STORY AND PHOTOS BY KATE DALY
Ed McHan and four teenagers tromped into the backyard of a Warm Springs home and quickly dropped to their knees.
Four years after the Blaine Bug Crew had placed bugs in the yard, the bugs were still doing their thing-- successfully consuming noxious weeds to prevent the invasive spread of spotted knapweed, a light purple-colored plant that can grow more than three feet tall.
The Blaine Bug Crew provides a free service each summer to help locals control weeds like these by using insects as biological agents. Recently, they checked on the Warm Springs site to measure progress since last July.
Dietrich School District English teacher Ed McHan has been supervising the program for 16 years. He trains groups of high school students, and then takes them out into the field. This summer he is running two crews--one in Blaine County and the other in Camas County. Three students are from Shoshone, one from Dietrich, and the others from Fairfield.
McHan drives the Blaine Bug Crew around to make field calls three days a week. Their goal is to combat the spread of Canada thistle; spotted, Russian, meadow, squarrose and diffuse knapweed; Dalmatian toadflax; leafy spurge; purple loosestrife; houndstongue and whitetop by capturing and releasing the specific insects that target those weeds.
He says the Indian Creek subdivision in Hailey is a particularly good place for netting bugs.
Back in 2020 a resident reached out to him at 208-316-0355 to see what could be done about a thick patch of spotted knapweed in the back yard. After inspecting it, his crew laid out a grid, or transect, so the number and size of the plants could be measured and photographed methodically on an annual basis. Then the crew released bugs.
Upon returning this summer with a new crew, McHan noted that the density had “really gone down” but that the weeds have fanned out into a neighboring stretch.
But he was reluctant to remove the plants because the crew had also found a healthy count of Larinus minutus munching on the spotted knapweed. The original crew brought in the seedhead weevil to do just that, and McHan was pleased to see the adult, egg-laying, larvae cycle continue working at the site.
McHan predicted the insects will eventually fly over to tackle the spotted knapweed growing on the other side of the yard.
Several partners support the total of six bug crews: the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and county weed departments. Locals are urged to contact the Blaine County Weed Department at 208-788-5516 or 208-788-5543 for more information.
In addition to using the Larinus minutus, the bug crew sometimes uses Cyphocleonus achates, or knapweed root weevil, as a biological agent for controlling spotted and diffuse knapweed. Other tools include pulling weeds, spraying and using tillage or cultivation to control growth before the weeds go to seed and get out of hand. One spotted knapweed plant, for example, can produce up to 25,000 seeds.
During his visit McHan also identified another prolific pest that’s wreaking havoc throughout Southern Idaho this summer. That would be voles.
Every 10 to 12 years their population naturally explodes, and in Gooding this summer, McHan said, his cats are catching 15 rodents a night, leaving the corpses on the sidewalk. Hawks, owls, snakes and coyotes prey on voles, too.
Voles, also known as meadow mice or field mice, can be very destructive to lawns, gardens and landscaping because they eat grass, roots, stems, seeds, tubers, bulbs and bark. Mostly active at night, they leave behind telltale signs of tunnels, holes and fresh mounds of dirt.
Apparently, they don’t like to chew on iris, salvia, daffodils or snowdrops. And sprinkling coffee grounds in the area might act as a vole deterrent.
#5#Vole damage looks like this.