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The field accomplishments that we've made with the noxious weeds,
there's never been this many boots on the ground in
Shoshone County, chasing weeds before.
What we do is it's a stimulus funded project
that we are going to fight the noxious weeds
that are on the Idaho state noxious weed list.
It's from the federal government through the Forest Service
through the ISDA and then out to the counties, different counties.
It's through Silver Valley mainly,
but we also go over to the St. Joe River,
to Calvert, between Calvert and Avery.
We also journey down, a little further down
to Clarkia which is the bottom half of the county.
And we try to, right now, go for four different types of weeds.
All of the Knotweed varieties,
Blue weed or Viper's bugloss,
Houdstongue and Scotchbroom.
We spray, we dig, we pull,
whatever we can do to get rid of that weed.
The weeds that we're going after,
mostly are imports from other countries.
They are not natural therefore they do not have
a bio-control that's naturally to the area that they live in.
The problem is, once they get away,
there's no enemies and so they proliferate.
These types of weeds push out the native species.
and therefore there's nothing more for these
native wildlife to eat or even the cows.
Ok, so, the area that they can live in
gets smaller and smaller and smaller.
Also, ladder fuels.
Especially things like Knotweed is going to go up.
And it's tall.
It could cause a treetop fire
as opposed to a lower brush fire.
So, a couple of reasons for that.
We are in a county that
our private foresters tell us that there's
two to three times the foliage load
on the forest floor than there was in the 1910 event.
Because we know that weeds continually grow back.
And we would like to, as the funds come down,
be able to sustain the effort.
We go around, we spray noxious weeds.
It's important because a lot of these plants
don't have any natural enemies,
so they choke out other plants and they're toxic to
animals around here and also they can build up
and become ladder fuels and start fires.
Part of the project, we also helped our local
county fire mitigation team do some work in the
hillsides like this to reduce the
fuels that can cause a fire.
We come in behind it as the county noxious weed crew
and spray for any vegetation that we don't want around,
any noxious weeds, and then later on we come back
and reseed the area
to get some native grasses growing in
that will overshadow any weeds
or possible weed infestations that
can occur after such a project as this.
We're a county that has high unemployment,
we are constantly trying to, we have a
natural resource based economy here.
We've got nine people in the noxious weeds
and right now, nine people in fire mitigation.
So, yeah, it's provided some jobs
and been very beneficial.
From the standpoint of the economy,
people that needed work.
Because it's a hands on job and
this county's traditionally been
in that unemployment for many, many years.
So, it was very helpful to the economics
of Shoshone County too.
You know, it's going to look good on a resume.
Being a professional applicator and
being able to read all the labels and all of that.
It's helping me save up for school and do that and
living expenses and everything. Definitely.
We go around and spray all the noxious weeds around the county.
Pull Scotch broom, it helps out the community
so that it doesn't get impacted by all the weeds.
And just kind of makes it look better.
That's been a big benefit, they're now experts,
they're out there every day doing the job.
I think that some of the things
they've learned from this job
they'll be able to carry on and probably
get some good employment opportunities from it.
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