On the Edge of Firewood Regulation

If a trees dies in your yard, what do you do? Chances are good, you would cut it up for firewood. Chances are not good most people would recognize the risk of spreading invasive species via that firewood.

Trees die for many reasons, but recently non-native invasive pests have been killing trees in some parts of the country. Ash trees are being killed in midwestern states by emerald ash borer, maple trees are dying from Asian longhorned beetle in Massachusetts, black walnuts are threatened by thousand canker disease, and closer to home, sudden oak death is killing tanoaks in Curry County and the coastal areas of California. These examples are the worst of a whole gallery of invasive pests attacking trees.

We humans inadvertantly make the problem worse by packing our firewood when we go camping. A quick look at the current distribution of emerald ash borer highlights the problem http://www.emeraldashborer.info/files/MultiState_EABpos.pdf. In the middle of the map, you can see the general infestation centered on Michigan. This infestation spreads at less than 20 miles per year through natural dispersal of the beetles.

The outlier sites in New York, Virginia, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are the result of people moving infested wood. Uninformed campers bringing wood with live bugs in it are a big part of the problem. Last summer, infested firewood was intercepted at a California border station from a camper leaving Oregon. Their homebase was Michigan, and they had brought their firewood with them!

Trees are one of our biggest assests in Oregon. We’ve got to protect them. The Oregon Invasive Species Council (OISC) has two related initiatives. They are in the second year of a regional outreach and education campaign to encourage people to buy and burn local firewood. Hopefully, you’ve seen the billboards and/or posters. We’re lucky to have plenty of local firewood available locally; we don’t need to pack it.

The OISC is also shepherding a bill in the Oregon legislature (HB 2122) to regulate firewood imported from out-of-state. Much of the commercial firewood sold in this country comes from distant sources. Check the labels the next time you’re at a store that sells firewood bundles. If the bill passes, out-of-state firewood would have to be labeled and heat treated to eliminate potential pests before being sold in Oregon. This week, the bill crossed its first hurdle by unanimously passing out of the House Agriculture committee with a “Do Pass” recommendation.

Most of the discussion during the committee hearings centered on how to handle issues along Oregon’s border. Regulations generally have geographic boundaries. It can be awkward and difficult to enforce regulations along geographic boundaries. For instance, what if you live in Hood River, Oregon, and your friend offers you free firewood from their woodlot in White Salmon, Washington. Would that wood have to be heat-treated and labeled to legally enter the state of Oregon?

A strict interpretation of the bill would indicate that treatment/labeling would be required, but there is a prevision in the law for exemptions. It says: “The department may adopt rules for exempting casual retail sales of firewood by priviate individuals. . .” This is important as it would allow us to deal with real-world situations along Oregon’s borders where “buy local, burn local” might include the states of Washington and Idaho. Common sense and regulation are not necessarily mutually exclusive. If this bill passes, we’ll have to keep in mind during rulemaking that the purpose of the law is to prevent long distance transport of untreated/unlabeled firewood.

There will be another chance for public testimony on HB 2122 soon . If you’d like to provide comments, you’ll have a chance when the bill is heard by the Senate Environment and Natural Resource Committee. To date, only the OISC and Oregon Department of Agriculture have provided testimony on the bill. Other agencies and lobbyists have been watching from the sidelines. It would be nice to have more support. The next hearing hasn’t been posted yet, but it will probably be in early March. You can follow committee agendas online at http://www.leg.state.or.us/11reg/agenda/webagendas.htm.

We’ve also got to get better at keeping invasive species out of North America in the first place, but that is a national issue and the subject for another blog.

Dan Hilburn

Watch Out for the Big, Bad Stink Bug

A stink bug hijacked a recent meeting of plant pest regulatory officials.  Brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB, Halyomorpha halys) wasn’t even on the agenda, but once it came up everyone wanted to talk about it. The stories from mid-Atlantic states were disturbing. This could be a very bad pest for Oregon. Our best hope for avoiding problems may be a tiny Chinese wasp. 

BMSB, an Asian pest, gets its name from its marbled (aka marmoreal) appearance. It was first detected in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1996, thought it was well established by then, so it was certainly introduced years earlier. In the time since, it has spread to 29 states, including Oregon. Our first BMSB was found in 2004 in SE Portland. The entire north and central Willamette Valley is now infested. A single specimen was collected recently in Sunriver, and there is an unconfirmed report from Ashland. It is an excellent hitchhiker, so if it is not in your part of the state yet, it will be soon.

How serious a pest will it be?  That is a multi-million dollar question. It could fade into the obscurity, or it could be the worst pest of fruits, vegetables, and houses that Oregon has ever faced. A 2005 ODA risk assessment rated BMSB a moderate risk. Given the extensive crop damage in 2010 to corn, apples, grapes, hazelnuts, etc. seen in Maryland, New Jersey, and neighboring states, that rating should be increased to high. The scariest thing I heard at the meeting was that farmers were forced to throw out their integrated pest management (IPM) programs, return to regular insecticide sprays, and still some lost their crops. Here is a link to a good video on BMSB from the Smithsonian Institute: http://www.webtvhub.com/watch-brown-marmorated-stink-bug-info-video-how-to-get-rid-of-new-pest/.

The first problem people notice is stink bugs in houses in the winter. Like boxelder bugs, they search out shelter when the weather gets cold. Easterners report they are annoying when they crawl across TV screens and fly around indoors, and as their name suggests, they have an odor. Farmers and gardeners will be the next to notice problems. Stink bugs have straw-like mouthparts. Every time they stick their proboscis into developing fruits/vegetables, it creates a wound that makes the fruit/vegetable unappetizing and unfit for sale.

Can we head off BMSB and keep them for becoming a nightmare? We’ve got to try. ODA is teaming up with OSU scientists and other experts to develop a coordinated response. The first order of business is to track BMSB spread and get the word out to farmers and gardeners so they aren’t blindsided. If you find one outside the current known distribution, please report it to ODA via our invasive species hotline (1-866-INVADER) or online at: oregoninvasiveshotline.org.

We’re also developing contacts with USDA scientists that are exploring the potential of biological control. Three parasitic wasps have been identified as potential biological control agents. One of them, an egg parasite, shows promise in early tests. It could be three years before testing determines if these parasites are safe to release. That process is important, no one wants to release another non-native species and have it cause more harm than good. You don’t have to look far for examples of poorly chosen biological control agents. Asian lady beetle, another home-invader, comes to mind.

We’ve offered to help with the testing, and USDA has responded with interest. Maybe we can speed things up. Cross your fingers that little wasps will prove to be a match for big bad brown marmorated stink bug. Otherwise our toolbox is pretty empty. Let’s hope we can borrow a Chinese tool that works. 

Dan Hilburn

Got Weeds? So Now What?

It is quiet common for us to receive calls from people complaining about weeds on their neighbor’s property. You can understand the annoyance of someone that works hard to control the weeds on their property, only to have the neighbor’s weeds continue to seed the whole area. There ought to be a law that your neighbors have to control their weeds, right?  Of course, if there was such a law, it would apply to everyone, including you and I. Hmmm, maybe we should think about that very carefully.

            The Oregon Department of Agriculture is thinking about weed regulations and gathering input from interested parties. Here is the background:

            The last legislature passed a law declaring noxious weeds to be a public nuisance. It is important to note up front that the dandelions in your lawn and many other common weeds are not official state noxious weeds. Only the really bad ones that cause economic or ecological harm are listed by the State Weed Board as noxious. You can find the list at:

 http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/PLANT/WEEDS/docs/weed_policy.pdf 

            Last fall the Department started the process of turning the legislature’s directive into policy. The first thing we did was ask for help from people all over the state that care about weed issues. Here is the email we sent out to our weed list serve:

“Dear Cooperators,

ODA needs your help. In the last legislative session, Oregon's noxious weed statutes were consolidated, updated, and expanded (ORS 569). Included in this rewrite was new authority to address noxious weeds as a public nuisance:

ORS 569.180: ". . .noxious weeds are declared to be a public nuisance and shall be detected, controlled, and where feasible, eradicated on all lands in this state. It is declared to be the policy of this state that priority shall be given first to the prevention of new infestations of noxious weeds and then to the control, and where feasible, eradication of noxious weeds in infested areas."

It is time for us to develop regulations clarifying what this means for you, me, and the other citizens of Oregon. Before ODA puts pen to paper to develop draft rule language, we'd like your thoughts on what should be included in the regulations.

Below are some questions to stimulate thinking. Are there other questions you'd like us to consider?  What issues/gaps would you like to see addressed?

1.) The State Weed Board classifies noxious weeds as "A" (highest priority for exclusion/eradication) or "B" (bad, but too late for eradication). How should this classification be applied to land mangers that have noxious weeds on their land?

2.) What about "T" (current target weeds, either A or B) weeds? Should a T/B be a different priority than a non-T/B?

3.) Enforcement of noxious weed regulations has been exclusively a county function, but not all counties have weed programs. Is there an enforcement role for the State, especially in counties without weed programs?

4.) The new law grants ODA "access to all lands within this state to carry out ORS 569.175 to 569.195."  It also says "no person shall fail to cooperate with the State Department of Agriculture in the administration" of these laws and the "rules promulgated pursuant thereto . . . " Further it states that: "if abatement procedures are required of a landowner, recommend that the landowner and the department jointly develop a management strategy or plan. . . " How would that look in practice?

5.) ORS 569.185 directs ODA to "administer and enforce" an "integrated weed management approach that focuses on the prevention of noxious weeds. . ."  How should we do that?

We'd appreciate your thoughts as we start down this road. There will be lots of other chances to provide comments, but this is your best opportunity to help shape the overall framework. Thanks for your help. We look forward to your input.”

       The response was huge. We got over fourteen pages of comments!  Four themes appeared over and over:

1.)  Whatever you do, make it simple to understand and easy comply with.

2.)  “B” weeds do matter.

3.)  Don’t interfere with existing programs that are working.

4.)  People need more information about weeds and how to control them.

            The next step was for us was to brainstorm how we could convert these ideas into regulations that would work in the real world. This week our Noxious Weed Control staff grappled with that issue and settled on a direction we’ll soon propose as a draft regulation. The nutshell version is that we’ll be proposing to amend OAR 603-052-1200 (Noxious Weed Quarantine, which prohibits importing and selling noxious weeds), to clarify ODA/County/ landowner responsibilities for weeds in the landscape.

“A”-rated weeds would continue to be handled by ODA with the goal of early detection and rapid response (EDRR), i.e., eradication. Dealing with “B”-rated weeds would be the landowner’s responsibility. Enforcement of “B”-weeds issues would be on a case-by-case basis through the county weed district system, as it is now. ODA would continue to be a source of information, technical help, weed identification, and biological control agents for all weeds.

            That is the proposal. You can expect proposed rule-language later this winter and a public comment period in the spring. What do you think?  Are we on the right track?  Would it work for both you and your neighbor?

Dan Hilburn