Invasive Species

The implementation of the DOD EDRR Strike Teams Pilot Project is the logical next step to in the management of invasive species on military installations. DoD EDRR Strike Teams offer a tool to increase installation managers’ knowledge of invasive species and not only find solutions to management problems but just as importantly, engage in the control and restoration of infested sites. This report details the first year of the pilot project that had specific benefits to Ft. Detrick and NAS Patuxent, MD, Arnold AFB, TN, MCAS Cherry Point NC, and details protocols that may be adopted by others who wish to follow this example.

This DoD Legacy Resource Management Program invasive non-native species pilot project, beginning in 2009 and concluding in 2012, was entered into to collectively address the threat of invasive non-native species within Florida military installation boundaries, watersheds, and on adjacent lands. In three years, this project has evolved from creating, to expanding, to sustaining Cooperative Invasive Species Management Areas (CISMAs), proving this is an efficient and effective way to combat the threat of invasive non?native plant and animal species. This highly successful CISMA project now includes and/or supports all of the military installations and branches in Florida, regional public and private partners, and the Florida Invasive Species Partnership (FISP).

This document details the accomplishments, challenges, and plans for future efforts within 5 CISMAS in Florida, which contain DoD installations as members. This document contains valuable lessons learned and strategies that could benefit anyone developing and implementing a CISMA.

This FY11 Monitoring Report details the invasive species management and restoration efforts on and adjacent to installations within the CISMA. This includes the following five (5) Cooperative Invasive Species Management Areas (CISMAs) and military installations involved in this project: Six Rivers CISMA (Eglin AFB), Apalachicola Regional Stewardship Alliance (Tyndall AFB), East Central Florida CISMA (Patrick/Canaveral AFB), Heartland CISMA (Avon Park AFR), and the Florida Keys CISMA (NAS Key West).

In 2003 the Apalachicola Regional Stewardship Alliance (ARSA) Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area (CISMA) was founded by stakeholders in the Apalachicola River Region, FL. TNC updated and expanded this document in June of 2011 with support from U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Legacy Resource Management Program to include Tyndall AFB. This plan offers information necessary to implement a cooperative approach to invasive management by maximizing limited financial and personnel resources throughout the region, prioritize highly valued sites, and reduce threats on a landscape scale. Individual land managers are encouraged to use this document as a guide to implement strategies on their own sites. This method will be used as a management tool to protect the native flora and fauna of the Apalachicola River region and serve as a model for other regions. Inclusive in this report is a detailed species-specific Invasive Species Management Plan applicable to Tyndall AFB.

Since 2009 The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Eglin Air Force Base (AFB)with funding from the Legacy Program has worked with military bases in Florida to establish and/or strengthen six Cooperative Invasive Species Management Areas (CISMAs). These CISMAs help to reduce reinfestation from invasive species on six DoD bases and three service branches including: Eglin AFB, Tyndall AFB, Camp Blanding ANG, Cape Canaveral AFS/Patrick AFB Avon Park AFR and NAS Key West. This report details the development of the CISMAs, the accomplishments of each, monitoring of projects, and strategic plans for each CISMA. This report also includes a Strategic Plan Template.

This report details the efforts from mid-March 2010 until mid-may 2010 by EST members in treating Eglin reservation lands for invasive species infestations using mechanical and chemical methods. Targeted species included Chinese Tallow (Sapium sebiferum), Lantana (Lantana camara), Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin), and Japanese Climbing Fern (Lygodium japonicum).

This project was designed to remove priority invasive plants from a public beach area that is directly adjacent to NAS Key West conservation lands. By removing these plants, a nearby seed source was removed thereby reducing re-infestation from this source onto NAS Key West. This Monitoring Report details efforts on approximately one linear mile of infested area. The majority of infestations were latherleaf (Colubrina asiatica) and beach naupaka (Scaevola taccada).

The Department of Defense is tasked with the logistics of supporting military readiness concurrent with protecting natural resources by not inadvertently transporting invasive species via shipments of cargo and personnel. No suitable chemical repellent tool is available to prevent invasive brown treesnakes (Boiga irregularis) from entering cargo or to forcibly evict snakes from shipping containers at U.S bases in Guam where exotic brown treesnakes are currently found. Three formulations of isophorone repellents were tested upon live brown treesnakes, cane toads (Bufo marinus), giant African land snails (Achatina fulica), and house mice (Mus musculus) to investigate isophorone efficacy for deterring wildlife movements into cargo and for repelling wildlife out of cargo.

Brown Treesnake Pheromone Attractant for Assessing Large-Scale Population Control and Incipient Population Detection - Final Report, February 2013 (Legacy 09-441) Large-scale eradication of snakes in the areas surrounding military lands in Guam is the only practical approach for potentially reducing the need for snake interception efforts currently conducted in and around areas of transport. Large-scale eradication also requires methods to determine efficacy of the operation. The primary methods available for these assessments are snake traps containing a live mouse and bait tubes containing a dead mouse. A sex pheromone attractant, however, has the potential to be a more potent attractant than a food bait. The goal for this project was to determine whether the sex pheromone of the brown treesnake would be an effective tool for 1) assessing efficacy of large-scale eradication operations on Guam, and 2) detecting small newly established populations on nearby islands at risk, such as Tinian and Saipan. There is a heightened risk of inadvertently transporting the brown treesnake to other sensitive locations due to the projected expansion of military activities on Guam and associated islands. This report describes the methods and results and recommendations for further study.

The overall objective of this effort was to strengthen, sustain and create four CISMAs to address the critical threat from invasive species on four Florida military bases and surrounding lands. Strong CISMAs would have plans to prioritize their efforts, would include many agencies and organization and would use on-the-ground control projects to demonstrate effectiveness in approach. They would also be networked into other CISMAs in the Florida. This report details the efforts for the 1st phase.

Six Rivers CISMA is a partnership of public and private agencies and landowners from across nine Florida and Alabama counties. Alabama counties include Baldwin, Convington and Escambia. Florida counties include Escambia, Holmes, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Walton, and Washington. This CISMA includes Eglin Air Force Base, FL. This Strategic Plan with its goals and objectives was designed to guide the interactions of all agencies and landowners within the CISMA boundaries.

The First Coast Invasive Working Group (FCIWG) was established in December 2006 to work across federal, state, local, and private lands for invasive species management. This plan includes Camp Blanding ANG. This Strategic Plan with its goals and objectives was designed to guide the interactions of all agencies and landowners within the CISMA boundaries.

This Strategic Plan with its goals and objectives was designed to guide the interactions of all agencies and landowners within the CISMA boundaries.

This Strategic Plan with its goals and objectives was designed to guide the interactions of all agencies and landowners within the CISMA boundaries.

Introduced rats are known to dramatically affect island biodiversity and so rodents have been removed from approximately 300 islands worldwide, demonstrating that eradication of rats can be a valuable tool for natural resources conservation. This document is a compilation of islands in the tropical and sub-tropical Indian and Pacific (Indo-Pacific) oceans in which the DoD owns or leases, or has management stake in at least a portion of the land area. Also included in this compilation are some non-DoD islands in the same region that have been or may be proposed as mitigation sites for DoD activities on adjacent islands. The islands analyzed here are those for which rat removal, or in the case of already ratfree islands, maintenance in a rat-free state, may be a feasible action for the benefit of the island's native biodiversity and/or the military mission.

Introduced rats are known to dramatically affect island biodiversity. On Wake Island, a U.S. Air Force installation in the tropical Pacific, rats predate seabirds and may have extirpated several seabird species from the island. Rats may impact a range of other biota and ecological processes on Wake. The Wake Island eradication provides a valuable opportunity to document ecological changes on such an island by monitoring various taxa before and after the operation. This report contains a Work Plan, Monitoring Protocol, and Sampling Designs for Seabird Monitoring, Shorebird Monitoring, Sea Turtle Monitoring, Vegetation Sampling, Arthropod Sampling, and Rodent Population Monitoring on Wake Island. The protocols and results described in the above reports, if replicated post eradication, can provide valuable documentation of ecological changes on Wake Island resulting from rat removal. These documented changes can then be used to generate predictions about ecological responses to potential rat eradications on other tropical islands on which the Department of Defense (DoD) has a management stake.

This document contains a Strategic Plan template for use by Cooperative Invasive Species Management Areas (CISMA) throughout Florida. It should be considered a starting point and should be revised by each CISMA to reflect local area priorities, landowners and membership capacity. It should also be noted that this plan has a strong emphasis on terrestrial invasive plants. However, actions were defined that address animals and pest/pathogens as well as aquatic resources. This document also includes a presentation describing CISMAs and a poster highlighting the project.

This project enabled the North Carolina Sandhills Weed Management Area (NCSWMA) to inventory and control invasive plant populations on lands in the vicinity of the military installations in the Sandhills region. This project assisted the NCSWMA in implementing regional invasive plant management strategies, including preventing the establishment of new invasive plants; inventory, control and monitoring of existing invasive plant populations; increasing public awareness of invasive plant issues and facilitating cooperation with land managers and landowners throughout the Sandhills region to control invasive plants. This Report details the accomplishments and provides detailed maps and GIS data.

This study investigated the effectiveness of large-scale mechanical removal of Scotch broom and the impacts on native vegetation in a critically imperiled ecosystem: coastal meadow habitat. Three land management priorities were included as part of this study: (1) eradication of the invasive European shrub, Scotch broom; (2) protection of native species in a critically imperiled ecosystem on adjacent non-DoD Lands; (3) improvement of training lands by reducing encroachment of invasive woody species in grasslands.

This report provides a guide for invasive plant species identification, management techniques, how to guide on preventing recurring invasive species and restoring historical plant communities, forming cooperative partnerships to acheive management goals and case studies.

The overall objective of this project is to better understand the impacts of invasive species on key components of ecosystems and pollinator communities, in order to address management concerns for desert plant communities and their associated threatened and endangered species. The study documented emphasized the integration of invasive nonnative plant invasion with other ecological processes through assessments of the spatial effects and fire dynamics of Lehmann lovegrass (Eragrostis lehmanniana) on the distribution and abundance of Palmer's agave (Agave palmeri), investigations of changes in A. palmeri pollinator community composition.

The first part of the guidebook covers the most detrimental invasive plant species encountered in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, with pictures and descriptions of each species to aid identification and appropriate control methods. The second part discusses strategies and management activities to prevent recurrence of problem invasive species.

This document outlines a strategic plan that defines a structure, recommends a membership recruitment strategy, and identifies goals and actions for the North Carolina Sandhills Weed Management Area over a 5 year period.

The goal of this research was to evaluate the efficacy of using remotely sensed and GIS data as tools to support early detection of invasive plants on Holloman Air Force Base (HAFB), NM. The proof-of-concept approach was to first create inductive models of potential invasive species habitat based on known plant occurrences on HAFB and then create spatial models of distributional pathways on HAFB, and conducted a risk assessment that allows for prioritizing areas for conservation efforts.

December 2006. This report details the goals and accomplishments during Phase I of this two-year project, which focuses on the initial development of this GIS database and incorporating this database into an updated GCPEP Conservation Area Plan in FL, which includes Eglin AFB. Appendices include invasive species information, a variety of resource maps and project site information.

The Department of Defense has made considerable annual commitments to preventing the inadvertent spread of Brown Tree Snake (BTS) via Guam’s outbound cargo network. This document summarizes current BTS control methods and strategies, locations of strategic actions for BTS containment on Guam and provides recommendations for improvement of these efforts.

This document contains information that identifies and distinguishes those non-native plants that can invade an area and cause adverse ecological impacts from those non-native plants that, at least based on current knowledge, are relatively innocuous.

This document provides a general overview of the current process that exists to clean, inspect, and regulate the movement of invasive species through ports of embarkation and debarkation.

This document consists of two separate protocols designed as guides to assist installation personnel in releasing Pseudacteon spp. flies (ant-decapitating flies, scuttle flies or phorid flies)and in follow-up monitoring to determine the fly’s establishment and expansion.

Invasive species can take over training lands, injure soldiers, damage equipment, overwhelm listed and at-risk species, and significantly erode natural resources and training budgets. The Commander's Guide on Invasive Species highlights key issues, relevant policies, mission impacts, and key actions that commanders and other installation personnel can take.

This first part of the guidebook covers the most detrimental invasive plant species encountered in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, with pictures and descriptions of each species to aid identification and appropriate control methods. The second part discusses strategies and management activities to prevent recurrence of problem invasive species.

September 2005. Contains detailed individual assessments of invasive plant species common to the southwest US. Assessments include the ecology and an assessment of the potential threat posed by each species.

This management guide supports effective land management by compiling current information on the biology, impacts, and control of yellow starthistle. Several techniques are highlighted including mechanical tools, chemical treatments, cultural practices, and biological agents. Each technique is discussed in detail to assist land managers decide the best approach after consideration of a particular site parameters.

This SETUP package allows for the installation of quick desktop links to three information-packed, dynamic invasive species databases developed by USACE ERDC. By using the Setup feature, one can access the databases without loading additional software to one's computer. The links take you to: The Plant Management Information System (PMIS: containing invasive wetland and terrestrial plant information and herbicide information), Aquatic Plant Information System (APIS: containing not only aquatic species information, but also ecology basics, the phenological cycle of Eurasian watermilfoil, effects of invasive plant communities, steps to develop an Invasive Species Management Plan, plant sampling techniques, and plant propagation methods), and Invasive Species Information System (ISIS: containing detailed information on invasive reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, birds, mammals and plants).

This 2-page information sheet provides species information, including biology, habitat, damage, and spread to be used as an outreach tool.

Strategic Management of Invasive Species in the Northwest United States Workshop - Final Report, August 2012 (Legacy 11-114). Invasive species prevention and management is an important element of the Integrated Natural Resource Management Plans for military installations. Invasive species directly impact military missions by infesting open space needed for military operations; rendering training grounds hazardous with dense, spiny, flammable, or otherwise noxious vegetation; and reducing the extent of realistic training areas. Building on a successful, Legacy-funded workshop that was presented in Phoenix, Arizona in October 2009, the Center for Invasive Plant Management (CIPM) offered a similar five-day workshop for DoD natural resource personnel at the University Place Hotel and Conference Center in Portland, Oregon from May 21-25, 2012. The primary goal of the Strategic Management of Invasive Species in the Northwest United States workshop was to provide a comprehensive overview of invasive species issues, and prevention and management strategies for natural resource personnel at DoD installations across the northwest US. This document details the planning, goals and presentation of this workshop.