Salt Lake City Kicks Up Invasive Weeds Program

1650 lbs of “Dyers Woad” removed from City Creek watershed during May 2006 weed pulling event

By:  Vanessa Welsh

Dyers Woad is an invasive weed that is rapidly growing within the Wasatch Canyon watersheds.

All of us, from serious gardener to dandelion warrior, know that unwanted weeds can be tenacious, obnoxious and most of the time down right nasty.  Year after year you pull, spray and mow, and year after year, without fail, those beastly weeds return.  Unfortunately, this problem isn’t limited to carefully kept yards and gardens; the issue extends to our wildlands where weeds are capable of conquering enormous expanses of land!  At astonishing rates the native plants in grasslands and forests of the United States are being taken over by less-than-desirable invasive weeds. 

In recent years land owners in the state of Utah have realized that they are not immune to the widespread implications of invasive weed takeover.  Rangeland managers were perhaps the first to realize that alien plants were poisoning livestock, increasing soil erosion and choking valuable waterways.  In an attempt to diminish the problem, the Utah Department of Agriculture designated 18 of the worst culprits as ‘noxious weeds’, requiring land owners accommodating these noxious weeds to take care of the problem before they could spread to our treasured wildlands, private and public. 

Salt Lake City, being a land management agency concerned with source water protection, is wary of these noxious weeds and their impacts on water quality.  It is well documented that invasive weeds can alter susceptibility to floods, erosion, nutrient loading, water availability and groundwater recharge.  The City is also concerned with how these weeds detract from the recreation experience in the protected watershed canyons of City Creek, Parleys, Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood.  Anyone who has had a run in with an 8 foot tall Scotch thistle, or had to patch a bike tire after an encounter with puncture vine will likely agree. 

Considering that weeds don’t honor property boundaries, this spring Salt Lake City joined the Bonneville Cooperative Weeds Management Area (BCWMA), a group of land managers working together to combat the weeds encroaching on the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent canyons.  The goal of joining the BCWMA is to share expertise, equipment, and information with participating agencies like the Utah Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and local farmers among others. 

Public Utilities watershed employee Jon Hamilton with two hands full of Dyers Woad.

In addition to joining the BCWMA, Salt Lake City Public Utilities hosted the first annual ‘Woad Runner Invasive Weed Pull’ in City Creek Canyon in May.  This five day event was an attempt to remove as much of the Utah noxious weed ‘Dyers Woad’, an umbrella like yellow plant, from the City Creek Nature Preserve.  Volunteers from the Utah Native Plant Society, Utah Rivers Council, DWR Dedicated Hunters, the Cottonwood Canyons Foundation, the University of Utah Bennion Community Service Center, the Wasatch Mountain Club and many more joined forces and muscle power to remove 1650 lbs. of Dyers Woad from three areas in the canyon! 

This summer Salt Lake City Public Utilities is looking forward to completing the first comprehensive inventory of invasive weeds in City Creek and Parleys Canyons.  The GPS and vegetation information from this inventory will help in cleaning up the existing problem in a financially feasible way and to start progressive projects to prevent problems in the future.

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