interstate Highway 17 and from highway
road corridors that cross the Forest including U.S. 60 and State
Highways 87, 88, and 188. The Forest is working closely with the
Arizona Department of Transportation to control new infestations that
occur along the highways during construction projects.
The Forest Service is committed to working with agencies,
educational institutions, community service organizations, local fire
departments, and other entities in preventing and controlling
buffelgrass. This includes coordinating with the Southern Arizona
Buffelgrass Coordination Center on a wide array of projects and
activities. The Forest Service is currently involved with several
multiagency projects at a regional level to increase knowledge of
buffelgrass expansion and management. In November 2008, the Forest
Service and National Park Service jointly conducted an aerial survey of
the Coronado National Forest and Saguaro National Park to map
buffelgrass infestations on these public lands. The Forest Service
recently provided FY 2010 funding to the University of Arizona to
investigate the effectiveness of several herbicides on buffelgrass
under the (U.S. Forest Service) State and Private Forestry--Forest
Service Pesticide Impact Analysis Program (FSPIAP). The Forest Service
is also part of a multiagency project to test the feasibility of using
helicopters in the Sonoran Desert to apply glyphosate herbicide at
application rates that can control buffelgrass while minimizing damage
to native vegetation. The project is based on the need to develop a
technology that can handle buffelgrass infestations in remote,
inaccessible areas or areas with steep, rocky terrain that do not allow
control by manual methods or ground application of herbicide. Testing
with the herbicide by helicopter application will be conducted on 12
acres of public land owned by Pima County during the summer of 2010.
The project is jointly sponsored by Pima County, City of Tucson, Forest
Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the
University of Arizona.
The Forest Service has an active and vibrant program to address
invasive species on National Forest System lands and to assist in
partnerships for all lands. We are committed to work to restore and
maintain forest ecosystem health using the best available science and
technologies to accomplish this goal of the Secretary. Mr. Chairman,
Ranking Member Bishop, this concludes my prepared statement. I am
pleased to answer any questions you may have.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Let me now ask Dr. Ned Norris, Junior,
Chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation. Welcome, Mr. Chairman,
and I look forward to your comments.
STATEMENT OF DR. NED NORRIS, JR., CHAIRMAN,
TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION, SELLS, ARIZONA
Dr. Norris. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
Committee. It's always good to see you, Congressman Grijalva,
and thank you for your continued leadership.
Today the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and
Public Lands invited me to testify about the invasion of
buffelgrass on the Tohono O'odham Nation. The Tohono O'odham
Nation is a Federally recognized tribe located in the
southwestern part of the State of Arizona.
Buffelgrass was introduced to the Nation in the 1980s for
cattle forage and erosion control. Since then, buffelgrass has
spread and established itself over a large portion of the
Tohono O'odham Nation.
The buffelgrass problem, on the Nation, is being compounded
by an increasing number of wildland fires. In the past five
years, the Nation has experienced more frequent wildland fires,
which are partially fueled by buffelgrass. Unfortunately these
fires have largely occurred in the biologically diverse
mountain ranges of the nation.
These fires set the stage for further buffelgrass
establishment in our most important land. For example the Green
fire, in November of 2009, consumed 5,700 acres of Tohono
O'odham Nation land, Arizona State Land and Bureau of Land
Management Federal land in the Baboquivari Mountains. It is
estimated that 8 to 10 percent of the fuel for that fire was
from buffelgrass.
The Baboquivari Mountains are culturally important to the
O'odham, and this fire will open the door for further
buffelgrass invasion on these mountains.
Additionally the San Juan fire, in July of 2009, consumed
9,000 acres of Tohono O'odham Nation land and set the stage for
buffelgrass establishment farther up-slope on the Quinlan
Mountains, which are adjacent to the Baboquivari Range.
Buffelgrass threatens the landscape that forms O'odham
culture and puts at risk species such as saguaro, bear grass
and the Sonoran Desert Tortoise.
Cultural sites are also at risk due to buffelgrass
establishment. The O'odham use saguaro and bear grass for
cultural purposes, and the threat that buffelgrass poses, of
turning the Sonoran Desert into a flammable Africanized
grassland, threatens the Tohono O'odham way of life.
Although the true extent of buffelgrass on the Nation is
not currently known, we are currently working with the Southern
Arizona buffelgrass Coordination Center to map the extent of
the invasion. This will help us to prioritize areas in need of
treatment.
However the Nation needs funding in order to treat the
prioritized areas. The Tohono O'odham Nation has hosted local
buffelgrass removal events; however, the Federal government
needs to reach out to a wider range of government groups and
institutions in order to mitigate the spread of buffelgrass in
Southern Arizona.
Buffelgrass needs to be treated on surrounding Federal
lands and funds need to be provided to help local governments
fight buffelgrass invasion. We must mitigate the buffelgrass
problem to ensure the O'odham way of life for generations to
come.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, we
ask the Committee to consider assisting Southern Arizona in its
fight against buffelgrass, to preserve the Sonoran Desert for
future generations.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Norris follows:]
Statement of Dr. Ned Norris, Jr., Chairman, Tohono O'odham Nation
Good morning, my name is Dr. Ned Norris, Jr. and I am the Chairman
of the Tohono O'odham Nation. Today, the Subcommittee on National
Parks, Forests and Public Lands has invited me to testify about the
invasion of buffelgrass on the Tohono O'odham Nation. The Tohono
O'odham Nation is a federally recognized tribe located in southwestern
Arizona.
Buffelgrass was introduced to the Nation in the 1980s for cattle
forage and erosion control. Since then, buffelgrass has spread and
established itself over a large portion of the Nation.
The buffelgrass problem on the Nation is being compounded by an
increasing number of wildland fires. In the past five years, the Nation
has experienced more frequent wildland fires, which are partially
fueled by buffelgrass. Unfortunately, these fires have largely hit the
biologically diverse mountain ranges of the Nation. These fires set the
stage for further buffelgrass establishment in our most important
lands.
For example, the Three Peaks Fire in November, 2009, consumed 5,700
acres of Tohono O'odham Nation land, Arizona state land, and Bureau of
Land Management federal land in the Baboquivari Mountains. It is
estimated that 8-10% of the fuel for that fire was from buffelgrass.
The Baboquivari mountains are culturally important to the O'odham and
this fire will open the door for further buffelgrass invasion on these
mountains. Additionally, the San Juan Fire in July, 2009, consumed
9,000 acres of Tohono O'odham Nation land and set the stage for
buffelgrass establishment further upslope on the Quinlan Mountains,
which are adjacent to the Baboquivari range.
Buffelgrass threatens the landscape that forms O'odham culture and
puts at risk species such as saguaro, beargrass, and the Sonoran Desert
Tortoise. Cultural sites are also at risk due to buffelgrass
establishment. The O'odham use saguaro and beargrass for cultural
purposes and the threat that buffelgrass poses--to turn the Sonoran
desert into a flammable, Africanized grassland--threatens the O'odham
way of life.
Although the true extent of buffelgrass on the Nation is not
currently known, we are currently working with the Southern Arizona
Buffelgrass Coordination Center to map the extent of invasion. This
will help us to prioritize areas in need of treatment. However, the
Nation needs funding in order to treat the prioritized areas. The
Tohono O'odham Nation has hosted local buffelgrass removal events.
However, the federal government needs to reach out to a wider range of
governments, groups and institutions in order to mitigate the spread of
buffelgrass in southern Arizona. Buffelgrass needs to be treated on
surrounding federal lands and funds need to be provided to help local
governments fight buffelgrass invasion. We must mitigate the
buffelgrass problem, to ensure the O'odham way of life for generations
to come.
In conclusion, we ask the Committee to consider assisting southern
Arizona in its fight against buffelgrass, to preserve the Sonoran
desert for future generations.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Let me begin with some questions, Dr. Frost--
and if some of your colleagues from BLM, Fish and Wildlife want
to participate in the response to any of these questions, feel
free to comment, and just identify yourself for the record and
we can go from there.
Mr. Frost, can you tell us what some of the primary
obstacles are to effectively combating buffelgrass invasion?
For instance, is it a funding issue? Is it a coordination
issue? And if so, what are those risks and challenges because,
despite all of the integrative efforts, the weed still appears
to be winning.
And you can correct that comment, if I'm wrong, but what
are the challenges? Is it a funding resource capacity or is it
a coordination capacity between agencies, other interested
jurisdictions and groups?
Mr. Frost. I believe a little of both of those. I mean
obviously resources, additional resources can greatly enhance
the ability for the Department's bureaus to address these
issues.
It's very labor-intensive to get into some of these areas
because of the remoteness of some of the sites, the safety
issues associated with getting into those places and doing the
type of work that needs to be done.
You know I would argue it doesn't matter how much we
coordinate, we can always coordinate better. I've worked on a
number of interagency issues, and it always seems like, when we
do coordinate, obviously we're going to get a lot more done. I
think we can always better coordinate.
It's even more important out there because it's not just
between the bureaus within the Department of the Interior, but
our friends with the Forest Service, our friends within the
tribes, the local entities and state entities and the private
interests, and when you get all those parties interacting,
sometimes the coordination effort gets more difficult.
So I think we need better coordination and obviously more
resources, and then we could start to make some better progress
than what we're making now.
Mr. Grijalva. Is much of what you've accomplished either in
jeopardy or has it already returned to the previous state of
disrepair due to the buffelgrass? I think all this is related
to the current problems along the border. Not all, but a
portion of it.
Is it a contradiction or is it not, or how can your agency
deal with the imminent threat of buffelgrass while you're
simultaneously having to deal with preventing access to border-
related areas?
Mr. Frost. Yes, that's a tricky issue because one of the
logistical constraints is just the safety of the people out
doing the work down there closer to the border. And so that
makes it more difficult, which requires more resources, and so
there's no easy answer.
I think our working with the border patrol to make sure
that they're not exacerbating the problem, making sure that our
agencies on our side of the border are doing everything they
can to address the issues. And until the assorted border issues
get resolved, that's one of the facts of life we have to deal
with. But I don't think we can give up because if we give up,
then we've lost the fight.
Mr. Grijalva. One of the gallant efforts is the volunteers.
Is there a need, for the Department of the Interior, to invest
a little money in the management of volunteer programs, which
involves staff time and tools, because the Federal Government
is getting a great return on its dollar.
This is one of the most cost-effective options that is out
there, but does the Department have the resources to continue
to provide robust support for these volunteer organizations?
Mr. Frost. Secretary Salazar has made the volunteer effort
and youth working his high priority. I know, at the National
Parks Service, we got an additional $10 million to increase our
ability to work with the volunteers and work with the youth
programs. And I know that, in the 2011 president's requests,
there are additional funds to increase that even more. I don't
know the number off the top of my head, but again resources, we
can always use more resources. But the secretary has made this
a high priority and has made those funds available so we can
engage volunteers to address this issue and a variety of other
ones.
Mr. Grijalva. You stated that the battle against invasion
can only succeed with a sustained and increased commitment to
the problem, and nobody argues that.
I translate that into a spending commitment to having to
deal with it as well. The commitment to say we don't like
buffelgrass and we wish it would go away is a commitment, but
to put resources and funding behind the effort for coordination
and for staff resources that would be required for the type of
linkages, between the agency, tribal government and other
jurisdictions, that need to be made, it's a resource question
to me. I'm sure we're going to hear from other panelists today.
So in this challenging time, are we talking about where the
dollar goes or where the dollar doesn't go, in the Department
of the Interior? How do we prioritize this as a critical issue
given the fact that sometimes other funding requests fall under
the radar, not the attention, but the attention after the fact.
One of the reasons for this hearing is to draw attention
and not to keep the issue under the radar. How would you
respond to the fact that--this is my first question--the
funding priorities and commitment issues as well.
Mr. Frost. Let me talk a little bit about what we do at the
national level, and then maybe I can ask Superintendent Sidles
to come up and she can talk about how she prioritizes at the
park.
At the national level, in our national resources science
program, we've made a significant commitment. I think we spend,
I think, on park service-wide, we spend around $50 million a
year on invasive species.
And so we understand it is a critical issue that we have to
deal with, and we are dealing with it on a day-by-day basis.
And we have people like the folks from the park, they live,
breathe and die invasives, and with that sort of commitment,
and with additional resources, we can make significant
progress.
But we do prioritize, but there are other priorities. So
it's one of those balancing acts that we have to do, but we do
have significant resources committed to the process. Maybe I'll
turn the time over to Darla for a minute and maybe Jim McKenna
from BLM, too.
Mr. Grijalva. Anybody want to speak on the same question?
Ms. Sidles. Chairman Grijalva, thank you for the
opportunity to speak. Darla Sidles, Superintendent of Saguaro
National Park.
And in answer to your question about the priority of
buffelgrass, it is the highest priority and upmost urgency at
the park. We don't always have the dollars to do what we need
to do, so therefore it's kind of a catch-and-catch-can
approach, but we find it is so important to do that we do just
about anything we have to do to get it done. If we treat
buffelgrass one year and then let it go another year, another
year, it will increase by 35 percent to 50 percent each year we
don't give it the same or more resources. So we haven't had a
consistent funding base to carry on the buffelgrass program
that we probably need to do.
We use over 3,000 hours of volunteer time, and that goes
back to one of your previous questions about why can't we just
use volunteers, and the reason is that they're obviously a
great resource and many of them are here today--they're very
committed. But buffelgrass is moving at an exponential rate and
we cannot keep up with it.
We're using two different methods, both chemical and
manual, but we don't yet have the technology using chemical
means to get into some of the steep and rocky and dangerous
country, and we don't want to put people at risk, people on the
ground.
So we need to find new research methods, new ways to be
more efficient to treat buffelgrass, and it's not necessarily
always going to work if they're volunteers.
Mr. Grijalva. I'm assuming that your point is that, in some
of those areas that you described, that that becomes more of a
department responsibility as opposed to the volunteer efforts
that can be coordinated at other sites?
Ms. Sidles. That's correct. And in terms of urgency of the
problem, I think the reason why we need a more coordinated,
concerted effort is because there are so many agencies
involved. It's Federal, state, city, county, nonprofit, citizen
volunteers.
There's such an amazing collaboration of partners that are
dealing with this issue. The rural fire departments, even the
city fire departments are dealing with this because of the
problem that is threatening to overtake not only the town of
Tucson but Sonoran Desert.
A better coordinated response is needed so that everybody
has the proper resources to tackle the problem. As I said, it's
kind of a catch-as-catch-can approach from agency to agency,
and we do the best we can, but as Bert said, we can always do
better.
Mr. Grijalva. Dr. Frost, in this coordinated effort that I
think is essential to that, all the jurisdictions, interest
groups, tribal governments, is there a need to identify a czar,
a frontrunner of responsibility for the coordination and
funding?
Mr. Frost. I don't know. I might defer that to one of the
locals. I have my own opinion. Sometimes I think that--I'll
just say what I think.
I'm not sure czars work very well all the time. I think, in
terms of the park service, the number one priority in the park
is dealing with this issue.
Mr. Grijalva. Anything you'd like to add to that?
Mr. McKenna. I would echo that point. To my way of
thinking, there's also a risk if you identify a czar. The risk
that I would see is this effort has gathered momentum. I think
we probably didn't realize its scale soon enough, but we did
have the success in the Watermans, and we're about to be able
to move to the Silver Bell.
We have prioritized, recognizing the vegetation communities
and Ironwood National Monument are--monuments are obviously--
the monuments, we are placing very high priority on them.
We have people that have put considerable personal
commitment and effort into this. The Friends of the Ironwood
were there to help with the surveys. The Friends of the
Ironwood were there to help with the eradication. They went
into some very difficult areas. The Sonoran Desert Museum has
been involved. Rural fire departments have gotten involved.
So what I think the opportunity here is in the community
effort--and let me add one other thought here. We have in
recent years worked with Tohono O'odham Nation, with their
youth group, who has been working along the boundaries between
the monument and the Nation and have done some tremendous work
in terms of cleanup and other issues.
We've talked about the opportunity to expand this effort
over time and this seems like an area that also could have
value.
Mr. Grijalva. Do you wish to make a comment?
Dr. Norris. I just wanted to comment that there are--as I
stated earlier, the Nation has hosted a number of
opportunities, through the use of volunteers, to address this
issue. And I guess my comment really surrounds--surfaces around
the fact that, as you know, Mr. Chairman and members of the
Committee, the O'odham have lived in this region since time
immemorial, and there's much on the desert lands that we use in
our daily lives, as far as consumption purposes and cultural
purposes.
And the invasion of the buffelgrass to our continued use of
bahidaj, which is the saguaro fruit that we harvest just before
the monsoon rains come or ibhai, which is the fruit off of the
prickly pear, or the wild spinach and other natural vegetation
that we use for consumable purposes are threatened by continued
use by this buffelgrass.
So if we can assist in some way, as the assistant
mentioned, through the use of our youth or the use of other
members of the Nation to help address this issue, we would like
to be able to continue to do that, but without having financial
resources and other resources available to us, it makes it
difficult for us to play an active role in the effort to
address this issue.
Mr. Eisen. My name is Mark Eisen. I'm a firecologist and
also the deputy fire coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife
Service Southwest Division.
Chairman Grijalva, regarding your last question and
prioritization of this issue, I'd like to speak to it in
consideration of the scale and magnitude we're talking about.
I think no one would argue, in the Southwest here, that
this is a pressing issue; however, the scale is much broader
than just Southern Arizona, as you know.
One of the factors I think is that buffelgrass is a
different invasive species. We cannot lump buffelgrass with the
other invasive exotics. It's much different than what we've
seen and how aggressively it invades arid lands and subtropical
existence. I'd like to add the scale of buffelgrass extends
down into Central America. And for the Wildlife Service,
although we have much smaller refuges compared to our sister
and brother agencies, our mission can be much broader with our
trust species, migratory waterfowl, threatened and endangered
and rare species.
And this is what I'm talking about, the proliferation of
buffelgrass in Mexico and Central America and South America and
the very diverse subtropical systems and the threat to many of
the tropical birds, threatened and endangered species and rare
species in these areas, that also live in North America, here
in the U.S.
So the implications and threats to biological diversity is
immense and should be considered a pandemic and truthfully is
much broader basically than what we're talking about here.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you. The issue that was just stated in
the opening comments, some of you have international
implications not just what we do here on American soil.
So I've learned to ask about what efforts are going on and
what efforts need to be concentrated so that there's a bi-
national response and coordination with the Mexican government,
Mexican communities.
And the efforts are ongoing here because, as you indicated,
that's a source of the invasion. And so how do we deal with
that part of the source and what is being done now and what
should we be looking at doing with our neighbors to the south.
Mr. Frost. We need to work with our friends in Mexico, on
the conservation side and the research side, and we have really
good connections. They understand the severity of the issue and
the complexity of issue, but where the difficulty comes is when
you're talking about livestock, farming and ranching and just
plain economics.
Some of the poor people can harvest buffelgrass and go out
and sell it to farmers as forage, and that's a source of their
economic income. So they see that as a great opportunity.
At the same time, it's causing great economic harm up in
the United States. So while I think we have the conservation
agencies and the research agencies working very diligently to
address the issue, we need to better engage the livestock
industry and some of the local communities across the border so
they can understand why we shouldn't be perpetuating this
species.
Mr. Grijalva. And the long-term damage.
Mr. Frost. Right.
Mr. Grijalva. Ms. Krueger, as one of the parks and land
managers in Southern Arizona, you have a unique responsibility
for much of the public land. And a considerable amount of your
budget is spent on fire management, as we both know, and
realizing budgets are tight, but the funds dedicated to fire
management, is some of it better spent trying to limit the
problem rather than having to cope with its effects at a later
date?
Ms. Krueger. Yes. We do forecast buffelgrass both as
hazardous fuel, a threat to wild and urban interface and also
as a noxious weed. So there are several line items, from our
budget, that we can use to fight this buffelgrass. We can use
our hazardous fuels money. We can use our vegetative management
dollars, wildlife, watershed and erosion money.
Last year we took $140,000 out of our hazardous fuels
program, and we hired a coordinator to help fight buffelgrass
on the Santa Catalina district, and we intend to make that a
permanent position. You're right, there are opportunities. We
started that.
Mr. Grijalva. And the same question I asked your
colleagues, is this a funding or a coordination issue, in terms
of adequately responding?
Ms. Krueger. Some of the obstacles we face, we haven't had
the resources, that's one thing. We have done recently
landscape oral review in the Santa Catalinas, and we have just
begun to identify how we best want to attack buffelgrass and
where we should invest our money, and we'll be prepared to
protect homes on the southwest rim of the Santa Catalinas.
So again, as Mr. Frost said, challenges with steep slopes
are a second obstacle we face. Another one, it's not a one-time
treatment. It has to occur over at least five years.
Our volunteers are the backbone of helping get rid of
buffelgrass, but at the same time, we believe that there has to
be herbicide treatment applied as well. So these are just some
of the obstacles we face.
Mr. Grijalva. So it's about stable funding committed over
the long term--five, six years?
Ms. Krueger. Yes, that's important, but this is long term.
We don't believe in five years this is all going to be taken
care of. We believe this is a long-term problem that we're
going to have to continue to fight.
Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Chairman, it appears as though Federal
land agencies are working together with local, state, private
entities as well as the tribes to coordinate strategies to
combat buffelgrass.
From your nation's perspective, do you feel that the
coordination is helping the Nation combat the buffelgrass, why
and why not, and more importantly, do you see that
coordination? And the point of the resources, which you
mentioned earlier, is well taken. What would make that process
better?
Dr. Norris. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, I have
to admit, yes, that the Nation is cooperating and working
closely with the Federal entities on this particular issue.
I think though that we could probably improve our
relationship and improve our level of working together on this
particular issue, and I think for us, like I said in my
comments, my prepared comments, we still--we, O'odham, still
don't fully understand the extent of the buffelgrass situation
on the Nation. We continue to study that. We continue to
identify those areas that are most prevalent than others.
So for us, we're still trying to figure out the extent of
the issue on the Nation, and we know it is there. We know that
it's creating an invasion, as we've termed it here. But what I
would like to respond to also, Mr. Chairman and members of the
Committee, is that when we talk about relationship and we talk
about--I think your comment about this being a bi-national
issue for the United States and as well for Mexico. I'd like to
look at it as a tri-national issue, a tri-national issue
involving the O'odham Nation, involving sovereign tribal
nations with this issue and involving the United States
government as well as the government of Mexico.
As you know, the Tohono O'odham Nation villages
historically have been mapped as far south as Hermosillo,
Mexico. Currently we have nine villages that continue to exist
as O'odham villages immediately south of the international
border.
So the relationship is a tri-national relationship that
needs to be developed more closely with our counterparts, our
friends with the United States government as well as our
counterparts in Mexico, in order for us to begin to
collectively work together and address this issue.
You know the Nation is indebted to the resources that come
from outside resources off the Nation because, when we've dealt
with these fires that I referenced in my prepared comments, we
didn't have the resources to be able to fight those fires. We
could only address that to a certain extent.
When those fires got to a certain acreage and size, we had
to call on the assistance of the range fire people from outside
the Nation, and they have been more than willing and able to
come and help the Nation address those issues.
So for us, it's really a lack of resources, a lack of
funding resources, a lack of clearly identifying the extent of
the problem within the Nation. And once we are able to do that,
once we continue to work with the Federal entities and the
Mexican entities, I think we can begin to have a better grasp
on how we can address this issue.
Mr. Grijalva. I appreciate that, and you answered partially
the other question I had having to do with resources, and I'm
talking about specifically dedicating funding to the effort
that would involve the Nation. And the point about the tribe
approaches is very good. Thank you for that.
If the resources were available, as you have indicated in
your testimony, Mr. Chairman, that would, I'm assuming,
expedite the identification and response?
Dr. Norris. Most definitely.
Mr. Grijalva. Let me thank the panelists today for being
here. There are additional questions that we're going to submit
in writing and hope to get your response and it can also be
part of the record. For the Forest Service, there are specific
questions that I asked Mr. Frost having to do with the border
issues and how that complicates the ability, in terms of
resources and priorities, to deal with the buffelgrass
invasion, and also some additional information from the BLM as
to why that particular Waterman had been so successful and the
lessons learned and applicable to other situations.
And I appreciate the comments from Fish and Wildlife about
the immensity we're dealing with in this region. The
implications go much further than that, and I thank you for
that. We get so territorial, we forget about the broader
implications.
And for the Tohono O'odham Nation, I think the issue of
people partnering, I think that was basically very clear.
We'll submit those to you and hope to get your speedy
response so that we'll have the result of this hearing and have
it out and help us formulate some response. Thank you very
much.
Mr. Grijalva. And let me now invite the second panel up.
Thank you very much. Let me begin with our first witness,
Sara Smallhouse, president of the Thomas R. Brown Foundation,
Tucson.
And I realize, Ms. Smallhouse, you have a time constraint,
so after your testimony, with the indulgence of the other
panelists, I'd like to ask you the questions I will be asking
after all of the panelists are done, so you're not late.
STATEMENT OF SARAH BROWN SMALLHOUSE, PRESIDENT,
THOMAS R. BROWN FOUNDATIONS, TUCSON, ARIZONA
Ms. Smallhouse. I'm not under time constraints. Thank you
for your consideration. Thank you for the opportunity because I
know you went to great effort to organize all this. It is a
matter of critical importance to our community, and the threat
is growing, so thank you very much.
For the record, I'll give a little background on myself.
I'm a native Tucsonan. My parents moved here from the East
because they were attracted here by the friendly community and
beautiful desert setting. They were entrepreneurial and started
Burr-Brown Research Corporation which manufactured high
precision electronic equipment. And when the company sold to
Texas Instruments in 2000, it was the largest sale in the
State's history.
Our family has prospered here, and they have given back
proudly and shared our wealth through philanthropy and are very
committed to the future here.
I serve on the board of the Regional Economic Development,
and I'm an active member of the Southern Arizona Leadership
Council. And both of these organizations are aware of
buffelgrass and are very concerned about it.
I became aware of the buffelgrass issue at a meeting of the
Southern Arizona Leadership Council Strategic Initiative
Committee in 2008.
Dr. Julio Betancourt, a USGS Senior Scientist, gave an
overview presentation that pretty much shocked us all. Although
we had been generally aware of the invasive species issue, the
full consequences and extent and implications of a buffelgrass
spread were a surprise to us. This particular invasion has the
potential to undermine our quality of life and the basis of our
economy. It hardly seems like it could be true. It almost seems
like a plot of a science fiction horror film, but the
scientists and land managers in the region are in agreement
with their concerns, and none feel adequately equipped to
address what needs to be done.
There has been a strategic plan developed, and one of the
principal recommendations was the formation of a nonprofit
entity that could provide coordination among jurisdictions and
help focus resources.
It's not exactly a czar, but the Southern Arizona
buffelgrass Coordination Center was formed. It's now the hub of
the buffelgrass-related activities in the community. It's
diverse, it's inclusive and it's the body through which choices
are assessed and the inevitable trade-offs are evaluated. We
have many of the people here that you've heard today involved,
and I think we've made great progress in the short amount of
time.
I'm the current chairperson of that organization, and our
family foundation helped provide early funding to get it going.
I spend about a quarter of my time on the buffelgrass issue,
and I do it because developing the capability to manage
buffelgrass is not only important, but it's really urgent. And
the outcome, one way or another, will have a huge impact on
this community and more broadly. We can't be complacent or
wishful. We have to act intelligently.
There are only two basic choices right now. We can focus
and invest substantial amounts upfront now to try to contain
this destructive grass, and some of it can be easily managed
with local resources going forward indefinitely, into the
future, through adjusting the agency budgets of the people
we've talked to and measured, such as that, or we can concede
that we waited too long to address the problem and start
preparing for a grass fire dominated environment, which also
will take investment.
Substantial investment in equipment and personnel to fight
fires will have to be put in place to protect life and property
if we let the buffelgrass take over.
In many ways, the situation is kind of like the dikes in
New Orleans prior to Katrina. We could fix the dikes. Yes, it
would have cost a lot of money, but the eventual cost of not
doing so far exceeded the cost of preventative actions, and it
would have saved a lot of human suffering.
Our choices are do we mitigate the spread of buffelgrass or
delay and face more costly adaptation to a hostile, fire-prone
environment later.
I have become convinced, by the experts, that wholesale
conversion of our landscape will, in fact, be inevitable
without intervention. The point of no return is on the horizon,
and there's a very real possibility of losing our magnificent
and diverse desert and saddling ourselves with ugly landscapes
and dangerous fires forever.
Our tourism industry can easily dry up. People, like my
parents, would choose other places to start a business, and
companies considering relocation or expansion could easily
choose to go elsewhere.
And it's not just a local matter. The Sonoran Desert is
unique to the Southwest, and there seems to be pretty
widespread scientific consensus that the Sonoran Desert in
Mexico is pretty much doomed. The Sonoran Desert of Arizona is
the last place where saguaros have a chance. Our cacti are
symbols of the wild west and embody the enchantment of the
American frontier and are recognized throughout the world.
If the ugly future is to be avoided, procrastination is not
an option. The situation is changing fast. Buffelgrass spreads
and doubles every year. To get a feel for that, if you double a
penny every day for a month, you're a multimillionaire by the
end of the month.
So we desperately need some help. State and local resources
have been pushed to the brink. We cannot do this on our own
right now.
The Buffelgrass Coordination Center submitted an
appropriations request earlier this year to give Federal land
managers more to work with. We need your understanding and
support for this.
People here have mobilized very quickly once they
understood the true ramifications of buffelgrass and its
spread. We have formed unprecedented alliances and
collaborations that could never have been imagined before. We
even have the Porsche Club of Southern Arizona involved. So
with this broad spirit of cooperation and volunteerism, we are
still not keeping up with it.
The Sonoran Desert in Mexico is gone for good with no
chance of recovering as we know it. It seems unbelievable but
the same could happen here. Please intervene and direct
resources our way so we can keep this from happening. We're
prepared to do our part. Please help us by doing your part.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Smallhouse follows:]
Statement of Sarah Brown Smallhouse, Chair,
Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center
Thank you for this opportunity to give testimony on the buffelgrass
issue in Arizona. This is a matter of pivotal importance to southern
Arizona now, and the threat is expanding. For an easy-to-digest
overview please watch the 10-minute video on the home page of
www.buffelgrass.org.
I am a native Tucsonan. My parents moved to Tucson from the East
because they were attracted to the community and the Sonoran Desert
setting. They were entrepreneurial and started a company, Burr Brown
Research Corporation, that manufactured high precision electronic
equipment and became world renowned. The University of Arizona and Pima
Community College educated and trained most of the employees that
worked at Burr Brown and who created its capacity for great success in
the world market place. When the company was sold to Texas Instruments
in 2000 it constituted the largest corporate sale ever in the State of
Arizona. My sister and I now carry the legacy of our parents and we are
deeply committed to this community and its ability to prosper long into
the future.
The Brown Family Foundations have given many gifts over the years:
Tucson Medical Center, the Arizona Cancer Center, the Tucson-Pima
County Library, the University of Arizona, Pima Community College, San
Miguel High School, the Wildcat School, the Sunnyside School District,
and to key strategic initiatives benefiting the region. We were major
supporters of the Southern Arizona Regional Town Hall. Our
contributions of start up funding for the Critical Path Institute and
Science Foundation Arizona significantly helped those organizations
launch. We have endowed professorships at the University of Arizona,
including that of Peter Smith, the first civilian scientist to ever
lead a NASA mission. The Phoenix Mars landing was another historic
moment for Arizona and we were very proud to have played a part. Many
students at the University of Arizona benefit from scholarship programs
we have funded; most recently we gave $2 million to the Arizona
Assurance Program designed to help the most financially challenged--but
talented and motivated--kids who apply to the University of Arizona.
Pima Community College significantly updated their health sciences
teaching facilities and upgraded technology needed to train respiratory
therapists, radiological technicians and nurses with our help. We offer
programs for public school teachers for professional development. We
have substantially contributed to the public dialog through research,
symposiums and forums in the areas of energy, infrastructure,
immigration, and growth. We feel gratitude for our good fortune in
Tucson and give back to the community in a myriad of ways.
I participate in civic affairs in other capacities too. I serve on
the Board of Directors of Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities
(TREO), our local economic development agency, and participated in
creating its strategic roadmap for investment and direction. I am also
an active member of the Southern Arizona Leadership Council (SALC), a
CEO group aimed at facilitating long term planning and leadership in
Southern Arizona. These entities are the two most influential business
organizations in the community and are where we put our collective
stock in preparing for a productive future and continued high quality
of life. They are both aware and deeply concerned about the potential
impact the expanding base of buffelgrass threatens.
I became aware of the buffelgrass issue at a meeting of the SALC
Strategic Initiatives Committee of which I am a member. Dr. Julio
Betancourt, a Senior Scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, gave an
overview presentation that shocked all who were in the room. I think it
is fair to say many of us had been aware of invasive species issues in
general, and may have even known buffelgrass was of particular concern,
but the picture Dr. Betancourt painted took us all back. The potential
consequences of this particular invasion have the potential to
undermine the very foundation(s) of our community; our quality of life
and the basis of our economy are threatened by buffelgrass. It hardly
seems like it could be true--it is almost like the plot of a science
fiction horror film--but the scientists and land managers in the region
are all in agreement, are all deeply concerned, and none of them feel
adequately equipped to address what needs to be done.
Land managers organized themselves and wrote a strategic plan for
how to most efficiently attempt to bring the invasion under control.
There was recognition that many governmental jurisdictions and private
property owners would have to coordinate their efforts to be
successful. After all, if one property owner lets buffelgrass spread
unchecked, regardless of how diligent his neighbor might be, the
neighbor will never be able to keep their land clear as the buffelgrass
will just keep reseeding itself. One of the principal recommendations
of the strategic plan was to form a neutral non-profit entity that
could provide such coordination and help focus resources. This is how
the Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center (SABCC) came into
being. It is now the hub of all buffelgrass related activity in the
community and is diverse and inclusive with participation from all
sectors of the community. This is the body through which community
choices are discussed, where all ideas have a forum and all sectors of
the community come together to evaluate inevitable trade-offs. SABCC
facilitates community-wide decisions and then organizes the teamwork
necessary for progress.
The Brown Family Foundation made an enabling gift to SABCC in 2009
and I personally contribute about a quarter of my time to this issue. I
choose to do so because it is important, it is urgent, and the
outcome--one way or another--will have a huge impact of this community.
I am committed to seeing this through. There is too much at stake to be
complacent or wishful. We must act intelligently, and fast.
I have come to appreciate the hard facts facing us: either we
focus, invest substantial amounts up front now and try to contain the
spread of this grass at some level that can be feasibly managed on
local resources indefinitely into the future, or we concede we have
waited too long to address the problem and start preparing for a grass
fire-dominated environment. Neither of these paths will be costless;
the fire regimes we can expect will be very expensive indeed and we
certainly do not have the equipment or personnel to fight them now. In
many ways this is a situation analogous to the dikes in New Orleans
prior to Hurricane Katrina. We could have fixed the dikes--and yes it
would have cost a bundle--but the eventual cost of not doing so far
exceeded what preventative action would have cost, and it would have
saved the terrible human suffering that came about from the extensive
flooding. I believe we are facing a comparable problem here, but it has
to do with the Sonoran Desert, grass and fire. Our choice is this: Do
we mitigate the spread of buffelgrass, or delay and face forced (and
more costly) adaptation to a hostile fire-prone environment?
There is no doubt among those who understand this desert ecosystem
that wholesale conversion of our landscape will be inevitable without
intervention, and it won't take that long either. Not only will we lose
the magnificent desert that creates enormous quality of life for the
people who live here, but we will have saddled ourselves with ugly,
expensive, and dangerous fires forever. The tourism industry, which now
contributes billions annually and employs close to 50,000 people here,
would surely disappear. People like my parents would choose other
communities to start a business. Companies considering relocation or
expansion might easily choose more friendly environs for their new
operations and a higher quality lifestyle for their employees. Things
could get pretty bad here.
If this ugly future is to be avoided, procrastination is not an
option. The situation is changing too fast. Estimates are the
buffelgrass doubles annually; a large effort is needed upfront to
contain the invasion to a smaller land area that can reasonably be
managed with much smaller budgets going forward. This is why we have
brought this matter to your attention. Right now we need your help.
State and local resources have been pushed to the brink and we simply
cannot manage this effort on our own right now. The appropriations
request SABCC submitted earlier this year is for funds to begin on
federal lands in southern and central Arizona. This is a responsible
and meaningful first step.
We believe this is more than a local matter of concern as well; the
Sonoran Desert ecosystem is unique to the southwest and is already
doomed in the northern states of Mexico due to widespread established
buffelgrass. The Sonoran Desert of Arizona is the last place saguaros
have a chance. Our giant cacti are symbols of the Wild West and embody
the enchantment of the American frontier. They are recognized
throughout the world. To lose the Sonoran Desert and all the
biodiversity it holds would be more than just a local travesty.
The broader Tucson community mobilized quickly once the true
ramifications of buffelgrass spread were realized. All jurisdictions,
area Tribes, parks, transportation departments, conservation and
environmental groups, the business community, the utility companies,
the University, the tourism industry, home builders, contractors,
realtors, public safety officials and fire fighters, neighborhoods and
homeowners, hikers, bikers and nature lovers, school kids, boy scouts--
even the Porsche Club of Arizona--all these groups have come together
to do what they can. This community has united in a totally
unprecedented way to prevent a terrible future from unfolding. We are
all very appreciative of Congressman Grijalva for responding quickly to
the threat we see and bringing this matter to the fore.
Our community has fully engaged and formed alliances and
collaborations that never would have been imagined before so we can be
as effective as possible. But for all this good work, valiant effort,
and broad spirit of cooperation and volunteerism, the buffelgrass is
still spreading faster than we can keep up. We need help, and it is not
within the capacity of our local or state governments to provide it.
Right now we need help from Washington. The goal is to contain the
buffelgrass spread, reduce the acreage infested, and then keep it under
control through ongoing diligence. But for this plan to work there
needs to be significant resources now to bring the problem under
control.
I lived for awhile in Southern Sonora, the Mexican state just south
of Arizona. I often drove the road between Alamos and Tucson. Over the
years I watched buffelgrass take over the Mexican landscape. The
scientists I have spoken with are unanimous: the Sonoran Desert of
Mexico is gone for good. No chance of it ever recovering at this point.
It seems unbelievable that the same could happen here, but it is true.
And it might not take that long either--a few decades. Please intervene
and direct resources our way so we can keep this from happening.
______
Mr. Grijalva. I was glad that you brought up the five-year
strategic plan in the role of coordination. Anything additional
you'd like to add to that strategic issue? I want you to define
czar.
There's an urgency for coordination and an urgency for
logistical strategic planning, as we make trade-offs that
inevitably happen in this process, but there's a blueprint
where it's going and who is in charge of making sure that
blueprint is carried out periodically. Is that what you see as
the nonprofit or is that part of the five-year strategic plan
that you're looking at?
Ms. Smallhouse. Well, it is part of the five-year strategic
plan and it's really substantially developed by the buffelgrass
working group, which is the people who are charged with land
management and who are out there trying to control the problem.
What they're looking to the Southern buffelgrass
Coordination Center to do is to raise awareness, focus
resources, and where there are jurisdictional changes or
different ownership patterns, that we can help negotiate what
the most effective, least-cost way is to proceed in those
boundaries.
Essentially we have to reduce the scale of the problem to
make it manageable going forward. Eradication is probably not a
reasonable goal. What can we do to enable our future capacity
to keep this in check, and we've had all levels of help, the
City of Tucson, all those towns, Pima County volunteer group,
school groups, the utilities, the resorts, all manner of
collaboration. Everybody is very interested. They just need to
know what their role is. That's something that the coordination
center can provide.
Mr. Grijalva. I thought the plan--the alliance you drew up
was very impressive and you identified that you prioritized
twelve hot spots where initial work has to be done. Those are
the priority areas.
What do you see as proposals for addressing the infestation
that occurs in other areas, not just the twelve hot spots, be
they public or private?
Ms. Smallhouse. We've evolved and we're refining that. And
right now actually we're taking a look at the whole basin right
now and evaluating where the most sensitive places are, where
is the most value at risk, from a fire management point of
view. With buffelgrass moving up into the Foothills, there's a
possibility of forest fires catching on valley fires and vice-
versa.
So there are some strategic places where we really need to
focus, and from the very get-go, the problem was we couldn't
give a firm figure, how much is it going to cost to do this,
exactly where are we going to tackle first.
So one of the very first priority projects of the
coordination center has been to initiate a mapping project
where those questions can be specifically addressed so that we
put our early resources to their highest and best use. Does
that answer your question?
Mr. Grijalva. Yes, thank you. And so if you need to go, you
can go or you can stay.
Ms. Smallhouse. I appreciate your flexibility. But I
actually would like to stay and hear the other panelists. I'm
deeply invested.
Mr. Grijalva. Burr-Brown and the Duval Mine are responsible
for me being here. When I graduated from Sunnyside, I applied
at both places and I didn't get a job. So I went to the
University of Arizona and I went a whole different direction.
But they're the best employers Southern Arizona has ever had.
Ms. Smallhouse. Thank you.
Mr. Grijalva. Let me now turn to Dr. Richard Mack. Thank
you for coming this way, from the School of Biological
Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman. Thank you very
much, sir.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD MACK, SCHOOL OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES,
WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY, PULLMAN, WASHINGTON
Dr. Mack. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate very
much having the opportunity to speak on this issue.
As in my written testimony, as background, I spent most of
my research career dealing with invasive grasses in arid
systems, cheatgrass, buffelgrass and similar epidemiologies.
I want to comment, based on my perspective from my research
career, on the question you proposed earlier to several of the
panelists in group one, which is, is this a capacity issue or
resource issue, and I think we can always say that we can add
more resources. We can add more capacity. I'll go a step
further and say you can hire several czars.
But I would take a different tack on this and agree with
that, which is I think we, as a society, need to have a change
in our attitude about how we deal with invasive species like
buffelgrass.
Frankly whether or not we want to express it this way, I
think we deal with invasive species far too often as similar to
earthquakes or hurricanes or tornadoes. In other words, we
clean up the mess after they roar through, and we restore the
site and then we sort of hunker down and wait for the next wave
or the next hot spot to pop up or whatever.
That frankly isn't going to get us that far in the long
run. That deals with the short-term issues. The mechanical
removal, herbicides, all have their proper place on a local
scale, but as you already heard this morning, we're dealing
with a regional phenomenon. In fact, it's likely to get bigger
than a regional phenomenon in the case of buffelgrass. That
calls for a landscape scale treatment. And quite honestly, in
my experience, the only tool left in the toolbox of more
invasive species treatment and one that hasn't been dealt with
is biological control.
Now, as you know, Mr. Chairman, biological control is the
identification, selection, rearing and release of agents which
attack specifically the target species, which, in this case,
would be buffelgrass.
That kind of research has two prime goals, one of which is
to release an agent which is effective. Best of all, it kills
it. But at least, it debilitates it.
But at even a higher priority is that it must be
extraordinarily specific. It will only attack the target
species and no other species. That's extremely important when
we're talking about grasses, for the obvious reasons of typical
host extension on to very radical grasses, native and
introduced into this country.
So we certainly would have to be extremely careful in that,
but the classical biological control is as close to the
proverbial silver bullet as ecologists can ever produce.
It will attack the beast, and if not destroy it outright,
will greatly reduce its role because frankly I'm not here to
talk about controlling buffelgrass. I'm here to at least
offering the option of us to consider eradicating it or
reducing its central role so it's really a minor species in the
landscape, not what we have today.
Now, of course, that's going to take a lot of research and
a lot of sustained research, I might add, that we aren't
investigating yet, but I advocate it is done, it can be done
and it is feasible.
And there are parallels, not just in this country, but
elsewhere in the world, in which this kind of work has been
undertaken, not yet for buffelgrass, but it can be and most
specifically dealing with microorganisms that can be used for
this approach.
This requires considerable care, and getting back to this
issue of extreme specificity to make sure that we select
microorganisms down to the genotype level that attack specific
genotypes of buffelgrass.
We have done some work in this, but we have to characterize
the genetics of buffelgrass far better than it has been so far.
Moreover we've got a big job ahead of us in characterizing the
microorganisms that can attack it.
Now ten years ago, if I proposed that--well, I never would
have because it would have been totally impractical from the
standpoint of logistics and the costs of it, but the good news
that I can tell you is that the costs of this kind of
examination have collapsed and fallen greatly in the last ten
years, and I detail, in my written testimony, how the human
genome project costs the Federal government three billion
dollars in costs over ten years. That has dropped in
considerable magnitude since then.
We can now do that same project in less than two months. In
fact, there's evidence that backs that up. So the cost of this
is coming down to a scale where we can consider these species,
and we can potentially select for them.
There's no guarantee with biological control that it works,
but what I can say, and I think we all agree on this, if we
don't deal with this at that kind of scale, that landscape
scale climate control can deal with, this problem is only going
to get worse.
I think we need a difference in our attitude about new
tools and new tactics in strategy, in addition to the issue you
asked, the rhetorical question about coordination of resources.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Mack follows:]
Statement of Dr. Richard N. Mack, Professor, School of Biological
Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington
Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony
here today.
I am Richard N. Mack. I am a Professor of Biological Sciences at
Washington State University. I am an ecologist, and for the past 35
years my research has dealt with invasive plant species and more
specifically with invasive grasses in the Far West. Much of my research
on invasive grasses has concentrated on the century long invasion of
cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), a native of arid Eurasia and northern
Africa, in its vast new range in the Intermountain West.
I. Plant Invasions in Arid Regions: A Recurring Phenomenology and
Learning from One Invasion as Preparation for Combating the
Next Invasion
A point that I hope to demonstrate today is that lessons we have
learned from investigating the spread, population biology and
consequences of the invasion of cheatgrass, an invasion that was
underway a century ago, provides valuable lessons in determining the
future for other invasive species in arid ecosystems in the U.S., in
particular buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare). The phenomenology of all
terrestrial plant invasions shares many characteristics (Rejmanek et
al. 2005), although admittedly each invasion has some unique features.
As a result of shared characteristics and features, many of the lessons
and consequences we see in the long term invasion by cheatgrass have
reliable carry-over for our understanding of the still developing
invasion by buffelgrass in much of the U.S. Southwest.
As has been true for almost all plant invasions, the invasion by
cheatgrass began slowly with its introduction into isolated areas.
Populations of this non-native grass grew readily and small pockets of
its occupation, perhaps just a few acres, developed at a handful of
sites on the Columbia Plateau and in northern Utah in the late 19th
century. Unlike buffelgrass, the entry of cheatgrass was almost
entirely accidental (Mack 1981). Although the mode of introduction
(accidental or deliberate) can affect the number of entry sites, all
plant invasions are dependent on a large measure of pre-adaptation of
the non-native species to the physical and biotic components of
environment in the new range. For both cheatgrass and buffelgrass, a
major pre-adaptation has been to an arid environment through a varying
array of physiological mechanisms (Smith et al. 1997). Equally
important for both these grasses has been a tolerance to grazing by
large mammals. Such tolerance is exceptionally important for two
reasons in the context of the arid American West: many native species
cannot tolerate routine (or even seasonally restricted) removal of
plant material by grazing because the plant's ability to replace
biomass ultimately requires water, and water is almost always limiting
in the American arid grasslands and deserts. Furthermore, to a degree
not widely appreciated by the public, our arid treeless regions in the
Far West did not support large herds of native ungulates (bison, elk,
antelope, deer) before the extensive arrival of settlers in the 19th
century (Mack & Thompson 1982). Consequently, our native plant species
in this huge region are at a competitive disadvantage with non-natives,
such as cheatgrass and buffelgrass, in the greatly altered environment
brought about with the introduction of livestock.
The rise of the public's alarm to the spread of cheatgrass also
deserves comparison to the events still unfolding with buffelgrass.
Although cheatgrass was recognized early on by farmers as a troublesome
weed, the whole scope of the damage that it would cause was not
recognized until after it was too late to curb the invasion, much less
eradicate it, with the tools available in the early 20th century
(laborious mechanical removal). Within less than 20 years (1915-1935),
cheatgrass went from a problem in croplands on the Columbia Plateau and
northern Utah to a regional invader in croplands and the much more
extensive rangelands in a five-state area (Mack 1981). The damage this
small (usually less than 18 in. tall) grass now wreaks is massive in
terms of its contribution of fuel for wildfires on a scale that the
native plants never contribute. Proliferation of cheatgrass and the
recurring fires its fuel produced has caused almost total replacement
of palatable native grasses for livestock with a low value, temporary
forage. In addition, cheatgrass remains a persistent weed in crops
(mainly wheat, barley and oats) on the Columbia and Snake River
Plateaus.
The Worst Damage by Invasive, Combustible Grasses is not Immediately
Seen
The worst damage caused by cheatgrass however (and ominously
similar to the growing role of buffelgrass) has been the aftereffects
of huge (as much as 500,000 acres) fires that almost yearly ravage its
new range here in the West. In addition to the immediate loss of
property and even human life caused by cheatgrass-fueled fires is the
loss of soil from this region. These fires consume all vegetation in
their path and the result is a lifeless, blackened landscape with no
vegetation left that could check sheet-wash and erosion. This soil,
which is an irreplaceable natural resource for the Nation, is destined
to wash into the region's waterways. The Snake and then the Columbia
River are the eventual resting places for this new sediment. Sediment
clogging these rivers threatens the efficacy, and even outright
sustainability of the hydroelectric dams along these waterways,
including Grand Coulee Dam in Washington and the Bonneville Dam on the
Columbia River at the Oregon-Washington border. So severe is erosion
from the Snake-Columbia watershed that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
must routinely dredge these waterways of sediment to maintain the
rivers as navigable waterways and to minimize sediment that would
interfere with turbine performance in these dams (http://www.nww.
usace.army.mil/dmmp/default.htm). Much of this cost (and the attendant
concerns about environmental damage caused by annual dredging [http://
findarticles.com/p/news-articles/columbian-vancouver-wash/mi--8100/is--
20050619/corps-seeks-input-dredging-snake/ai--n51309342/] can be blamed
on cheatgrass and the fires it fuels in the region.
Here again, the invasion of cheatgrass and its consequences in the
Intermountain West presage events and circumstances that are unfolding
with the buffelgrass invasion in the Southwest. As a non-native grass
deliberately chosen for forage, buffelgrass was introduced initially
into more locales than was the accidentally-introduced cheatgrass
decades earlier. But much of the subsequent spread of buffelgrass has
occurred through its own seed dispersal, rather than direct
introduction by humans. Similar to the unfolding invasion of
cheatgrass, the early small infestations of buffelgrass were worrisome
to some, but ignored by many others--until the new range occupation
became only too apparent.
Invasions of Invasive Species take on an Accelerating Pace
The rate of new range occupation and increase in abundance of
invasive species forcefully illustrates one of the most powerful
aspects of the performance of an invasive species under conditions it
finds ideal (and simultaneously illustrates an important difference
between the need for swift reaction to combat its spread, compared with
a pollutant, such as a heavy metal contaminant in soil). Species have
various modes of persistence, including the production of seeds. Under
conditions a species finds ideal (as defined by the species), its
vegetative growth and its seed production may be prolific and form a
performance trajectory that grows with compound interest. The accrued
interest for a species, such as buffelgrass, is the rapid increase in
seeds and in-turn new parent plants. This growth in numbers adds
individuals to the population at an exponential rate, so that the
doubling time for the population becomes increasingly short, e.g. from
decades to just a few years. Consequently, the immigrant population
grows and expands its range: a few individuals in a small locale
increase to many individuals occupying a much larger area (Mack 1981;
Williamson 1996). When viewed in a map, the initially occupied areas
grow, and eventually coalesce at an accelerating rate (Elton 1958; Mack
1981). The alarm that is being legitimately sounded now about the
spread and prominence of buffelgrass is a recurring public reaction to
the development of a biological invasion.
II. The Need for a New Course of Action in Combating Buffelgrass
Given the size of areas occupied by invasive grasses such as
buffelgrass, one might readily conclude that these species and the harm
they cause are with us for good, and that at best all we can do as a
Nation is pay for site restoration after an invasive grass burns over a
huge area. (This approach is roughly analogous to cleanup after a
hurricane or an earthquake, i.e., cleanup is our only option;
prevention of the next calamity is not possible.) Although site
restoration through re-seeding and careful conservation of areas once
occupied by an invasive species is always required, we need to take a
much broader, science-based, view of not only restoring areas damaged
by buffelgrass but also actively implementing a sustained program to
roll-back the invasion.
What Is Being Done (and What Can also be Done) Now
The current control of buffelgrass locally has often produced
positive results, such as the laudable campaign to limit its spread in
the Saguaro National Park and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
Using dedicated volunteers, U.S. National Park personnel have removed
buffelgrass from many areas within both sites, perhaps most important
has been its removal along roads, which serve as excellent corridors
for the grass's spread http://www.nps.gov/orpi/naturescience/invasive-
plant-species.htm). Other groups within the Tucson area have also
banded together to remove local grass infestations. These efforts pay
immediate dividends by protecting sites of high cultural and
conservation value and should be encouraged, expanded and sustained.
Another, non-mutually exclusive approach that can be done now
(short term) is admittedly more controversial. Although buffelgrass has
been banned for planting and transporting in Arizona since 2005
(Schiermeier 2005), the grass is available for sale elsewhere in the
U.S. and even overseas. Furthermore, an active research program has
been pursued elsewhere in the U.S. to breed cold tolerance into
buffelgrass so as to expand its geographic range as a forage grass
(Hanselka 1988; Hussey & Bashaw 1996; Hussey and Burson 2005). This
line of investigation has led to the release for sale of a cold
tolerant strain ``Pecos Buffelgrass'' (http://www.pogueagri.com/
Buffelgrass_Pecos_Brand.aspx). I am unaware of any evidence that this
variety has become invasive. But developing new varieties of this grass
that would extend its geographic range seems problematic, particularly
in any cases in which the new variety is derived from the same basic
genotypes as those that are now invasive in the Southwest. Policy-
makers could consider strengthening the prohibition of this grass's
sale and transport as well as evaluate whether developing new
buffelgrass varieties is in the overall public interest.
What can be done in the Long Term--Exploring Biological Control
I contend that while a variety of tools have been used to control
invasive grasses, such as buffelgrass, including herbicide application,
mechanical removal, and controlled burns of accumulating fuel, we need
to investigate additional approaches to this problem that are more
effective at all landscape scales. The cumulative areas already
occupied by buffelgrass defy effective control, much less permanent
removal, by any of the tools that gave been employed so far. Herbicides
are rarely practical over large areas, and often incur public comment
on the potential for collateral damage to waterways, livestock, native
species and humans; mechanical removal is impractical for an invader
that now occupies so large an area. (Although it can be effective in
protecting small areas of special interest or sensitivity.) Controlled
burns are a highly contentious issue in the West--certainly appropriate
in some circumstances in forested sites but is problematic or even
counter-productive in habitats that buffelgrass occupies. (And of
course, it is not feasible near buildings, highways or anywhere near
where humans reside.)
Biological Control--the last big (untried) tool in the toolkit for
combating invasive grasses
The biggest single tool left remaining in the invasive plant
toolkit for combating buffelgrass (and other invasive grasses in the
West) is biological control. Biological control refers to the release
of organisms, usually native to the native range of the invader, which
readily attack the invasive species--and only that species. The USDA
has a long, successful history of having discovered, developed and
released effective biological control agents in the U.S. Invasive plant
species that have been effectively curbed in this manner over large
areas include St. Johns Wort and Dalmatian toadflax (Coombs et al.
2004). The biological control agents released in these cases have been
insects, but it is unlikely that any insect can be found that attacks
only buffelgrass. (Grass species rarely have specific insect predators
or grazers.)
The search for biological control agents for buffelgrass will
instead need to be for microorganisms (e.g. bacteria, fungi) that have
the requisite lethality and specificity for this invader (e.g., Auld
and Morin 1995; Hintz 2007). Specificity in attack of buffelgrass or
any invasive grass is of paramount importance, given the need to
prevent introduction of any microbial agent that inadvertently also
attacks a native or valued introduced grass. (Admittedly the most
severe concern would deal with commercial grasses employed in food
production, such as corn, wheat, oats and rice.). Neither the invasive
grass nor the microbial species to be evaluated as control agents are
genetically uniform, although most buffelgrass in the U.S. was produced
through asexual seed production, i.e., the seed develops without
requite pollination (Gutierrez-Ozuna et al. 2009). Whatever the extent
of the grass's genetic variation, whether termed subspecies, races,
varieties or most specifically, genotypes, it will nevertheless need to
be characterized. The same characterization will be necessary for any
microbial taxa that may show promise of buffelgrass control under
laboratory conditions.
Key to finding Effective Microbial Control Agents will be
characterizing their specificity
To develop an effective bio-control program against buffelgrass (as
well as other invasive grasses in the West) will require commitment to
a research program by USDA (in association, for example, with
researchers at land grant universities and others) to identify
microbial agents that meet a high standard for efficacy in control of
the invader and strict specificity. Such research will likely involve a
long term financial commitment by state and federal governments to
ensure that the project is given the opportunity to succeed.
(Development of biological control agents from initial collections
through evaluation to release on the target species often involve a
work that spans as much as 10 years or more). Research for biological
control agents does not guarantee a successful outcome: some searches
for effective agents against other plant invaders have yet to identify
an effective agent (Coombs et al. 2004). And as pointed out above,
great care will be needed to ensure that no introduced agent can attack
any non-target grass, especially a crop species. Unintended target
species often include close taxonomic relatives of an invasive species.
Although no Pennisetum species are native to the U.S., pearl millet
(Pennisetum glaucum), a commercial crop, is a relative. Consequently,
care certainly would need to be directed at insuring the release of an
agent that does not attack pearl millet.
As illustrated with the presence of a valued relative of
buffelgrass in the U.S., the scientific hurdles in such a research
program are admittedly sobering. But I certainly do not mean to paint a
pessimistic picture. The opportunity for success in this research has
never been better: recent advances in the molecular technology needed
to screen and characterize the genetics of large number of
microorganisms has taken quantum leaps, even the last half dozen years.
Analyses that once took years, can now be completed in a few months and
at a small fraction of the cost 10 years ago. For example, the
federally funded Human Genome Project, a massive research program to
map all the genes that we humans possess, took more than a decade and
cost 3 billion dollars (http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/18809/
?a=f). In sharp contrast, 80% of the Paleo-Eskimo genome, i.e.,
duplicating the original Human Genome Project but for a specific group
of humans, was completed recently in 2 months for $500,000 (Rasmussen
et al. 2010). These costs and the length of the analyses will
undoubtedly drop further with rapidly improving technology in the next
few years. Nevertheless, federal commitment to this program through the
USDA and its research partners will involve multi-year careful
laboratory evaluation of potential bio-control agents.
Although I am optimistic about the ability to rapidly screen
potentially hundreds of microbial taxa for efficacy and specificity, I
deliberately avoid painting an overly optimistic picture of the ability
to find effective agents for buffelgrass. There are no assurances of
success in the search for biological control agents. I emphasize
nonetheless that the search for these agents, given the growing scale
of the damage attributable to this invader, is worth the endeavor.
Without it, buffelgrass will continue to expand its range, and this
range expansion will occur even without our factoring in the potential
for this grass to expand its range under future global warming.
Postscript: What Can be Done Now and in the Future
Buffelgrass was deliberately introduced in an era in which the
ability to evaluate the potential detrimental features of a non-native
grass were rudimentary (e.g. prohibition of parasitic plants and
species known to harbor pathogens that could attack crops). In
retrospect, the introduction of buffelgrass and other species should
have been blocked, and these lessons are reflected in current
quarantine laws and Weed Risk Assessments (WRA), illustrated by the
Plant Protection Act of 2000. (http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/pubs/
fsheet_faq_notice/fs_phproact.html). USDA APHIS diligently carries out
enforcement of this and other regulations. Needed however is a
strengthening of our ability to detect and prohibit the entry of
problematic species that may pass or at least not fail current
screening procedures. Although some invasive or otherwise noxious
species would likely arrive under any evaluation protocol short of a
total (an economically untenable) ban on plant imports, post-
immigration (but pre-release) experimental field testing and evaluation
of these species would likely pay important dividends. For example, had
buffelgrass been evaluated in field trials in its intended range in the
Southwest before its widespread introduction, its invasive properties
would likely have been detected. Much cheaper to the Nation than the
high cost of a potential ``Product recall'' for buffelgrass and other
deliberate plant introductions that have become invasive would be an
effective, transparent, science-based procedure for their detection and
removal. Steps are underway to develop such a system for the future
(Mack 2005; Davis et al., in press).
References
Auld, B.A. and L. Morin (1995). Constraints in the development of
bioherbicides. Weed Technology 9:638-652.
Coombs, E.M. et al. (eds.) (2004). Biological control of invasive
plants in the United States. Corvallis : Oregon State University Press,
Davis A.S., R. N. Mack et al. (2010). Screening bioenergy feedstock
crops to mitigate invasion risk. Frontiers in Ecology and the
Environment, in press. www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/090030]
Elton, C. S. (1958). The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants.
London, Methuen.
Gutierrez-Ozuna, R., Eguiarteb, L.E. and Molina-Freanera, F. (2009).
Genotypic diversity among pasture and roadside populations of the
invasive buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare L. Link) in north-western
Mexico. Journal of Arid Environments 73: 26-32.
Hanselka, C.W. (1988). Buffelgrass: South Texas Wonder Grass.
Rangelands 10: 279-281.
Hintz, W. (2007). Development of Chondrostereum purpureum as a
mycoherbicide for deciduous brush control. In: Biological control: a
global perspective (C. Vincent et al., eds.) pp. 284-299). CAB
International, U.K.
Hussey, M.A. and E.C. Bashaw. (1996). Performance of buffelgrass
germplasm with improved winter survival. Agronomy Journal 88: 944-946.
Hussey, M.A. and B.L. Burson (2005). Registration of 'Frio' Buffelgrass
Crop Science 2005; 45(1): 411--412.
Mack, R. N. (1981). Invasion of Bromus tectorum L. into western North
America: An ecological chronicle. Agro-Ecosystems 7: 145-165.
Mack, R.N. (2005) Predicting the identity of plant invaders: future
contributions from horticulture. HortScience 40: 1168-1174.
Mack, R. N. and J. N. Thompson (1982). Evolution in steppe with few
large hooved mammals. American Naturalist 119: 757-773.
Rasmussen, M. et al. (2010). Ancient human genome sequence of an
extinct Palaeo-Eskimo. Nature 463: 757-762.
Rejmanek, M. et al. (2005). Ecology of invasive plants: state of the
art. In: Invasive Alien Species: a New Synthesis. (Mooney, H. A., Mack,
R. N., et al., eds.), pp. 104-161. Island Press, Washington, D.C.
Schiermeier, Q. (2005). Pall hangs over desert's future as alien weeds
fuel wildfires. Nature 435:724.
Smith, S. D., Monson, R.K. & Anderson, J.E. (1997) Physiological
Ecology of North American Desert Plants. Springer, New York.
Williamson, M. H. (1996). Biological Invasions. London: Chapman & Hall.
______
Mr. Grijalva. The Tamarisk and other exotic plants, the
biological efforts have taken on in the desert to try to
control those species, you mentioned the word research line. I
agree with you. I think this is a many-fronts war, and
unfortunately--and we've had many hearings over a variety of
invasive species and the effects they are having generally over
the environment, now in our public lands.
The research development, the biological control aspects of
it have always been the last tier of discussion in those
efforts. It's about control. It's about targeting and hoping
they don't come back. I think your point is well taken. This is
a many-fronts war.
Can you elaborate a little more on the research line, how
do you see that as an important part?
Dr. Mack. Well, the traditional steps--and, of course,
they'd have to be modified for these issues--would involve
wide-scale screening of all microorganisms that can attack
buffelgrass, and most of all literally fieldwork, not just in
this country but overseas, and then the genetic
characterization of those organisms under controlled laboratory
conditions far removed from the potential release of them, so
they can be evaluated so they are indeed specific to
buffelgrass and its various genotypes itself.
It's a long-term program or protocol. It's well worked out
with insects as well as microorganisms. Folks that do this type
of work are conservative to the extreme in terms of making sure
that they don't release something that undergoes an unintended
attack on a nontarget species.
So the bad news about it, in that sense, is it's a long-
term research program. This is not a quick term fix, but I
think we're agreeing that the tools that are already on the
table that are being used locally, however you define locally,
need to be continued, but this program I think needs and should
run in tandem.
Mr. Grijalva. The research and development component is not
at the expense of the current control component?
Dr. Mack. I don't think it should be done at the expense
of. I think it should be done as a parallel line of pursuit.
Mr. Grijalva. You talked about changing attitudes when it
comes to biological eradication or control?
Dr. Mack. Yes.
Mr. Grijalva. Is it an education issue? Is that how we get
to that point?
Dr. Mack. It very much is. In fact, we have a precedent in
this country for doing that. It's always remarkable to me that
the Federal Government, and specifically the USDA, has let this
fine record, in this very area, slip into institutional memory
or lack of memory because 80 years ago this country faced an
enormous problem, frankly, which I think is more devastating
than buffelgrass--with European Barberry, which is the
alternative host for stem rust on wheat.
It was devastating the wheat crop, the crops grown in a 13-
tier, 17-state tier. They used the tools they had at the time,
which involved largely mechanical removal and very primitive
types of herbicide treatment, and they destroyed the European
Barberry, essentially brought down the damage to wheat at a
time that it was critically important. It took 30 years. It
took hundreds of thousands of people.
So I'm not advocating that as particular tools and tactics
to use, but nevertheless, we do have a precedent for that wide
scale public acceptance of a sustained program that has, as its
goal, eradication.
Mr. Grijalva. Without the Pandora's box?
Dr. Mack. Yes, without the Pandora's box. We've learned a
lot in 80 years. So the science today, all I can say is it's
better than the science then. So when we consider all these
other tools, they weren't even on the horizon then.
Mr. Grijalva. With a century of research on grass with no
biological control mechanism, what leads you to believe that
the biological control mechanism, with regard to buffelgrass,
is valid?
Dr. Mack. Because it hasn't been explored. It's the last
tool we have left. We know this tool works with other species.
In fact, with cheatgrass, we've had more experience with it.
Doug Coomer asked me--he's currently exploring my core band for
cheatgrass.
It's a case where we're going to consider what we thought
we couldn't do before and investigate it. We don't know that
we're going to have a guaranteed agent coming out at the end of
the tunnel, but we do know we'll never find it if we don't look
for it.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Looking
by way of acknowledgment and introductions, first I'll
acknowledge Dr. Betancourt for all his work and his persistence
with our office. We appreciate it very much.
Also welcome my former colleague on the Board of
Supervisors, Supervisor Elias. Thank for you being here today.
Mr. Grijalva. Let me now turn to someone I used to work
for, my good friend, Mr. Chuck Huckelberry, who is the
Administrator for Pima County. One time I went to talk to him
about the Sonoran Conservation Plan, and I was introduced by
the then supervisor from Maricopa, as Chairman Raul Grijalva
from the People's Republic of Pima.
Mr. Huckelberry. We've been called worse.
Mr. Grijalva. Right in this chamber too. I want to thank
you, Chuck, because with the process of getting the planning
and discussion and the research for the Sonoran Conservation
Plan, one of the things that Mr. Huckelberry educated many of
us on was the whole issue of invasive species, both in the
Sonoran Desert and in general, and for many of us, that was a
shocking realization that we'd like to go about our days not
knowing, that all around us the ecology that we're trying to
save is being threatened, not just by homebuilders but by
invasive species coming into the region. So I appreciate that.
Mr. Huckelberry, comments.
STATEMENT OF CHUCK HUCKELBERRY, COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR, PIMA
COUNTY, TUCSON, ARIZONA
Mr. Huckelberry. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's good to
see you in Pima County again, even if it is in the Council's
chambers.
I'd like to offer our comments and concerns with regard to
the issue of buffelgrass. And frankly I think I've seen
buffelgrass transition, in Pima County at least, from a
potential ecological disaster to one now that frankly can be a
public safety disaster.
We've already seen, in this community, one death from an
uncontrolled buffelgrass fire. We have today hundreds of homes
on the front faces of the Catalina Highway that are all subject
to buffelgrass wildfire and that could, in fact, cause public
safety chaos within this community. It needs action. It needs
to be controlled.
We need to understand that it is not only the threat that
it is to the ecological soundness to the Sonoran Desert, in
maintaining our cultural diversity, but it is a true public
service threat.
As you know, we've worked together to try to develop and
implement a Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, a far-reaching
plan trying to really retain the species diversity of the
Sonoran Desert and to tackle the tough issues associated with
conservation and growth and to meet Federal regulatory
requirements.
That plan is being well advanced. It's being implemented.
It's being implemented with the cooperation and the funding
from taxpayers in Pima County.
If we look back at the last 20, 25 years, the people of
Pima County, through bond issues, have voted to approve
spending $300 million to acquire sensitive land in the Sonoran
Desert. They have done that, and in doing so, they have made
Pima County the six largest land manager in the region.
We have purchased and control today over 85,000 acres of
fee land and 160,000 acres of either State trust grazing land
or Federal grazing land for purposes of the conservation plan.
The buffelgrass threat is something that, in that invasion,
puts our investment in jeopardy. We may lose the fundamental
purpose of those investments in preserving and protection of
the Sonoran Desert.
The board of supervisors, when you were a member and today,
continues to be very concerned about buffelgrass. We have
adopted ordinances. We have prohibited it and have caused it to
be deemed a noxious weed.
We now have the ability to regulate it on private
properties. We have done all those things, but we're still
losing ground at a very rapid rate.
Because of our proximity in this valley and the
relationship of other Federal land managers, we share
boundaries with Federal land management agencies that are
extensive and often very adjacent to our urban footprint today.
Those agencies include the Bureau of Land Management, the
Forest Service, the National Park Service, the United States
Fish and Wildlife Service and our State trust land. They're all
very important partners with dealing with this issue.
It's very critical that the county and we all continue to
work more closely in the future, on our buffelgrass control
efforts.
Because of the aggressive nature of buffelgrass, this is
not a simple we can go pull it out and we're done. It take
successive periods of time to be able to eradicate it, probably
in a period of five to ten years.
I'd like to conclude my statement by giving a few points
that we think are important. It's important that Federal
agencies, within the county, have adequate and sustained
funding with which to systematically control buffelgrass
infestation on their lands and so they can be controlled and
they don't spread to other lands within Pima County.
We would suggest that the Federal Government do the same
that the local government has done. What the State government
has done is to classify buffelgrass, as a Federal action, as an
invasive species, and that any further research, with regard to
its use, be ceased and not funded by the Federal Government.
We would like to think its important to direct all Federal
land management agencies to be active participants. I think
they are voluntarily today, but it would be appropriate to
ensure that they intend to be very active in the Southern
Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center, and it's important
that funding be provided, funding to both the Federal
Government and local jurisdictions, to address the infestation
and to begin actions to reverse it.
We also believe that the Federal Government needs adequate
flexibility and authority necessary, under planning documents,
to deal with these issues, as opposed to being delayed for
months and for years in updating their planning documents to
allow them to take control of the situation.
We also think that we should fund and direct certain
research efforts for controlling buffelgrass, and that we study
and know fully the social and other impacts of buffelgrass, if
the infestation continues uncontrolled.
We believe that it is, in fact, an issue that has been
largely overlooked and is also one that could cause huge
impacts almost instantaneously because of the public safety
threat today.
I'd like to thank you for holding this hearing and allowing
everyone to express our concerns and to better understand the
threat of this invasive species.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Huckelberry follows:]
Statement of C.H. Huckelberry, County Administrator,
Pima County, Arizona
I. Introduction
Chairman Grijalva and subcommittee members, I would like to thank
you for holding this hearing on the ecological and social challenges of
controlling the buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare) invasion in the
southwest and for inviting Pima County to testify. The impact of the
buffelgrass invasion on federal lands, and consequently on the adjacent
County lands, is of great importance to the residents and visitors to
southern Arizona. Therefore, I greatly appreciate this opportunity to
formally convey concerns on behalf of Pima County.
Unfortunately, Pima County seems to be ground zero in the
buffelgrass invasion in Arizona, and the presence of this invasive
exotic grass threatens the very existence of the Sonoran Desert in our
region. Only through the coordinated partnership efforts of local
jurisdictions, NGOs, state agencies and the federal government can we
systematically and aggressively address this threat on the many fronts
necessary. To do otherwise could seal the fate of the demise of the
Sonoran Desert as we know it today, and the accompanying ecological and
economic disaster is unacceptable.
There is little question within the scientific community about the
potential impacts and alteration of the fundamental workings of the
Sonoran Desert ecosystem that the buffelgrass invasion can bring. One
only needs to look south to Mexico to see the catastrophic changes to
native plant communities where buffelgrass has been introduced and not
controlled to gain a strong sense of urgency. We do not want to see our
region follow the same destructive pathway and a similar ecological
fate.
II. The Risks of the Buffelgrass Invasion to Pima County
The current buffelgrass invasion's roots can be traced back to the
well meaning, but now clearly understood as ill advised, introduction
of the grass for erosion control and livestock forage in the 1930s by
federal land managers. For over 60 years, the grass was spread around
the region by agencies and individuals; yet the distribution and
density of the introductions were generally contained. In the last
decade, however, a rapid and dramatic expansion of the grass
distribution, as well as the size and density of existing patches, has
dramatically increased, leading to the current crisis conditions.
Pima County has experienced tremendous population growth and is
dealing with the challenges of accommodating continued growth while
conserving the watersheds and unique natural areas that are a vital
part of the quality of life in our communities and that bring new
residents and visitors to our area. Pima County has been implementing a
regional plan, the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, which balances
these growth issues and minimizes the need for federal regulatory
actions that can be divisive. Public support for the Sonoran Desert
Conservation Plan has been very high, as demonstrated by voter approval
of $174 million in bond funds to purchase lands for conservation.
The County's current network of biologically important lands
includes more than 85,000 acres of fee title lands and another 100,000
acres of state and federal grazing leases held for conservation uses by
Pima County. Added to that is over 1.5 million acres of federally owned
conservation lands within the over all Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan
identified planning boundaries. Many of these lands are in direct
jeopardy of losing their fundamental conservation and natural habitat
values due to the buffelgrass invasion. The risk to the key
conservation lands in Pima County like Saguaro National Park, Organ
Pipe Cactus National Monument, Cienega Creek Natural Preserve, Las
Cienegas National Conservation Area, Ironwood Forest National Monument,
Catalina Ranger District of the Coronado National Forest and the 85,000
acres acquired by Pima County is real and inevitable without strong
action and leadership by both local jurisdictions and the federal
government. The visionary outcomes of the Sonoran Desert Conservation
Plan will be increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to achieve if
the buffelgrass invasion is not controlled. The investment and
commitment by Pima County of millions of dollars and tens of thousands
of hours of community planning efforts will have been in vain.
Like many areas with unique natural resources and important
National Parks and Monuments, tourism is an important component of the
local economy. Imagine the impact on the local economy if the iconic
Sonoran Desert is significantly altered or lost. The saguaro cactus is
extremely susceptible to the increased fire regimes brought to the
historically fire resistant desert ecosystem with the buffelgrass
invasion and could be lost. Lose the natural systems that have
attracted residents and visitors from around the world and the impacts
will unquestionably ripple through the local economy. Tourism and bed
tax revenues will decline, property values will be reduced,
infrastructure will have to be modified to be protected from annual
buffelgrass fires, and fire suppression time commitments and costs will
increase thus reducing the ability of fire agencies to also respond to
routine medical calls. At this time, the full impact of the current
buffelgrass invasion on the local economy is not entirely understood.
However, even the more conservative projections place the impacts at
hundreds of millions of dollars over time. An emerging environmental
issue of this magnitude cannot be ignored.
III. Pima County's Current Investment in Buffelgrass Control
Pima County has been developing responses to the buffelgrass
invasion since the late 1990s. In October 2005, the Pima County Board
of Supervisors passed a resolution establishing an Invasive Species
Working Group to coordinate actions and activities within the County
structure. This working group identified buffelgrass as a priority
species and has worked to integrate buffelgrass control activities
across the various Public Works agencies with land management
responsibilities. The policy guidance from the Board also directed
County staff to play a visible and supportive role in coordinating
buffelgrass planning and control efforts. The County investment in
those programs is thousands of staff hours and hundreds of thousands of
dollars annually and would be more if overall budgetary resources were
not currently so constrained. The County's commitment to this issue has
been clear, visible and supported with on-the-ground funding.
In February 2007, the Board of Supervisors again passed a
resolution targeting policy efforts to control buffelgrass as part of
the lead up to the first Buffelgrass Summit held in Pima County. In
that resolution, the Board of Supervisors stated ``...the Pima County
Board of Supervisors strongly supports the 2007 Pima County Buffelgrass
Summit and its stated outcomes, and encourages in the strongest terms
that local, state and national agencies, jurisdictions and
organizations allocate human and financial resources to assist in
coordinated buffelgrass control efforts in their areas of
responsibility as well as the County as a whole, until control efforts
have been determined effective.'' Unfortunately, that call to action
did not result in the desired visible support. Responses from key
partners have ranged from a lack of available funds, questions
regarding the actual severity of the issue, lack of information on
buffelgrass distribution, no staff resources to take on additional
projects, and a general lack of pressure from the public to take
action.
In 2000, a volunteer group was formed by the County called the
Sonoran Desert Weedwackers, to combat buffelgrass in Tucson Mountain
Park. This group of community volunteers has invested over 30,000 hours
over the past decade at a value to the County conservation efforts of
over $450,000. We have conservation education staff that conduct
community programs on buffelgrass awareness and how to take action at
the local community level and how to conduct volunteer control projects
and events. The County utilizes Summer Youth work crews to conduct
buffelgrass control projects on County lands and roadways each summer.
Adult probationers are also used to conduct buffelgrass control
programs along roadways and in neighborhoods as part of their community
restitution program. County staff assists with the annual Beat Back
Buffelgrass Day activities across the Tucson basin and provides
significant amounts of information to the public on the buffelgrass
issue and ways for people to take positive action and be part of the
solution. Community awareness of the dangers of buffelgrass invasion is
at an all-time high. There can no longer be a question of public
interest and demand for government, at both the local and national
levels, to take action.
In 2009, the County adopted a modification of the current Weed
Ordinance in the unincorporated portions of the County that allows the
County to require removal of buffelgrass infestations on private lands
where they are determined to be a public health and safety risk. Our
major utility companies have agreed to voluntarily control buffelgrass
and other invasive plants on County rights of way where they disturb
the ground as part of their development and maintenance activities,
since these pathways have been found to be major vectors for the
movement of buffelgrass within the urban areas.
One of the more significant efforts the County has made is to
support the Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center (SABCC).
The County took a leadership role in the formation of the group and is
one of its major financial sponsors at this time. SABCC is an important
link in actually bringing the major land management agencies to the
table to begin coordination efforts on the scale necessary to actually
tip the buffelgrass war back in our favor. This nonprofit organization
needs broad based support and a commitment of resources to meet its
potential. Unfortunately, once again, the financial resources necessary
to move our collaborative efforts forward are slow in coming.
Participation of some federal agencies could be improved and financial
support more forth coming. This is one area that the federal government
could be of specific assistance. All opportunities need to be explored
and supported to get the SABCC a steady flow of the resources it needs
to be an effective facilitator for research, control projects and
public outreach. This role could not be played as well by any other
local organization, institution or jurisdiction.
IV. Interrelationships with Federal Lands and Future Scenarios
Pima County enjoys hundreds of miles of shared boundary with
federal land management agencies. At some points, the County urban
footprint directly adjoins the federal lands. The National Park
Service, Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service manage
the largest units of those federal lands. The County has maintained a
strong working partnership for many years with the various agencies and
under the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, the health of those federal
lands within Pima County will play important roles in the future growth
and conservation priorities of our County.
The current lack of a systematic effort to control buffelgrass is a
clear and multi-jurisdictional concern. The potential for fire to move
back and forth across the land boundaries is a real threat and
currently without any comprehensive strategies to combat such
occurrences. Current efforts by the Forest Service in their Coronado
National Forest Firescape planning process shows promise, but it will
take time to mature and be implemented. Buffelgrass control needs to be
integrated into all local fire plans, and we would hope to explore in
the near future the development of a County level Community Action Fire
Plan to focus on the needs and strategies required to address the new
fire regimes the buffelgrass invasion has created. Because of the many,
expanding interface zones of buffelgrass infestations and urban growth,
the potential for loss of life and property from a catastrophic fire is
a real possibility if strategic control actions are not taken
immediately. New fire models on public lands show a bleak future and
fire behavior previously unknown to our desert ecosystem. The front
face of the Catalina Mountains appears to be an especially vulnerable
area at this time. Federal agency participation and support is critical
to a successful outcome to establishing comprehensive fire management
strategies and defendable spaces. The emerging buffelgrass fire
concerns in southern Arizona rival those in the pine type of northern
Arizona and warrant the same types of resource allocations in the
future.
At the present time, while federal agencies in Arizona expend
limited resources to combat the buffelgrass invasion, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture is working to hybridize this exotic invasive
grass to make it more cold tolerant. Because of the proven serious
invasive nature of buffelgrass in the desert ecosystem, the federal
government should be restricting all activity in use or development of
hybrids of this invader. It seems counter to good environmental policy
to have some federal agencies fighting buffelgrass and others trying to
make the species more adaptable. How can this expenditure of federal
funds be justified when we at the local level are paying the price? Why
is buffelgrass not being recognized as the invasive species it is by
the federal government and its use and distribution by all agencies,
both inside and outside the United States, prohibited? Arizona has
taken action within our borders; we need the federal government to
recognize that need and mirror local actions.
It is critical that the County and federal land management agencies
work closely on future buffelgrass control efforts. Joint multi-year
projects will be necessary to ensure that resources are being targeted
on the priority areas and that adequate project boundaries are treated
to ensure that seed banks of the grass are not maintained on adjoining
lands. Based on the most recent discussions, it appears that most of
the local federal agencies do not have adequate resources available to
address the buffelgrass invasion with a systemic approach. Funding
commitments from the federal government must be adequate for the task
and sustained over the necessary life of control efforts. Because of
the aggressive nature of buffelgrass and long-lived seed banks, control
efforts must be considered in terms of three to five repeat year
treatments and not single year efforts in any given area.
In the past, Saguaro National Park implemented comprehensive
control programs only to see funding cut and much of their positive
effort lost due to the inability to apply the necessary continued
control effort. Ultimately, they experienced a reestablishment of
buffelgrass in specific areas previously treated for several years
within the park. This is a disappointing waste of manpower, funding and
control effort impact.
Pima County is facing a rapidly diminishing timeline for effective
action. Action response needs to be intensified and measured in years,
not decades. The County and federal lands infested with buffelgrass
need aggressive treatments now. If we wait a decade, it may well be too
late, and the costs of required routine control efforts to contain the
inevitable fires will be far greater than potential control efforts
today. Buffelgrass knows no boundaries; therefore, the County and
adjacent federal lands must be viewed as a holistic ecological system.
The County cannot continue to focus resources on lands adjacent to
public lands without assurance of support from federal agencies to
address the buffelgrass problem cooperatively, collaboratively and
effectively.
V. Summary and Recommendations
We have an ecological and economic disaster looming on the horizon,
and parties are working diligently to avert that impending disaster.
However, the commitments and resources necessary to address the issue
are not available or coordinated at a level necessary to move concern
to true action. Because buffelgrass knows no boundaries and much of the
current infestation is on federal lands, the problem is one of local,
state and federal significance. All of the land management agencies
must be active and committed participants in control efforts and public
outreach. We cannot adequately address this issue from just the local
level. The federal government needs to provide its local units with the
funding and tools necessary to address the buffelgrass invasion
responsibly.
I would like to conclude this testimony by listing the following
recommendations that the federal government could take that I believe
will make a measurable difference in the fight to control buffelgrass
now and into the future:
Ensure that federal agencies in Pima County have adequate
and sustained funding to systematically control buffelgrass
infestations on their lands with special emphasis on those shared
boundaries with Pima County and the urban lands interface.
Cease any further work on hybridization of buffelgrass
and distribution of this invasive exotic grass outside of its native
habitats.
Direct all of the federal land management agencies in
Pima County to be active participants and funding support partners with
the Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center.
Provide local jurisdictions and organizations in Pima
County with emergency funding support to address buffelgrass
infestation control efforts on lands that border federal public lands.
Ensure that the federal land management agencies have
adequate authority and planning documents in place to take aggressive
action with all the control tools available when implementing
buffelgrass control programs.
Direct and fund the federal agencies to increase research
efforts into the ecology, control methodology and social implications
of the current buffelgrass infestation.
I hope I have communicated to you a sense of urgency in the need to
address the buffelgrass issue head on and allocate the resources at the
federal level necessary to make a difference in the open space lands we
cherish. The areas of interface between Pima County and federal lands
are too important for watershed protection, habitats for special status
species of plants and animals and our local tax base to not step
forward and address the buffelgrass invasion now. If we do not address
this invasion by an exotic, human introduced species cooperatively,
aggressively and financially we will share the disastrous environmental
and economic consequences of inaction.
Again, thank you for inviting Pima County to provide testimony on
this most critical and time sensitive environmental issue.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Huckelberry, and your point
about public safety, I appreciate that a lot. I think that
needs to be integrated fully into the overall discussion, even
with the invasive species, that it threatens biological
diversity, but it threatens life and limb.
And I think people will understand, one, in one sense the
urgency of that, like many of us in this room. The other one
has an urgency to it, and I, for one, think we should integrate
that as part of the discussions on this. So I appreciate that.
I couldn't agree with you more about the classification.
That's something we're going to pursue to add it to the list
and to attach to that the fact that we, the Federal Government,
should not be funding efforts to promulgate buffelgrass,
whether it's through research or through demands from certain
industries that that is part of the feeding cycle for
livestock.
And it's going to be a little bit of a fight, but I think
the science is there. The threat is evident, and I think we can
justify pushing for that legislative classification. Thank you
for that.
We heard today about agencies working together, state,
local, private entities, Federal agencies, to coordinate its
efforts to combat buffelgrass. In your written testimony, you
state some concerns about maybe some of the efforts of the
Forest Service have been counterproductive in that effort. Can
you elaborate on those, or did I misread your testimony?
Mr. Huckelberry. I think it's fragmented. What occurs one
year, doesn't occur the next year and there's inconsistent
application. It's a whole issue of whether it becomes a
statement and a guiding principle, and why it's adopted and why
it's in the document. Those things need to be addressed so
there's consistency, because if you take some actions and
they're funded for a short period of time to eradicate
buffelgrass, and then you're not--then you don't, it doesn't
work.
So there has to be an understanding. There needs to be a
continued effort and indeed basically carried forward from one
land manager to another. And that then is institutionalized to
the long range plan, management planning documents.
Mr. Grijalva. And that was your point?
Mr. Huckelberry. Yes, sir.
Mr. Grijalva. I think Ms. Krueger made that point about not
putting limitations of three years, five years, that this be an
ongoing and consistent effort.
The Federal Government is a nexus both for our needs,
classification, flexibility on the planning documents so land
managers can react and also the nexus for funding.
Given all the constraints that are going on budgetarily in
this state and across the Nation, I see local jurisdictions and
state government being less able to respond with funding for
this, and that kind of begs the question about where that
funding nexus is going to come from. I think it needs to be the
Federal Government. Your response to that?
Mr. Huckelberry. Mr. Chairman, as you know, states are
fiscally stressed. They pass that fiscal stress back down to
the local government, but they have other resources that, if
properly managed and directed, can, in fact, become a component
of fighting the buffelgrass these days, and I'll give you
another example.
In Pima County, we have adult corrections. They can
actually be directed to these efforts from a manual eradication
perspective, but they require equipment, supervision, control,
and it costs money.
And so I see those kinds of grants that could come from the
Federal Government and then actually take programs that are
under stress today and make them more effective.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, Mr. Huckelberry.
We will now hear from Dr. John Brock, Brock Habitat
Restoration and Invasive Plant Management. Welcome, Doctor.
We'd like to hear your testimony.
STATEMENT OF JOHN BROCK, BROCK HABITAT RESTORATION AND INVASIVE
PLANT MANAGEMENT, TEMPE, ARIZONA
Dr. Brock. Thank you, Congressman Grijalva, for asking me
here. Part of my other background, my other life, I was for 31
years at ASU, Arizona State University, as a professor on the
faculty there. So that explains a little bit of my----
Mr. Grijalva. We all have our cross to bear.
Dr. Brock. It was a tough life but someone had to do it.
One of the nice things about being the last person in a
testimonial line like this is that all the good things have
been said, and I could just quietly walk off.
But buffelgrass, I think, was introduced in the United
States in the early 1930s, and it actually didn't take the
first time. In the early 1940s it was reintroduced, and
obviously it made it.
Buffelgrass, as an invasive species, is fairly unique. It's
one of those invasive species, kind of like Russian Olive, that
was introduced and almost immediately people recognized the
thing was invasive and it was spreading beyond the limits.
Specifically, invasive plants have a lag time, from the
time they're introduced, until they start really spreading.
Buffelgrass is one of those that didn't act that way. It
started spreading almost immediately after it was introduced.
Buffelgrass is--when we talk about it being an
international problem, it truly is a global problem because
buffelgrass is on the top 20 unwanted plants in Australia, and
they have literally millions of acres of buffelgrass in
Australia as well.
My first experience with buffelgrass was actually when I
worked at Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Texas in the
early 1970s. I was on a ranch down in Southern Texas when they
were root-plowing and digging brush and seeding buffelgrass on
that land.
That landowner later became one of the Governors of Texas,
but it was quite awhile ago. It wasn't the one that was just
Governor and then President awhile ago. It was a different one.
Mr. Grijalva. I was going to add another blamegate here.
Dr. Brock. Also when I was working at the experiment
station in Texas, I worked out of Lubbock. And one day I got a
telephone call from the main campus, from the plant breeders,
asking me if I'd be willing to work with them on a project
evaluating cold tolerant buffelgrass strains that they had been
working on, the forage plant breeders had been working with.
And I had eight strains of buffelgrass shipped to me up to
Lubbock. The first winter some of the buffelgrass actually
survived. The second winter, temperatures got down to about 5
degrees, and they died. So that was that at that point.
But even in the 1970s, people were working to try to get
cold tolerant buffelgrass, and what they were doing was
crossing it with other species in the Cenchrus genus. A real
common one of those is the common sand burr. But anyway that
was my experience.
When I came to Arizona, in '77, buffelgrass was not much of
a deal at all. I remember seeing it being planted down on the
Santa Rita Experimental Range at that particular time, and so
it was just something that, well, people are planting it and
the invasive nature of it wasn't being recognized by very many
people, but it was being planted.
And then about 1985, at ASU, I was given a new teaching
assignment that included buffelgrass on that list. And I used
to have to go to one specific spot in Phoenix, on I-17, to find
buffelgrass to bring a specimen to class. Fifteen years later,
I could pick it up on my bicycle going to campus.
And so it spread fairly rapidly. So it's still spreading.
So it's spreading along the transportation corridors around
Phoenix, and it's continuing to spread. It's going to find new
microsites, particularly when we have--the full effects of
global warming are coming on.
It's a difficult case for vegetation managers. And in my
testimony, I list actually seven things we could do to
control--try to control buffelgrass. The first one is
prevention, and like Dr. Mack talked about with biological
control.
But there are seven things we could do. We talked about
those this morning. I've been pretty active in looking for
herbicide screening for buffelgrass. Of course, Round-Up,
glyphosate herbicide works quite well for it, if the plant is
green and we can get the coverage on the plants.
I've been looking at broadcast sprays with several
different herbicide with minimal successes, but I'm continuing
that. I started some studies in 2008, 2009. Both of those are
still active.
What I'm going to do next is try to eliminate a bunch of
things that didn't work and try to focus more on--there have
been some other studies. But my recommendations this morning is
that a concerted effort be put together taking the best
knowledge of the people in the State or everywhere, getting all
that knowledge together, getting research and demonstration
teams going, much like were laid forth in the presentations
earlier, and by particularly Southern Arizona Buffelgrass
Group. We can do that. We've got plenty of expertise in the
State installed to interpret and evaluation those kind of
results.
And the second recommendation is that really immediate
effort be made by APHIS, the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
They're the ones that do the biological and control-type work.
Get an immediate project going on that.
There's a spill-wet that controls buffelgrass--that can
control buffelgrass. It attacks buffelgrass. The current
technique, to get rid of buffelgrass stands, is for the
ranchers or the farmers to burn those fields to get rid of that
pest, and it will kill buffelgrass plants.
There is also a disease--there's plant disease, but also a
fungi, I believe, that will get on buffelgrass. And it's
another way they control that, and again actually burn the
pastures to get rid of it.
I believe there are some things that could be done with
biological control, but much more the emphasis has to be put on
really trying to treat it as a forage material and much less on
bio control. That's my comment. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Brock follows:]
Statement of Dr. John Brock, Brock Habitat Restoration and Invasive
Plant Management, and Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University
Polytechnic, Tempe, Arizona
Buffelgrass is native to the veld of central Africa. Its taxonomic
classification is as follows: Family: Poaceae, Grass Tribe: Paniceae,
Genus and species : Pennisetum cilare (L.) Link (syn) Cenchrus ciliaris
L. Buffelgrass is a perennial bunchgrass that is adapted to sub
tropical habitats around the world. While being a native to sub
tropical climate grasslands, buffelgrass is well adapted to dry periods
and can withstand prolonged drought conditions. Buffelgrass was
introduced the United States in the 1930's and that introduction
failed. In the early 1940's a successful introduction was made.
Buffelgrass was first introduced in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, and
fairly soon thereafter to neighboring states in Mexico. Buffelgrass
began to show its invasive nature fairly early after introduction.
Often perennial plants show a lag time of decades from the time of
introduction to invasion, this was not quite the case for buffelgrass.
According to the USDA's Plant Data base, buffelgrass is now found in 1O
states, and is in Puerto Rico. Buffelgrass is widely found in Hawaii,
along with fountain grass, Pennisetum setaceum, which has escaped urban
landscapes and is invading the Sonoran Desert at well. Buffelgrass is
one Australia's most unwanted plants and has invade vast areas of that
country's deserts.
My first experience with buffelgrass was in about 1972 while doing
rangeland improvement projects in south Texas. In that case, mixed
brush was being removed from rangeland and this introduced African
grass was being planted to increase forage production for livestock
grazing. Buffelgrass showed advantages over the native grasses in that
it was easy to establish from seed, reached maturity rapidly, and
provided palatable forage to domestic livestock, especially cattle.
Forage yield measurements showed that buffelgrass pastures could
produce in excess of 4,000 pounds per acre, in years of favorable
rainfall. In the mid 1970's I planted accessions of buffelgrass at the
Texas Agricultural Experiment Stations at Lubbock and Spur, Texas to
test them for winter hardiness. At that time forage plant breeders were
attempting to increase cold tolerance in buffelgrass by crossing it
with other species in the Cenchrus genus. The first winter was mild and
some of the buffelgrass plants survived at both locations. However in
the second winter low temperatures approached zero degrees and all of
the plants were winter killed.
When I arrived in Arizona in 1977, buffelgrass was not very common,
especially in the Phoenix area. However it was being planted in
southern Arizona, including trial plantings on the Santa Rita
Experimental Range. At Arizona State University, in about 1985 I began
teaching the course ``Range Plant Identification''. To instruct this
class, we used, as part of the material, a plant list of 200 rangeland
plant species utilized in the Society of Range Management annual
meeting plant ID contest for undergraduate students. Buffelgrass was on
this list. I liked to use fresh specimens if possible for laboratory
instruction and ID tests. At this time, I could only find buffelgrass
near the interchange at 7th Ave and I-10 in the Phoenix area. For
several years, I would go to that site to collect buffelgrass. Later,
about 1990, I was able to find it growing at industrial type areas in
north Tempe. Before moving to ASU Polytechnic in 1999, I would collect
buffelgrass on my bike ride to the ASU Tempe campus. It was also about
this time when buffelgrass became established on ``A'' mountain in
Tempe, since that was a site I would take students on fieldtrips for
plant identification. At the present time, buffelgrass can be easily
found along roadsides and other disturbed sites in what is known as the
East Valley.
Buffelgrass is spreading along transportation corridors and is
firmly established to the east of Fountain Hills. To the north of
Phoenix, along I-17, it is found as far north as Black Canyon City. I
believe it will continue to spread northward and find microclimate
sites for establishment and with the advent of climate change, will
continue to advance into the upper Sonoran Desert characteristic of the
landscapes north of the Phoenix area. Buffelgrass impacts the Sonoran
Desert in two ways. One the presence of this plant can provide strong
competition to native plants and result in a monotypic vegetation
stand. This obviously decreases plant biodiversity, but also can change
animal populations because of the limited food source and decrease
overall biodiversity. Secondly, buffelgrass presents a perennial fine
fuel that can promote wildfires. Sonoran Desert vegetation is not
adapted to fire and many of the signature plants of the Sonoran Desert
are killed in wild fires.
Buffelgrass is presenting a difficult case for vegetation managers.
Vegetation managers have seven categories of management to direct
toward a plant species. These include: (1). Prevention of introduction,
(2). Manual, which can be labor intensive (3) Cultural practices which
includes things like crop rotation and directed livestock grazing, (4).
Mechanical treatments involve equipment like plows and mowing, however,
on most Sonoran Desert sites, these actions would have little value,
(5). Chemical treatments most commonly focus on herbicides, (6). Fire,
and (7) Biological control agents.
There are reports of insect and plant disease damage to
buffelgrass. A spittle bug can attack buffelgrass causing plant death,
however, the common response by land managers who want buffelgrass is
to burn the pasture to control the spittle bug. Buffelgrass developed
under a natural fire regime in Africa and is tolerant to fire, although
prescribed fire during summer dormancy can cause mortality to the
population, but the losses are quickly replaced by seedling
recruitment. Directed grazing as a form of biological control has been
considered for buffelgrass, but buffelgrass is well adapted to grazing
pressures. If ``overgrazed'' it can develop a decumbent growth form
which helps it escape some of the grazing pressure. Manual removal of
buffelgrass can be very effective. Manual control works best when the
soil is moist and persons doing this practice return to the site for
several years to find any new invading buffelgrass plants.
Herbicides can control buffelgrass. The most common herbicide
applied for buffelgrass control is Roundup (glyphosate) or the generic
equivalents of this herbicide. Roundup works best when buffelgrass is
in a full green state. Glyphosate based herbicides are not selective
herbicide hence, care during application is needed not to harm non-
target plant species. In recent tests, Arsenal or Habitat herbicides
(imazapyr) has been found to be effective against buffelgrass. Imazapyr
also is not a selective herbicide, so collateral damage to non-target
plants would be expected if this herbicide was applied as a broadcast
spray. Buffelgrass can be controlled, based on research in Texas, with
applications of Spike or Graslan (tebuthiuron. To get effective control
tebuthiuron was applied at high rates, about 2 lbs ai/ac, and
tebuthiuron is a persistent herbicide that ties readily to soil organic
matter and plant tissues. Research for buffelgrass control with
herbicides with more selectivity have shown that buffelgrass is not
very susceptible to those compounds. For example Oust herbicide
(sulfometuron) is selective but has intermediate control effects on
buffelgrass, as does Accent herbicide (nicosulfuron). These preliminary
observations are from treatments made to buffelgrass in September of
2009. As with most perennial invasive species, conclusive statements as
to vegetation management treatments should be made after 1 or 2
complete growing seasons. Herbicides more specifically developed for
grasses (gramacides) have shown little effectiveness to buffelgrass
control. What is needed at this time are controlled herbicide tests
made to buffelgrass growing among native Sonoran Desert vegetation,
using the best herbicide management practices.
My recommendation would to be actively begin research/demonstration
tests for buffelgrass control in the Sonoran desert using the best
information available. I believe this will involve a team approach and
team members are present within Arizona to design, install, evaluate
and interpret such tests. A second recommendation is that an immediate
effort be put forth by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
(APHIS), an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, charged
with assisting in biological control strategies for management of
invasive species, to find biological control agents targeted to
buffelgrass.
______
Mr. Grijalva. Two questions in one, having to deal with a
comment you made about climate change. Is part of the migration
up north due to cooling of temperatures, and on that same
issue, how is that worsening buffelgrass infestation in the
Sonoran Desert?
Dr. Brock. Climate change, from my observations, is moving
north. I make that road trip from Phoenix to Flagstaff once in
a while but much more commonly to Payson. I've seen it going up
the mile markers to Payson. Fountain grass or Pennisetum
setaceum is a close relative and is even farther north than
buffelgrass. But the other part of that was--gosh, now my
senior moment came. What was the second part of that?
Mr. Grijalva. Is it worsening?
Dr. Brock. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes, I believe it is.
Buffelgrass is a subtropical grass, and I believe that the
changing environment--there are things, too--global climate
change has a bunch of components.
One is temperature, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and
then the other thing is that people don't seem to think too
much about either is hydrogen deposition in terms of all the
air pollutants. So I believe all three of those are working
together to allow buffelgrass stands to expand and become a
little more vigorous.
Mr. Grijalva. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. I want to
thank all the panelists for the hearing today. The information
today plus, for all the panelists, the questions that I want to
submit and for the sake of time and other reasons I didn't ask
today, but if you could get that back to us as soon as possible
for a couple of reasons: One, to have a strong record of this
hearing, number one, and the recommendations that we heard;
Number two, back to the point that Ms. Smallhouse made, that we
are going to continue our efforts to secure some early
demonstration money for the region, and like the last time, we
hope that the appropriators will, based on today and the body
of evidence that is available now, be more responsive to the
requests.
So we'll make that effort, and we thank the alliance for
their help in pushing some of our appropriators that that's a
good thing to fund down here. That's truly a funding request,
implications all over.
And the legislative work, I think it's important to raise
this to an imminent threat status to where it should be, and I
think it will help us most on the funding side.
I think the point that Chuck made, and in other parts of
the testimony, about creating management and planned
flexibility for plant managers so they have the ability to move
and rapidly respond to situations.
And I think part of the hearing has to be about the cost
benefits. If we would have spent the money that we should have
20 years ago, we wouldn't be talking to the grave situation
that we find ourselves in now.
And rather than be foolish about that, I think this is--we
have to look at the cost, but we also have to look at the
benefit of making the investment now as opposed to waiting
another ten years when the crisis perhaps is to the point that
we can't tip it over in the other direction.
And so on the scale of how it's spreading, this is
something everyone should be terribly, terribly concerned
about, and I think that helps us with our argument about cost
benefit, that it's not just Southern Arizona. It's going to
affect the State. And thank you for that, Doctor.
It's going to affect other parts of the country, and there
are multiple responses we need to take, and all of them are
codependent on our ability to have that sustained funding, so
that land managers in local community can begin the control
process, and that we have the flexibility, once classification
is done, for some real R&D work down the road.
The tri-national point about this, this invasion has no
boundaries between jurisdictions and between nations, so the
coordination has to be some effort and some resources dedicated
both to helping tribes and to enhancing the bi-national
cooperation with our neighbors to the South. It is essential.
And the educational component is going to be critical. We
are going to continue to work now on the--I don't want to call
it demonstration funding anymore. I think we're past the
demonstration point.
We're going to attach the urgency that this hearing has
produced, to our request, and push it. Beyond that, there's the
legislative initiative, and a coordinated, comprehensive
campaign to eradicate buffelgrass has to be the overarching
goal that we have here.
So we're real grateful for your testimony today. The staff
has much good information and we're going to follow-up with
some of you for additional information and additional help in
helping us craft some of the initiatives that we're going to
put together.
Thank you so much. More than anything, not only was it
informative, but I appreciate all of the people here, the
panelists and the alliance, for the fact that you have done so
well in taking this issue and not letting it settle under the
radar, and hopefully this hearing will continue to profile the
fact that there's a clear, imminent threat to the biological
diversity of the region and to the health and safety of the
people of the region.
With that, I want to thank you again and I appreciate very
much your attendance and fine work. Thank you. The meeting is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[NOTE: The individuals listed below have submitted
documents for the record, which have been retained in the
Committee's official files.]
Bean, Travis M., Principal Research Specialist,
University of Arizona
Bloom, Claudia, Founder of the Phoenix Weedwackers
Brigham, Linda A., Executive Director, Southern Arizona
Buffelgrass Coordination Center
Brown, Lasha, Executive Director, Friends of Ironwood
Forest
Brusca, Richard, Senior Director, Research &
Conservation, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
Dahl, Kevin, Arizona Program Manager, National Parks
Conservation Association
Graumlich, Lisa J., Professor, University of Arizona
Green, Paul, Executive Director, Tucson Audubon Society
Lovallo, Lisa, Vice President, Cox Communications
McVie, Christina, Secretary, Board of Directors, Friends
of Ironwood Forest and Conservation Committee Chair, Tucson Audubon
Society
Olsson, Aaryn, PhD Candidate, Arid Lands Resource
Sciences, University of Arizona
Remington, Richard, Senior Biologist, Logan Simpson
Design, Inc.
Skelton, Lynne, Mayro, Town of Sahuarita
Whittle, Richard K., LTC (ret.), PhD, Wildlife Biologist,
Barry M. Goldwater Range-East