September 4, 2004
Weed Meeting, AZ WIPWG
photo: © 2001 CDFA
AZ Wildlands Invasive Plant Working Group (AZ-WIPWG)
Monthly Meeting: Flagstaff, Friday October 22nd.
(Meetings generally alternate between Northern and Southern AZ.)
-This group is attempting to identify invasives on Arizona wildlands that should be of concern for active management, and trying to determine recommendations for degree of regulation and type of control.
-Importantly, this group also tries to identify invasives that are likely to be innocuous. This helps land managers direct resources more efficiently toward those invasives likely to be bad characters.
-The number of invasives is proliferating faster than we can identify them or identify management techniques. This group is looking for botany savvy people to help them with this task. They have a backlog of around 150 species to assess already. Meetings are not public forums, but working meetings. Presentations, if any, are highly technical. The taskforce is new, and agency officials, senior academic faculty and students, conservation professionals, neighborhood and homeowner association representatives, corporate and private landholders, and of course, conservation volunteers such as Master Naturalists are invited to attend to witness the process. This invitation is extended in order to promote understanding of the task and scope of the problem, and who knows, help provide solutions.
Meeting will be at the Flagstaff USGS Complex Building #6 (Shoemaker Building) Room 652 (new building on the north side of the USGS campus and the conference room is along the north hallway). The meeting will begin at 9:00AM and end around 4:00. Map to the Science Center campus can be viewed by clicking here.
Please contact Dana Backer (see below)
A. About attending Wildlands Invasives Monthly Meeting.
B. If you have any questions about the statewide assessment for developing a categorized list of non-native plants that threaten wildlands.
Dana Backer
AZ-WIPWG Coordinator
c/o The Nature Conservancy
1510 East Ft. Lowell Rd.
Tucson, AZ 85719
phone: 520-622-3861 x3473
dbacker@tnc.org
This group is not to be confused with the San Francisco Peaks Weed Management Area (SFPWMA) which is part of the greater AZ Weed Management Council. SFPWMA members are concerned with coordinating management responses for Regulated, Restricted, and Prohibited Noxious Weeds. These are plants that have already been recognized as bad actors in regulations and law.