Medusahead Wildrye found in Lake County

Weed considered “noxious” in five other states

The Flathead Reservation’s annual blanket of spring green might get a little more invasive this year now that Medusa is in Montana.

But don’t worry, agricultural specialists have Medusahead Wildrye, an invasive weed masquerading as a harmless visitor species, in the crosshairs of their future plan to annihilate the weed and replant the land it vacates with something better.

And Montana’s agricultural freedom fighters have a $500,000 federal funding boost to help their cause. That money arrived in the form of two grants awarded in 2015 to the Salish Kootenai College.

Sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the Montana Agriculture in the Classroom project is a three-year long annual grant award that will be used by the Salish Kootenai College Extension to “suppress and restore,” affected areas. 

Experts believe Medusahead Wildrye is an invasive and potentially damaging wild land grass identified as prevalent in the great basin of Oregon, Idaho and Washington.

Medusahead Wildrye is designated as a “noxious weed” in California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Utah. 

The relatively new-to-Montana invasive plant is making itself known, growing mainly near the Arlee area, said Virgil Dupuis, Salish Kootenai College Extension Program director.

“It’s an annual grass that is kind of similar to Cheatgrass but more aggressive, more destructive,” Dupuis said.

Experts believe that invasive annual grasses like Medusahead Wildrye might degrade plant communities, reduce suitable habitat for livestock and wildlife and complicate fire fighting efforts.

“It acts just like Cheatgrass … it’s grass that sticks to your socks, starts early in the spring, turns red in the summer, grows up and set seed real quickly,” Dupuis said.  

First discovered in 2013 in Sanders County, local agriculture experts still need to study the potential effects of Medusahead Wildrye as well as develop herbicides and other forms of growth inhibitors, he said.

SKC educators are working closely with the Tribes and are also working with the State of Montana Department of Agriculture, who is in turn working with the Lake County Weed Control office.

SKC is also working with Peter Rice at University of Montana and Jane Mangold at Montana State University as well as Ann Kennedy, a soil scientist with the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. Dupuis said that along with their herbicide efforts to curb the plants growth, during the next several years, the group will apply a naturally-occurring bacteria known to stop the weed’s growth and will work to re-establish grass on the site that will not harm the environment. “This is the first time we’ve ever been working on a restoration in this kind of climate,” he said. “Our long-term efforts will be spread over quite a few years but the State and Tribes are committed to contain it.”