US Fish and Wildlife Service takes action to combat the spread of invasive species in Bristol Bay

It’s a rainy day in Dillingham and the US Fish and Wildlife Service South-central Invasive Species Strike Team is stopped along the side of the road.

The group has spent this summer at wildlife refuges in King Salmon, Cold Bay, and now here in Dillingham. They are surveying and treating Bristol Bay’s invasive species to reduce the impact these plants have on the native ecosystem.

Aurelia Umholtz, Biological Science Technician, is one of three members on the strike team.

“What we were looking for when we got here were high-priority species as well as visiting where they found them last year and making sure we at least survey it or do something about it,” said Umholz.

According to Umholtz, they are not looking for just any invasive Species. For example, dandelions are invasive in Bristol Bay, but they aren’t high on the list.

“They are not listed as high-priority species because their harmful effects on human health, environment, and economy are not as high as these that we do take action on,” said Umholtz.

When they surveyed this roadside site last year they found patches of Bird Vetch and they are returning this year to pull it out of the ground.

The patches of Bird Vetch look innocent. The plant is about the size of a small table with bright purple flowers and long vines that wrap around surrounding plants. But the bush can grow out of control and choke the surrounding vegetation and anything that tries to grow beneath it. That is what put this species on the team’s most-wanted list.

The team pulls it out by the root and rolls it up like a burrito. They shove it into a trash bag, careful not to drop any of its seeds.

It would only take one seed to restart the infestation, and this bush is packed with small seed pods. The team expects them to come back. Umholtz says once a plant is in an area, it’s difficult to remove it fully. Once a species is established, most of the work done is to mitigate the impact.

“Most of the work we do is in town where the invasives are and controlling them there,” said Umholtz.

Umholtz says that high-traffic areas that invasive species call home - places like airports or boat launches - are called critical access points. They’re the places where these invaders arrive before spreading to the surrounding region. If the strike team can catch them at the critical access points, they can reduce the risk of the species spreading to national refuges.

Ben Wishnek is a Fish and Wildlife biologist and project manager for the strike team. He says invasives like the Bird Vetch push out local flora.

“These plant species that live on land, they can compete for resources and take over habitat where a lot of berries grow that are important to folks for foraging, especially this time of year for stalking up for winter and everything,” said Wishnek. “We are concerned about that for subsistence. They can also compete with Lichen which is important for caribou.”

While in King Salmon they treated infestations of Orange Hawkweed and White Sweet Clover that were threatening berry habitats. Orange Hawkweed grows in thick monoculture mats, making it impossible for other plant life to grow. Both species can poison and erode the soil and riverbanks. Wishnek says the White Clover was found near the King Salmon airport, which worried him.

“Even though it’s not on a refuge it’s right near the airport and if the white sweet clover got established it could take over a lot of area and ground near the airport. And then its seeds- one of those plants can produce up to 300,000 seeds, it’s some really high number like that,” said Wishnek.

Wishnek says that each of those seeds can live 80-plus years before it sprouts.

Other types of invasives include Bird Cherry, a tree containing arsenic that kills Moose, Reed Canary grass which causes erosion on river banks and cuts them off from spawning salmon, and Elodia, a marine species that grows thickly in waterways, making it difficult for salmon to spawn at all. These species have not made their way to Bristol Bay, and making sure that they stay out of the region is a top priority for the strike team and their local partners.

“There’s the saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, that’s kind of what we work off of,” said Wishnek. “We are hoping to prevent invasives so we don’t have to take any action on them.”

Once the invasive species

are established, Wishnek says work must happen fast.

“We focus on early detection and rapid response which means getting our eyes out on the ground and searching areas that are most likely to have invasives pop up and finding invasives when they are in their really early stages,” said Wishnek.

The patches of Invasive species found in Bristol Bay this summer were relatively small, according to Wishnek, making it easier to treat them effectively and reducing the time and resources expended in the process. But Wishnek explains early detection is important for more than just cost.

“We are looking to take care of these invasives before they become a really big problem for a lot of the resources, the fish, the berries, the caribou, everything else that is really important to everybody and the ecosystems themselves in Alaska,” said Wishnek.

Wishnek says that regardless of the doom and gloom of the situation, he is hopeful about the current and future status of invasives in the Bristol Bay region.

“It could be easy to think about everything, keeping me up at night, with all of the different ways that different species could get here, on foot, on float planes, on ships that come to the area,” said Wishnek, “But having everything be at the state when things are nonexistent in a small population has me hopeful.

Wishnek says the strike team is working on spreading prevention efforts in Bristol Bay communities, like cleaning shoes after a hike and cleaning the bottom of your boat or the bottom of your float plane in between trips to different water systems.

“Everyone can kind of work on tackling this problem together to help save everything the resources that drive the area, that are important to everybody, that help the fishery in Bristol Bay which helps feed the world. That’s what we are trying to save and protect,” said Wishnek.

The strike team will return to Bristol Bay next summer to continue their efforts.