Lots of work related to weeds lately.  I’ve done weed monitoring, weed treatments, and weed management planning. It has been a nice balance between taking action and planning for action.

The weed monitoring was mostly in future timber sale units. They will construct roads and close roads to prepare for all the traffic on the unit so we want to take care of the weeds before they are given the opportunity to spread.

We pulled weeds at campgrounds, along roads while monitoring and at research natural area. The weeds we’ve been working with mostly are Scotch Broom, Reed Canary Grass, Himalayan Blackberry, and Stinky Bob (a geranium).

One interesting day was going out and looking for big old trees for a fuels reduction project. Went to look for “old growth stands”. If it was old growth, we would have to have fungi surveys in the area for the next two years before they could go ahead with the project. To assess if it was old growth we looked to see if there was age class diversity in the trees, multiple stories in the canopy, decaying logs, the litter layer on top of the soil, and big trees that look to be >200 years old.

I am continuing to work on project proposals for weed treatments and working on weed management plan for a 6,500 acres reserve for the Federally endangered Columbia white-tail deer. The project proposal is to remove English Hawthorn, a super weedy tree. I don’t have any pictures this month, but soon I will have to post pictures of the oak savannah and oak woodland habitats in need of some thinning.