The Honorable Debbie Stabenow and the Honorable Vernon Ehlers gathered recently in Grand Rapids with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, ArcelorMittal (NYSE: MT), local officials and federal agency partners - the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S.D.A Forest Service, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - to announce 25 projects selected to receive a total of $7.6 million in funding through the Sustain Our Great Lakes program. The Upper Peninsula RC&D Council was awarded a Community Grant for $150,000 to fund work on their RRIP-IT-UP (Rapid Response Invasive Plant Intervention Team of the Upper Peninsula) Project. Over the next 18 months the project will bring together volunteers and professionals from many of the organizations, and agencies that have expressed a desire to collaborate to identify and control invasive plants in the region. Partners working with the UP RC&D Council in the RRIP-IT-UP Project are The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Forest Service, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, the Conservation Districts, Lake Superior State University, the Michigan DNRE, MDOT, the Michigan Natural Features Inventory, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and all five tribes in the Upper Peninsula. At least 100 volunteers will be recruited to be part of the local Rapid Response Teams that will be established in each Conservation District in the UP. These teams will have the expertise to provide early detection and control of new outbreaks as they are spotted. Each Conservation District will identify the invasive species that pose the most significant problem in their own region and target those species. During the course of the project there will be several volunteer training opportunities on invasive species identification and control measures. The project will also sponsor UP-wide workshops that will enhance partner communication and collaboration by allowing partners to share knowledge, research and experiences they have gained from the control measures they are implementing. RRIP-IT-UP will also be collaborating with the Michigan Natural Features Inventory to enter invasive species distribution data into the Michigan Invasive Species Information Network (MISIN) which will be useful in helping direct strategic control efforts. Through education and collaboration, the RRIP-IT-UP partners hope to make significant progress in controlling and preventing the spread of invasive species in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The UP RC&D Council recently sponsored Invasive Plant Workshops in three locations across the Upper Peninsula. The title of the workshop was "Let's Go RRIP-IT-UP: A Workshop on Invasive Plants, How to Recognize, and Tips to Control". These "Train-The-Trainer" workshops were structured to teach representatives from our partner agencies, organizations, tribes, and conservation districts about invasive plant issues so they could take the knowledge they gained back to the other employees in their agency, students in their classes, and volunteers in their conservation districts or other conservation organizations. We were fortunate to have the expertise of Phyllis Higman, Senior Conservation Scientist with the Michigan Natural Features Inventory, Ian Shackleford and Ellen Manderfield, botanists with the Ottawa National Forest, and Kim Herman, ecologist with the MDNRE Forest Management Division who each taught different components of the workshops. The training modules for each workshop consisted of:

 

Overview of Invasive Plants-Putting It Into Perspective - Phyllis Higman

 

Identification of Major Invasive Plants in the UP and Treatment Methods - Ian Shackleford

(Look for the powerpoint slide show entitled "Invasive Plants of the Upper Peninsula on this page of the Ottawa National Forest website)

 

Prioritizing Efforts, Mapping Infestations, and How to Use the Michigan Invasive Species Information Network (MISIN) - Phyllis Higman

 

Monitoring & Documenting Treatments - Kim Herman

 

Several organizations and individuals that attended the workshops have been dealing with invasive plants on some level for several years, and for others, this was their first opportunity to get some much-needed training on these issues. With more than 75 people attending these workshops, it was clear that there is value in working together to deal with invasive plants across the UP. Through the RRIP-IT-UP Project, several volunteer Rapid Response Invasive Plant Teams will be formed. These teams will provide early detection, expertise in plant identification, expertise in prioritizing control efforts, and rapid response activities when new infestations are discovered. They will also be entering the locations of invasive plant species into the Michigan Invasive Species Information Network (http://www.misin.msu.edu/).