A two-year program targeting invasive alien plants in Saskatchewan will end in July unless new funding is found.
The program was funded under the environmental pillar of the agricultural policy framework, and is managed by the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities and the provincial agriculture department.
Spokesperson Harvey Anderson said the federal government offered the program about one-quarter of its previous funding to continue until July.
“Then if we don’t find any other funding, we’re gone,” he said.
The project has applied to Saskatchewan Environment for money that would take it until March 31, 2009, but hasn’t heard yet if the request has been approved.
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Anderson said the project is worth it.
In the last two years project staff worked mainly with rural municipalities, which have the ultimate power to enforce the Noxious Weed Act and encourage landowners to control invasive weeds.
The program focused on early detection and eradication while the weed population is small, moving to containment and integrated control in situations where the plants are established and spreading, and coping where the weeds are widespread.
Integrated weed management uses herbicides, biological control (predator insects) and physical control such as cultivating, mowing and grazing.
Anderson said the problems would be worse if not for the efforts of RMs. The project encouraged more of them to appoint weed inspectors and create long-term written plans to deal with invasive plants.
Ten groups, which each grouped three to 10 RMs together, developed co-operative management areas to monitor weeds and deal with them.
“There is somebody in place and it is economical for the RMs to hire somebody,” Anderson said of the co-operative approach.
There are 41 alien plants listed in Saskatchewan’s legislation. The two most serious are leafy spurge and scentless chamomile.
There has been more success controlling the chamomile, said Anderson. Leafy spurge has moved into riparian areas, which makes chemical control more difficult.
“The best chemical is quite mobile in moist soils,” he said.
But the program also focused on weeds that aren’t in the province yet.
Native Plant Society of Saskatchewan executive director Chet Neufeld said Montana, for example, could become an invasion front if weeds there start moving north.
“Some plants still sold in greenhouses are invasive but are not listed under the Noxious Weed Act,” he said.
Anderson said another problem is that people don’t know what the weeds look like or that they are a problem.
“In their native Europe or Asian locations they have natural predators,” he said. “Here, they can outcompete the native plants.”
Now that cities are banning the use of pesticides, some invasive species might become more aggressive in those locations.
