A8
LOCAL
Wallowa County Chieftain
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Farmer named ‘Weed Warrior’ for welted thistle fi ght
Jim McCormack
has infestation on
Alder Slope farm
they just absolutely kill out every-
thing else around them, like native
grasses along ditch banks … they
can just come in and create these
massive bare spots and choke out
everything else around. They create
a mat so that nothing else will grow
there.”
He emphasized that the thistles
choke out crops, alfalfa and grass
hay and are poor for erosion control
and soil sustainability.
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
ENTERPRISE
—
Enter-
prise-area farmer Jim McCormack
is being recognized by the Wallowa
County Weed Board as the Nox-
ious Weed Warrior for 2021 for his
eff orts to stamp out welted thistle
on his Alder Slope land and alert the
county to other infestations, Weed
Department Manager Andy Mar-
cum said Wednesday, Dec. 29.
“It’s one of two sites in all of
North America,” Marcum said. “It
could be extremely invasive if it
wasn’t for landowners like Jim who
are keeping an eye on it and calling
us when they see it on their neigh-
bors’ land and we’re able to keep it
contained. Ever since it was found
in 2016, we haven’t found it any-
where else other than the original
site.”
County Commissioner Todd
Nash, who also is a rancher and
keeps a close eye on the county’s
agricultural resources, was the one
who discovered the member of the
Carduus family of thistles.
“I drove past it and then I stopped
on Alder Slope in a county right-
of-way alongside the road,” Nash
said Dec. 30. “I took a picture of it
and sent the picture to Mark Por-
ter and he spent some time identi-
fying it and found out that it was,
indeed, welted thistle. The closest
plant was in North Dakota or south-
ern Canada.”
Porter, who is based in Enter-
prise, is the regional noxious weed
specialist for the Oregon Depart-
ment of Agriculture.
Nash said after that, one area res-
ident sprayed it.
“It was quite a large plant,” he
said. “Then, looking in other areas
and surrounding ditch banks, they
found quite a lot of plants. It had
been there for a while. It’s a big,
impressive thistle with big, purple
blooms on it that were easy to see.”
“It took a bit of botany work
sending off samples,” Porter said
in an email Dec. 29. “There was no
reason to expect we’d fi nd welted
thistle.”
But he was appreciative of the
Winning the war
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Wallowa County’s 2021 Noxious Weed Warrior Jim McCormack shows off the
hats and a hammer he received Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2021, in recognition
of his eff orts to battle invasive weeds in the county.
work by Marcum and McCormack
in battling the weed.
“Finding a noxious weed when
it fi rst arrives is really important
and also to get it controlled when
it’s small,” Porter said. “This is a
great example of early detection and
rapid response.”
Where did it come from?
“We never had those thistles
about four or fi ve years ago when
a ditch company came through and
cleaned the ditch out,” McCormack
said. “They dumped the pilings on
my side of the lower ditch, and the
next year they just started coming
up everywhere. I think somebody
brought them into this county and
threw them into that ditch.”
But it wasn’t necessarily inten-
tional, they said.
“A lot of the ways things like this
get spread is through equipment,”
Marcum said. “Who knows where
they were working before, and that’s
why there’s been a big push with
a lot of these big corporations and
noxious week managers across the
state who are working with power
companies and ditch companies.”
Marcum said he can’t be sure just
how it arrived in the county.
“It’s hard to say,” he said. “It
looks like someone just threw a
bunch of seeds right there in the
ditch and that’s where they started.”
McCormack added that the Stan-
gel Bison Ranch had work done at
the same time as his place.
“They cleaned out a section
down at Stangels’ place, too, and
they started coming up there,” he
said. “There wasn’t anything (done)
in between my place and theirs.”
Why a problem?
“It’s a Carduus thistle and that
family is one in North America
that is invasive,” Marcum said. “In
every state across the entire coun-
try, the Carduus family is an inva-
sive species.”
The Carduus family includes
welted thistle, musk thistle and
plumeless thistle.
“Others (thistles) are invasive,
but they’re not nearly as problem-
atic as the Carduus family,” he said.
“It’s the way they grow and spread,
Marcum said welted thistle is
nearly gone from Stangels’ place.
“They only had two plants on it
this year,” he said.
But it still exists on McCor-
mack’s place and that of his neigh-
bors. Marcum said there were about
50 plants there this year.
“The seeds stay in the ground for
a long time,” Marcum said. “After
the initial treatment in 2016, we saw
good residual control until 2020.
In 2020, we had a big fl ush of the
welted thistle again and we sprayed
probably 200 plants. This year, we
saw the residual control back again,
but there were still about 50 plants
that popped up this year. This is the
only site we have in the western
United States.”
The other North American site is
in British Columbia, Canada.
“We have this rotation of check-
ing on them and that’s why Jim was
nominated to be the Noxious Weed
Warrior of 2021,” Marcum said. “He
lives right in the middle of where
this site’s at. Not only is he spraying
them on his place, but he’s calling
me when he sees them on the neigh-
bor’s. … He works on other people’s
properties and sprays other weeds
like knapweed and other things.”
McCormack mentioned a pasture
that had been sprayed a couple years
ago. But he hadn’t seen any this year.
“There were just rows of them
there,” he said.
The pasture grass McCormack
has planted now seems to be out-
competing the thistles.
“I think the treatment and the
competitiveness of the (desired)
plants helped stop it,” Marcum said.
In the spring, he said, the Weed
Department will actively start spray-
ing any new rosettes found and
continue through August checking
every other week or so.
“That’s the long-term goal, with
it being found in such a small area,
it’s a species that we will be able to
eradicate eventually, as long as we
stay on top of it,” Marcum said.
But it will take a while before the
county can be sure it has eliminated
welted thistle.
“It’s been fi ve years now, so it’s
going to be probably another 15
years before we’re confi dent in say-
ing that it’s eradicated,” he said.
Supposed to be retired
McCormack, who has farmed his
entire life, had hoped to be retired by
now.
“He wants me to keep working,”
he said of Marcum. “I try to not work
outside any more than I have to. I’ve
done that my entire life.”
His generational farm has raised
cattle, wheat, alfalfa and grass hay.
Now he leases much of his land to
others to farm.
“I’m just tired of it. I don’t want to
do it anymore,” he said. “I’ve done it
my whole life. My dad started me out
there on the tractor when I was prob-
ably 6 or 7 years old raking hay.”
Marcum, who runs a one-man
department, fi nds farmers and ranch-
ers like McCormack critical to his
success.
“We appreciate that there are
a lot of landowners in the county
who support the noxious week pro-
gram and are fi ghting the battle with
us,” he said. “That’s what it’s going
to take to get a lot of these species
under control.”
McCormack agreed that those
who really care about the land are
the biggest help. But there are others.
“And there’s a lot of landown-
ers who don’t really care,” he said.
“People who are coming in here and
just buying a place to build a house
on and they don’t make their living
off the land. Next thing you know,
they see all these pretty wildfl ow-
ers blooming and they don’t know
they’re noxious weeds.”
That leads to another aspect of
Marcum’s job: education.
“That’s a lot of what it is now,
why we have the booklets that Tri-
County CWMA puts out, keeping
our brochures up to date and avail-
able to people. Outreach and edu-
cation, it’s just as important as on
the ground management.” he said.
“All the counties in Oregon, they’re
doing the same thing with their weed
managers and weed boards. We try
to do as much outreach and educa-
tion as we can.”
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