Photo: Henbane. © 2020 Delena Norris-Tull
Allen Mooney, Campbell County, Wyoming, interview 2013
Video interview conducted by Becky McMillen, transcribed by Dr. Delena Norris-Tull. Reviewed & Approved by Allen, July 2020.]
[Allen Mooney was the Weed & Pest Supervisor for Campbell County, in Northeastern Wyoming.]
"I was a district supervisor for 28 years, since 1983. I retired about two years ago. Campbell County has about 3,200,000 acres. The County is 70 miles long, 50 miles wide. We have about 50% Federal lands, and the rest is private. We raise some grain. It’s mostly a grazing large animal operation. At the South end of the County, we have fairly flat rolling hills. The North end gets into some timber, with a very large elk herd. Gillette is the County Seat. There’s a lot more timber than you think when just driving through.
The Powder River runs through the County. We’ve had weed problems from weeds coming down the River."
[Becky asked: What weeds and pests have you dealt with?]
"We’ve dealt a lot with blacktail prairie dogs, mosquitoes with West Nile Virus, and grasshoppers, are the main pests. As for weed concerns, we have probably spent more money on Canada thistle. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most important species. We’ve got some new species moving in, like spotted knapweed, and leafy spurge. We’ve spent a considerable amount of money trying to prevent them from gaining a foothold in the County. We’ve been pretty successful with spotted knapweed. Leafy spurge we seem to treat and then re-treat. It doesn’t want to go away very easily. We don’t have a lot of acres of leafy spurge, but what we do have, we document with GPS, and try to get back to them every year. We’ve been using GPS technology to map the problem, and that has helped a bunch."
[Becky asked: How long has your District been in place?]
"This Weed and Pest District started in 1973 or 4. That was the year the Wyoming Weed Law was in place. They started this District with a $60,000 a year budget. Now it’s over $1 million.
There’s a lot of difference from when we started and what we have today. When they started, they didn’t even have a building. They rented a room in the Farmers’ Cooperative Association building, and that’s what they worked out of. They had very little storage for pesticides or herbicides. While I was there, we built a pesticide storage building next to our office building that was kind of state-of-the-art. It had a bladder underneath the floor so that if there were pesticide leaks, or a disaster came, we’d be able to contain all the pesticides that were stored in that building, without getting any into the drainage that was right behind our building.
We went from one person and one pick-up, to multiple units that we rent out to local farmers at a very reasonable cost, trying to get them interested in controlling noxious weeds on their property. We probably have five or six vehicles now, which is small compared to some of the Districts. We went from one person to probably five full-time employees. So there’s a big difference from 1973 to 2013."
[Becky asked: How did you get into the Weed and Pest program?]
"I had a master’s degree in large animal nutrition. I was the Nutritionist at the Farmers’ Cooperative for 10 years, from 1973 to 1983. 1983 is when I was hired as a Supervisor for the County Weed and Pest District. I thought the position had advancement possibilities that would work well.
I had a chemistry background, and it just fell in place. I really didn’t think I would be there over five years before I moved on. It turned into a job I really appreciated and enjoyed, working with landowners primarily. I’m a rancher as well, so I appreciated the landowners, and I could work well with most of them because of my background as a nutritionist. I think that’s why the County gave me the job, because I was local, and a lot of the people that were on the Board that did the hiring appreciated my abilities, I guess.
You learn a lot right off the bat when you get out of college. It’s not going to happen the way you think it’s going to happen. Most generally, people hire you to sell something. So you’re either selling your services or something, and you learn that right away.
I was born and raised in Gillette. I have lived there my entire life, except when I was in the University of Wyoming."
[Becky said: Talk about the people in Campbell County.]
"When I was a young man, we had a population of about 2500 people in Gillette. We lived in town because the ranch we had wasn’t large enough to make a living. But the 2500 people that lived there, I knew most of them. The population in and around Gillette today is probably close to 50,000. It used to be entirely agricultural, with some Indian tourism and hunting. And now it’s primarily mineral industry.
The coal industry is huge, and oil and methane is doing very well. It’s helped agriculture as well, because most of the landowners in Campbell County have gained significantly in leases or owning mineral rights. I’ve seen probably three or four boom-and-busts in our County. It’s certainly gone up and down."
[Becky asked: What challenges have you had with the mineral industry coming in?]
"The mineral industry added significantly to our County tax evaluations, so we’re trying to keep the mining industry, and keep them happy, as well as the agriculture. So we did a lot of work with the coal industry, and, this last boom, the methane industry, natural gas. A lot of roads were built, and a lot of drilling sites were built. A lot of them have been abandoned in the last two or three years. That’s going to present some challenges for the people that are in place in the Weed and Pest program now. In some cases, the mining industry brought weeds in, cheatgrass or downy brome. You have to be careful with Russian knapweed moving in with vehicles, and falling off trucks with the mud. We’ve got people in place, in the District office, who are going to do a very good job, who know what’s going on."
[Becky asked: Does the Weed and Pest Council contract with Federal Agencies and the energy companies?]
"Yes, we encourage private applicators and industries to do the work. We provide cost-sharing for the products, and make recommendations. If we’re going to cost-share the chemical products, we want them to be used the way they are supposed to be used. So we’ve had a lot to do with what’s been applied and have made recommendations to the industries, sometimes in regard to which applicator could do the most good.
Recently the Wyoming Council formed Special Management Areas, so if you want to go in and work on a specific pest or weed, such as in the drainages. That’s helped immensely with our ability to do it. And we would contract, then, with the applicator. We’d sign contracts telling them what their responsibilities were, and what our responsibilities were, and what landowners were involved with and what they had to do, to make the program work. And it’s been very effective. The Special Management Areas are an effective tool that the Weed and Pest Districts are using. A Special Management Area primarily deals with one weed or pest. One Special Management Area that we had dealt with prairie dogs. They’re trying to set up one for Russian knapweed, on a particular drainage north of Gillette, which goes to the Montana line.
The effective part of a Special Management program is that you get everybody involved. You do all of this work upfront. The contracts are signed, and the landowners know what their responsibilities are. It’s very important that those contracts are signed, and that there is follow-up. So that when you treat the noxious weeds or a pest, the Weed and Pest District does the follow-up. And it makes the landowner, then, go back in and re-treat the prairie dogs, because you aren’t going to get 100% right off the bat. And so, you don’t wait five years or 10 years later, and then have the same problem that you started with. I guess I’d recommend to the Weed and Pest Districts that you make sure you do the follow-up, and that those landowners do what they were contracted to do."
[Becky asked: When did mapping begin?]
"We’ve done mapping for many, many years. But a lot of it was ineffective, because we didn’t have the tools to do it with. Now, with the GPS technology that they have today, and the young kids that are able to use it, they are doing some very, very effective mapping. They are even tying the GPS in with videos, so that they can have the before and after pictures. And they can go right back to the particular site and be within 10 feet of where they marked a spot, which is critical on the new species that are coming in, because you may have a total of 1 acre of weeds in the County, but they may be scattered over several townships. So, it’s important to be able to go back to those sites and make sure you got it all."
[Becky said: Estimate what the infestations were like in 1983 compared to today.]
"I would say that with Canada thistle, in a County with over 3,200,000 acres, we have probably held our own. That may sound like a failure, but it’s not. If you’re holding your own, you’re doing very well. I think we’ve made inroads with leafy spurge. I don’t think we’ve totally eliminated that weed in any large area. We also have some landowner problems with that. But I would say that we’re doing well.
I can’t think of anything that has increased immensely since the time I’ve started to the present time. An exception might be, cheatgrass has increased around the County. That’s a weed we weren’t controlling to start with. It’s not on the noxious weed list. Probably should have been. Now I don’t know whether there is any chance at all. The Federal Agencies are making a big play on cheatgrass, especially in the mineral industry. They are wanting to come in and treat a 1 acre methane site for cheatgrass, and make the oil companies responsible for doing that. I contend that has no value, because of the 100,000 acres that surrounds that site, that’s covered with cheatgrass."
[Becky asked: What changes have you seen in the weed laws?]
"There’s been some changes in the State Weed Law. I know they’ve worked on the law several times. Allowing County Districts to add as many species as they want to the County Declared list has enabled Districts to treat more weeds."
[Becky asked: Who was your predecessor?]
"Alvin Gray. I know he drove the white 1974 Ford pickup that we still have, with a snowplow on it. He worked by himself. He told me at one time that there was leafy spurge in the Clearmont Valley, not in our County. He was a chemical salesman in the time before he was a weed Supervisor. He stopped and talked to a landowner there, and begged him to treat the leafy spurge. He was selling a 2,4-D product at the time that wouldn’t have killed the leafy spurge, but it could’ve controlled it at that time.
It’s hard to educate landowners to treat a problem early. One of my Assistant Supervisor’s job is to educate the schools and the landowners."
[Becky said: Talk about George Hittle.]
"A lot of states have modeled Wyoming’s laws as a base to set up their own. George Hittle was probably instrumental in that. Harold Alley, at the University of Wyoming, was also very instrumental, and a fabulous weed researcher. Tom Whitson followed him up and was likewise very effective in educating and helping the Wyoming Weed Districts."
[Becky asked: What about biocontrol?]
"Yes, biocontrol was very important. I got involved in it in the early 1980s. I put out a lot of insects on leafy spurge to start with. I put insects out on Canada thistle. And in some cases, it was very effective. It was something none of us really knew about. It depends a little bit on environments. Different environments for different insects. It’s seem to work better on particular weeds at particular times. It would be the answer to our problems if we can get the right insects. It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. It’s something that takes decades. Unfortunately, many of us don’t have decades to see how effective it is really going to be."
[Becky asked: What do you wish you’d known in your first few years?]
"The thing I lacked and needed most was patience. I wished I’d had some of the other people’s patience to work on some of these problems. I wanted to get everything done in one day, and you can’t do it. I guess as I get older, I’m learning more patience."
[Becky asked: Are there any problems you wish you’d started on earlier in your career?]
"The Special Management Areas weren’t available at that time. That’s a program that would’ve helped us immensely, if we’d have the program earlier. One of the things that made the Special Management Areas very effective was that, if you went into a drainage, and worked out the contract with the landowners, if there was one landowner in the entire drainage… And there is always someone who doesn’t want to work with the government. They don’t want somebody telling them, you’ve got to do this. But if you set up a Special Management Area, and you have 99% of the landowners that say, 'Yes, we want to control Russian knapweed in the worst way. It’s spreading exponentially every year.' And you have one landowner that says, 'No way am I going to work with a government agency telling me how to run this outfit,' he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If you take him to court, you’re going to win. Because everyone around him is controlling the weeds, and he’s not. I’ve use that two or three times in my career, once for prairie dogs, once for Canada thistle, and maybe once for leafy spurge.
The contract has some kind of penalty built into the program, in case the landowner doesn’t do the follow-up treatments. If he doesn’t do it, we would come back and slap their hands. We are providing 80% of all the costs. We could penalize them the entire cost of the follow-up treatment. So you had a tool that the landowners agree to, so they finish the job. You don’t have to come back, for example, in a prairie dog situation, and do the whole damn thing again.
Prairie dogs are a concern in Campbell County, and several other counties. Sheridan, Johnson, and several other counties. It’s hard to control them because the pesticides we used to have are not available any longer. They’ve got some other pesticides out now, that are effective. But there are a lot of hoops that the applicators have to jump through to use the product, that made the price of the application of product go from, for instance, $3 an acre. We used to do it for $3 acre, and furnish all the pesticides. Now it’s probably $10-$15 an acre. And without the Special Management Area program and the help that the Counties provide to the landowners, it wouldn’t be possible."
[Becky said: Talk about partnerships with the Federal Agencies.]
"We’ve worked with the BLM primarily, some work with the Forest Service on prairie dogs, before they decided prairie dogs were more important. We’ve got State laws that say prairie dogs are a noxious pest, and that the landowner has to control them. And then we have Federal lands, Forest Service primarily, that says they aren’t going to control them. And so you have the prairie dogs moving from the Federal lands back onto the private lands. There needs to be some method of making the Federal Agencies control the prairie dogs. If they want to raise them, fine, but keep them on their own property. I think that’s also important with some of the programs when the Forest Service would pay landowners to raise prairie dogs, in some areas, because of the black-footed ferret. They wanted areas where they could do that. I don’t know how many instances where they’ve done that. So we suggested that the Federal Government pay to control the prairie dogs that have moved over onto adjacent lands. But that hasn’t worked out.
We’ve had some real good cooperation with the BLM on weed control. They’ve helped us a lot in some of the areas that have quite a bit of BLM land. They’ve paid for the weed control on their lands.
Some Federal Agencies work very well with us, and some Agencies haven’t."
[Becky asked: What are some of the biggest challenges for the future?]
"One of the biggest challenges for our District, my being old school from the baby-boomer generation, is keeping abreast with the new technology. I know that the people that are working for the District now are doing a lot better with GPS technology, the mapping. It all comes naturally to them, but it didn’t to me. Even cell phones were somewhat of a challenge for me. So the young people, that’s one of the best things Weed Districts have done over the years. Because of the budgeting process, and the financing that the Districts are able to do, is this new, educated, better quality personnel that we’re hiring. Most of the Districts, back in the beginning, they were just looking for warm bodies, anyone that could kill a weed.
They’ve learned since that’s not the way it works. You have to know what you’re doing, and know what pesticides to apply, and how to apply them. If it doesn’t work, what’s the problem. And there’s so many different aspects of applying pesticides. You have to know what you’re doing, and also from a liability standpoint, to the County that you’re working for. Our District personnel probably offer more liability to the County than just about anybody in the County, because it costs so much to clean up a pesticide spill, and various things. So I think that’s very, very important."
[Becky said: Talk about the formation of the Weed and Pest Districts.]
"Prior to 1973, there were a few Districts started in other Counties. But it was the 1973 Weed Law that forced every County to set up a District. In some Counties, they had to convince the Commissioner that this was something they should budget for. They’ve come a long ways. For example, our County has realized that, from a conservation standpoint, how affective the programs are."
[Note: a long section from this interview was not transcribed, on how the State and County treated grasshoppers.]
[Becky asked: What are some funny stories you remember?]
"At one point, Campbell County had the highest tax evaluation in the State, because of the mining industry. So at one point, Campbell County gave herbicides away, to the landowners, trying to encourage them to treat weeds. I’ve had landowners at that time come in with their pickup trucks, and say, “Fill it up.” And I’d have to say, no, because they have to show us where they’re going to use it, and so forth."
[Becky said: Do you have advice for the new generation of workers?]
"The Special Management Areas: Make sure you have a contract that’s signed, and you have a follow-up program in place, so that you don’t have to do the program again in five years. This is especially important with prairie dogs, but likewise with weeds. Control them, and make sure the landowner knows he’s responsible for the follow-up treatments."
Links to the Wyoming County interviews:
Allen Mooney, Campbell County, Wyoming, interview 2013
Video interview conducted by Becky McMillen, transcribed by Dr. Delena Norris-Tull. Reviewed & Approved by Allen, July 2020.]
[Allen Mooney was the Weed & Pest Supervisor for Campbell County, in Northeastern Wyoming.]
"I was a district supervisor for 28 years, since 1983. I retired about two years ago. Campbell County has about 3,200,000 acres. The County is 70 miles long, 50 miles wide. We have about 50% Federal lands, and the rest is private. We raise some grain. It’s mostly a grazing large animal operation. At the South end of the County, we have fairly flat rolling hills. The North end gets into some timber, with a very large elk herd. Gillette is the County Seat. There’s a lot more timber than you think when just driving through.
The Powder River runs through the County. We’ve had weed problems from weeds coming down the River."
[Becky asked: What weeds and pests have you dealt with?]
"We’ve dealt a lot with blacktail prairie dogs, mosquitoes with West Nile Virus, and grasshoppers, are the main pests. As for weed concerns, we have probably spent more money on Canada thistle. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most important species. We’ve got some new species moving in, like spotted knapweed, and leafy spurge. We’ve spent a considerable amount of money trying to prevent them from gaining a foothold in the County. We’ve been pretty successful with spotted knapweed. Leafy spurge we seem to treat and then re-treat. It doesn’t want to go away very easily. We don’t have a lot of acres of leafy spurge, but what we do have, we document with GPS, and try to get back to them every year. We’ve been using GPS technology to map the problem, and that has helped a bunch."
[Becky asked: How long has your District been in place?]
"This Weed and Pest District started in 1973 or 4. That was the year the Wyoming Weed Law was in place. They started this District with a $60,000 a year budget. Now it’s over $1 million.
There’s a lot of difference from when we started and what we have today. When they started, they didn’t even have a building. They rented a room in the Farmers’ Cooperative Association building, and that’s what they worked out of. They had very little storage for pesticides or herbicides. While I was there, we built a pesticide storage building next to our office building that was kind of state-of-the-art. It had a bladder underneath the floor so that if there were pesticide leaks, or a disaster came, we’d be able to contain all the pesticides that were stored in that building, without getting any into the drainage that was right behind our building.
We went from one person and one pick-up, to multiple units that we rent out to local farmers at a very reasonable cost, trying to get them interested in controlling noxious weeds on their property. We probably have five or six vehicles now, which is small compared to some of the Districts. We went from one person to probably five full-time employees. So there’s a big difference from 1973 to 2013."
[Becky asked: How did you get into the Weed and Pest program?]
"I had a master’s degree in large animal nutrition. I was the Nutritionist at the Farmers’ Cooperative for 10 years, from 1973 to 1983. 1983 is when I was hired as a Supervisor for the County Weed and Pest District. I thought the position had advancement possibilities that would work well.
I had a chemistry background, and it just fell in place. I really didn’t think I would be there over five years before I moved on. It turned into a job I really appreciated and enjoyed, working with landowners primarily. I’m a rancher as well, so I appreciated the landowners, and I could work well with most of them because of my background as a nutritionist. I think that’s why the County gave me the job, because I was local, and a lot of the people that were on the Board that did the hiring appreciated my abilities, I guess.
You learn a lot right off the bat when you get out of college. It’s not going to happen the way you think it’s going to happen. Most generally, people hire you to sell something. So you’re either selling your services or something, and you learn that right away.
I was born and raised in Gillette. I have lived there my entire life, except when I was in the University of Wyoming."
[Becky said: Talk about the people in Campbell County.]
"When I was a young man, we had a population of about 2500 people in Gillette. We lived in town because the ranch we had wasn’t large enough to make a living. But the 2500 people that lived there, I knew most of them. The population in and around Gillette today is probably close to 50,000. It used to be entirely agricultural, with some Indian tourism and hunting. And now it’s primarily mineral industry.
The coal industry is huge, and oil and methane is doing very well. It’s helped agriculture as well, because most of the landowners in Campbell County have gained significantly in leases or owning mineral rights. I’ve seen probably three or four boom-and-busts in our County. It’s certainly gone up and down."
[Becky asked: What challenges have you had with the mineral industry coming in?]
"The mineral industry added significantly to our County tax evaluations, so we’re trying to keep the mining industry, and keep them happy, as well as the agriculture. So we did a lot of work with the coal industry, and, this last boom, the methane industry, natural gas. A lot of roads were built, and a lot of drilling sites were built. A lot of them have been abandoned in the last two or three years. That’s going to present some challenges for the people that are in place in the Weed and Pest program now. In some cases, the mining industry brought weeds in, cheatgrass or downy brome. You have to be careful with Russian knapweed moving in with vehicles, and falling off trucks with the mud. We’ve got people in place, in the District office, who are going to do a very good job, who know what’s going on."
[Becky asked: Does the Weed and Pest Council contract with Federal Agencies and the energy companies?]
"Yes, we encourage private applicators and industries to do the work. We provide cost-sharing for the products, and make recommendations. If we’re going to cost-share the chemical products, we want them to be used the way they are supposed to be used. So we’ve had a lot to do with what’s been applied and have made recommendations to the industries, sometimes in regard to which applicator could do the most good.
Recently the Wyoming Council formed Special Management Areas, so if you want to go in and work on a specific pest or weed, such as in the drainages. That’s helped immensely with our ability to do it. And we would contract, then, with the applicator. We’d sign contracts telling them what their responsibilities were, and what our responsibilities were, and what landowners were involved with and what they had to do, to make the program work. And it’s been very effective. The Special Management Areas are an effective tool that the Weed and Pest Districts are using. A Special Management Area primarily deals with one weed or pest. One Special Management Area that we had dealt with prairie dogs. They’re trying to set up one for Russian knapweed, on a particular drainage north of Gillette, which goes to the Montana line.
The effective part of a Special Management program is that you get everybody involved. You do all of this work upfront. The contracts are signed, and the landowners know what their responsibilities are. It’s very important that those contracts are signed, and that there is follow-up. So that when you treat the noxious weeds or a pest, the Weed and Pest District does the follow-up. And it makes the landowner, then, go back in and re-treat the prairie dogs, because you aren’t going to get 100% right off the bat. And so, you don’t wait five years or 10 years later, and then have the same problem that you started with. I guess I’d recommend to the Weed and Pest Districts that you make sure you do the follow-up, and that those landowners do what they were contracted to do."
[Becky asked: When did mapping begin?]
"We’ve done mapping for many, many years. But a lot of it was ineffective, because we didn’t have the tools to do it with. Now, with the GPS technology that they have today, and the young kids that are able to use it, they are doing some very, very effective mapping. They are even tying the GPS in with videos, so that they can have the before and after pictures. And they can go right back to the particular site and be within 10 feet of where they marked a spot, which is critical on the new species that are coming in, because you may have a total of 1 acre of weeds in the County, but they may be scattered over several townships. So, it’s important to be able to go back to those sites and make sure you got it all."
[Becky said: Estimate what the infestations were like in 1983 compared to today.]
"I would say that with Canada thistle, in a County with over 3,200,000 acres, we have probably held our own. That may sound like a failure, but it’s not. If you’re holding your own, you’re doing very well. I think we’ve made inroads with leafy spurge. I don’t think we’ve totally eliminated that weed in any large area. We also have some landowner problems with that. But I would say that we’re doing well.
I can’t think of anything that has increased immensely since the time I’ve started to the present time. An exception might be, cheatgrass has increased around the County. That’s a weed we weren’t controlling to start with. It’s not on the noxious weed list. Probably should have been. Now I don’t know whether there is any chance at all. The Federal Agencies are making a big play on cheatgrass, especially in the mineral industry. They are wanting to come in and treat a 1 acre methane site for cheatgrass, and make the oil companies responsible for doing that. I contend that has no value, because of the 100,000 acres that surrounds that site, that’s covered with cheatgrass."
[Becky asked: What changes have you seen in the weed laws?]
"There’s been some changes in the State Weed Law. I know they’ve worked on the law several times. Allowing County Districts to add as many species as they want to the County Declared list has enabled Districts to treat more weeds."
[Becky asked: Who was your predecessor?]
"Alvin Gray. I know he drove the white 1974 Ford pickup that we still have, with a snowplow on it. He worked by himself. He told me at one time that there was leafy spurge in the Clearmont Valley, not in our County. He was a chemical salesman in the time before he was a weed Supervisor. He stopped and talked to a landowner there, and begged him to treat the leafy spurge. He was selling a 2,4-D product at the time that wouldn’t have killed the leafy spurge, but it could’ve controlled it at that time.
It’s hard to educate landowners to treat a problem early. One of my Assistant Supervisor’s job is to educate the schools and the landowners."
[Becky said: Talk about George Hittle.]
"A lot of states have modeled Wyoming’s laws as a base to set up their own. George Hittle was probably instrumental in that. Harold Alley, at the University of Wyoming, was also very instrumental, and a fabulous weed researcher. Tom Whitson followed him up and was likewise very effective in educating and helping the Wyoming Weed Districts."
[Becky asked: What about biocontrol?]
"Yes, biocontrol was very important. I got involved in it in the early 1980s. I put out a lot of insects on leafy spurge to start with. I put insects out on Canada thistle. And in some cases, it was very effective. It was something none of us really knew about. It depends a little bit on environments. Different environments for different insects. It’s seem to work better on particular weeds at particular times. It would be the answer to our problems if we can get the right insects. It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. It’s something that takes decades. Unfortunately, many of us don’t have decades to see how effective it is really going to be."
[Becky asked: What do you wish you’d known in your first few years?]
"The thing I lacked and needed most was patience. I wished I’d had some of the other people’s patience to work on some of these problems. I wanted to get everything done in one day, and you can’t do it. I guess as I get older, I’m learning more patience."
[Becky asked: Are there any problems you wish you’d started on earlier in your career?]
"The Special Management Areas weren’t available at that time. That’s a program that would’ve helped us immensely, if we’d have the program earlier. One of the things that made the Special Management Areas very effective was that, if you went into a drainage, and worked out the contract with the landowners, if there was one landowner in the entire drainage… And there is always someone who doesn’t want to work with the government. They don’t want somebody telling them, you’ve got to do this. But if you set up a Special Management Area, and you have 99% of the landowners that say, 'Yes, we want to control Russian knapweed in the worst way. It’s spreading exponentially every year.' And you have one landowner that says, 'No way am I going to work with a government agency telling me how to run this outfit,' he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If you take him to court, you’re going to win. Because everyone around him is controlling the weeds, and he’s not. I’ve use that two or three times in my career, once for prairie dogs, once for Canada thistle, and maybe once for leafy spurge.
The contract has some kind of penalty built into the program, in case the landowner doesn’t do the follow-up treatments. If he doesn’t do it, we would come back and slap their hands. We are providing 80% of all the costs. We could penalize them the entire cost of the follow-up treatment. So you had a tool that the landowners agree to, so they finish the job. You don’t have to come back, for example, in a prairie dog situation, and do the whole damn thing again.
Prairie dogs are a concern in Campbell County, and several other counties. Sheridan, Johnson, and several other counties. It’s hard to control them because the pesticides we used to have are not available any longer. They’ve got some other pesticides out now, that are effective. But there are a lot of hoops that the applicators have to jump through to use the product, that made the price of the application of product go from, for instance, $3 an acre. We used to do it for $3 acre, and furnish all the pesticides. Now it’s probably $10-$15 an acre. And without the Special Management Area program and the help that the Counties provide to the landowners, it wouldn’t be possible."
[Becky said: Talk about partnerships with the Federal Agencies.]
"We’ve worked with the BLM primarily, some work with the Forest Service on prairie dogs, before they decided prairie dogs were more important. We’ve got State laws that say prairie dogs are a noxious pest, and that the landowner has to control them. And then we have Federal lands, Forest Service primarily, that says they aren’t going to control them. And so you have the prairie dogs moving from the Federal lands back onto the private lands. There needs to be some method of making the Federal Agencies control the prairie dogs. If they want to raise them, fine, but keep them on their own property. I think that’s also important with some of the programs when the Forest Service would pay landowners to raise prairie dogs, in some areas, because of the black-footed ferret. They wanted areas where they could do that. I don’t know how many instances where they’ve done that. So we suggested that the Federal Government pay to control the prairie dogs that have moved over onto adjacent lands. But that hasn’t worked out.
We’ve had some real good cooperation with the BLM on weed control. They’ve helped us a lot in some of the areas that have quite a bit of BLM land. They’ve paid for the weed control on their lands.
Some Federal Agencies work very well with us, and some Agencies haven’t."
[Becky asked: What are some of the biggest challenges for the future?]
"One of the biggest challenges for our District, my being old school from the baby-boomer generation, is keeping abreast with the new technology. I know that the people that are working for the District now are doing a lot better with GPS technology, the mapping. It all comes naturally to them, but it didn’t to me. Even cell phones were somewhat of a challenge for me. So the young people, that’s one of the best things Weed Districts have done over the years. Because of the budgeting process, and the financing that the Districts are able to do, is this new, educated, better quality personnel that we’re hiring. Most of the Districts, back in the beginning, they were just looking for warm bodies, anyone that could kill a weed.
They’ve learned since that’s not the way it works. You have to know what you’re doing, and know what pesticides to apply, and how to apply them. If it doesn’t work, what’s the problem. And there’s so many different aspects of applying pesticides. You have to know what you’re doing, and also from a liability standpoint, to the County that you’re working for. Our District personnel probably offer more liability to the County than just about anybody in the County, because it costs so much to clean up a pesticide spill, and various things. So I think that’s very, very important."
[Becky said: Talk about the formation of the Weed and Pest Districts.]
"Prior to 1973, there were a few Districts started in other Counties. But it was the 1973 Weed Law that forced every County to set up a District. In some Counties, they had to convince the Commissioner that this was something they should budget for. They’ve come a long ways. For example, our County has realized that, from a conservation standpoint, how affective the programs are."
[Note: a long section from this interview was not transcribed, on how the State and County treated grasshoppers.]
[Becky asked: What are some funny stories you remember?]
"At one point, Campbell County had the highest tax evaluation in the State, because of the mining industry. So at one point, Campbell County gave herbicides away, to the landowners, trying to encourage them to treat weeds. I’ve had landowners at that time come in with their pickup trucks, and say, “Fill it up.” And I’d have to say, no, because they have to show us where they’re going to use it, and so forth."
[Becky said: Do you have advice for the new generation of workers?]
"The Special Management Areas: Make sure you have a contract that’s signed, and you have a follow-up program in place, so that you don’t have to do the program again in five years. This is especially important with prairie dogs, but likewise with weeds. Control them, and make sure the landowner knows he’s responsible for the follow-up treatments."
Links to the Wyoming County interviews: