| James Nielson sprays musk thistle near Electric Lake. |
The Skyline Cooperative Weed Management Area group teamed up for a great effort to control three noxious weeds around Electric Lake on June 27-28. The Skyline CWMA is made up of the Carbon and Emery county weed departments, the US Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, the Castleland Resource Conservation and Development Council Inc., the Utah Division of Fire, Forestry and State Lands, Carbon and Emery USU Extension, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the State Institutional Trust Lands, Price River and San Rafael Conservation Districts, and the Utah Department of Transportation, and private landowners.
These agencies, groups, and individual landowners work together across jurisdictional boundaries to control noxious weeds wherever they occur. This facilitates a great partnership and synergy to work on a growing problem.
The noxious weeds that were focused on this past Wednesday and Thursday were dalmation toadflax (linaria genistifolia), musk thistle (carduus nutans), and whitetop/hoary cress (cardaria draba).The real key to this group’s work is that they cooperatively work with the private landowners to help them control the spread of noxious weeds on their property, and also work together on state and federal lands.
Jim Davis, a private property owner met the group at the Electric Lake turnout along the Huntington Canyon road, when he saw all of the spray equipment and crews ready to go to work he said “This looks like someone is going to really work on some work on some weeds”. He offered the group a source of water to fill up spray equipment and provided access to his private lands so that the group could get to where the weeds were. The Zions’ Camp landowners association also provided access to their land for noxious weed control.
The Skyline CWMA has a grant from the Utah Department of Ag and Foods’ Grazing Improvement Program to provide chemicals and other means to accomplish the goal of controlling the noxious weeds in this area.
James Nielson, Emery County Weed Department Supervisor was quoted “The musk thistle in this area was several feet tall in this area when we started this project.” He has seen a marked improvement in the area around Electric Lake.
Mikel Johnson, Carbon County Weed supervisor said “when we started this project, there were only a few people involved, now we have a great group working together.”
There were a total of 22 people who came to work on the project on Wednesday morning. US Forest Service-Ferron Ranger District, Forestry-Fire and State Lands, UDWR, Carbon and Emery county weed departments, Jim Davis (cabin owner), were all there.
Four-wheel ATVs, and 6-wheeled Polaris Ranger vehicles were outfitted with spray equipment to access the mountainous terrain. Large trucks with spray tanks were used along roads also.