Some states seek federal money to fight invasive species

Cheatgrass, drying and posing fire hazard (Elko Daily photo)

Invasive species cause more than $120 billion in economic damage to U.S. states every year; since the Interior Department's Invasive Species Advisory Committee "concluded that federal agencies lack the authority to effectively combat that impact," so states are seeking partnerships with the federal government, Dave Nyczepir reports for Route Fifty.

Before the U.S. Senate Environment Committee Wednesday, a Wyoming official talked about the difficulty of suppressing cheatgrass, "a weed that consumes large amounts of water, degrades soil, displaces vegetation, and fuels catastrophic wildfires" and had reduced the state’s 50-year fire cycle to three years, Nyczepir reports, adding that the problem goes beyond Wyoming; "In the last 20 years, 74 percent of Department of Interior acres that experienced wildfires were on rangelands, and 80 percent of those 12 million rangeland acres had been invaded by cheatgrass, according to the Bureau of Land Management."

A North Dakota official said his state doesn't need federal aid, but from the other side of the country, a Delaware official said otherwise. “States currently don’t have sufficient resources to tackle all of the threats outlined within their wildlife action plans, so we are unable to address threats facing fish and wildlife populations from invasive species,” said Joe Rogerson, program manager for wildlife species conservation and research at the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife.

Rogerson said federal help was helpful in eliminating the nutria, "a semi-aquatic rodent with large orange teeth native to South America," from the Chesapeake Bay area in the early 2000s, "A prolific breeder and voracious eater of grasses, nutria threatened to destroy 35 thousand acres of wetlands in 50 years."

Nutria (Photo via RouteFifty)