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“All I’m doing is killing stuff”
For a bunch of bird-loving, oysters-on-the-half-shell types, the
language used for ridding Willapa Bay of Spartina is
downright militaristic.
“All I’m doing is killing stuff,” said Jonathan Bates, an
equipment operator for the wildlife refuge, one day last July. At
the time, he was rumbling across Spartina meadows aboard a
tank-like tractor outfitted with sprayer nozzles to mist the grass
with Rodeo herbicide.
Closer to the tide line, where smaller Spartina bunches
called “clones” hadn’t yet formed meadows, airboat crews drew
herbicide pistols and blasted the grass with blue-dyed
herbicide.
“The plan,” says airboat crew leader Darrin Zavodsky, “was to
divide and conquer.”
The tractors all are armed with GPS units to map their progress,
and at least one has infrared sensors that signal the sprayer
nozzles to fire only when it detects plant matter.
Last summer, the wildlife refuge, the Washington State
Department of Agriculture, and the bay’s oyster growers treated
Spartina on 5,000 acres in the bay. It was a landmark year:
they killed nearly 10 times more grass than any previous year and,
for the first time, gained ground against Spartina. This
summer, partners including WSU and the University of Washington
have mapped out a strategy to treat another 3,000 acres while
mopping up new shoots on mudflats they treated in 2003.
Until 2003, more than a decade of spraying, mowing, and tilling
Spartina had proven futile, while a UW study of plant-eating
insects remains unproven. Stenvall, the wildlife refuge chief,
credits WSU researcher Patten, whom he jokes is Willapa’s own “mad
scientist,” with finding a way to make common herbicides kill the
pesky grass in harsh conditions—without harming the bay’s fragile
ecosystem.
This year, Patten’s work should bring a new weapon to their
arsenal: federal and state agencies’ expected approval of imazapyr
for use in the bay after Patten exhaustively tested the herbicide.
Imazapyr, compared to Rodeo, requires less chemical and shorter
drying times to kill Spartina.
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 An airboat crew moves along the bay-side edges of the tall Spartina
meadows that are taking over parts of the south end of Willapa Bay.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service workers from the Willapa National
Wildlife Refuge spray dye-colored herbicide on the Spartina.
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