Kentucky Heartwood 

http://www.kentucky.com/latest_news/story/866538.html
Invasive plants overtake natives
By Andy Mead
amead@herald-leader.com
RED RIVER GORGE — Miscanthus sinensis is one of the worst offenders.

It takes advantage of our nourishing climate, and repays the kindness by smothering the locals.

The ornamental grass, which also goes by the alias Chinese silverplume, was planted at Natural Bridge State Resort Park in the 1930s, but it soon escaped and now is at large in the state.

It was one of the priority targets listed by the Forest Service last week when the agency asked for input on a proposed war on weeds in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

The 700,000-acre forest "is facing an ecological crisis," as native species are crowded out by the foreigners, the agency said.

The Forest Service plan calls for treating as many as 1,400 acres a year by various means, but actual numbers will depend on how much money is appropriated each year for the work. The proposal contains no cost estimates.

There have been efforts to combat invasive exotic plants in Lexington parks, at the Arboretum on Alumni Drive and in state parks and nature preserves. But the effort at Daniel Boone, which covers portions of 21 counties, has the potential to be the largest attempt so far to take back acreage for native species or at least stop the spread of exotics.

"Every acre lost to these invaders is a loss not only to our native plant species' diversity, but also displaces wildlife food sources and habitats," the Forest Service said.

More than 70 species are causing problems, the Forest Service said. Most of the offending weeds came here from Asia or Europe. They spread rapidly because they left behind whatever diseases or insects kept them in check back home.

The best-known invasive is kudzu. It can be found in the Boone, but it's not among the worst invaders.

The agency proposes to get rid of weeds by pulling, mowing, burning or spraying them with herbicides.

It issued a report asking for comments from the public. If the proposal is approved, work could begin next June.

The Forest Service says it wants to concentrate on areas, such as wetlands and cliff lines, where sensitive native species are found and invasives can do the most damage.

In some cases, the Forest Service says, it wants to work with landowners to remove invasives on private land that is adjacent to public land in the fragmented forest.

The two wilderness areas in the Daniel Boone — Clifty and Beaver Creek — are not included in the proposal, but the public is invited to give opinions on whether they should be.

Joyce Bender, president of the Kentucky Exotic Pest Plant Council, welcomed the move against invasives.

"I know they've had to go through a lot of processes to get to this point, so this is good," she said.

The Forest Service proposal uses what the agency calls "adaptive management, which allows it to react more quickly to new infestations. Bender said that is important, because "if they didn't give themselves the option to switch gears, they might not be as successful."

Bender also is a branch manager for the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission. She said she could not speak for that agency about the Forest Service proposal because she had not yet consulted with colleagues.

Jim Scheff, the director for the environmental group Kentucky Heartwood, said he was glad to see the Forest Service dealing with the invasives problem. But he said he is concerned about an over-reliance on herbicides to control the weeds.

"A site-specific, case-specific argument can be made for herbicides, but they should be a last resort," Scheff said.

He also said that when the Forest Service approves a logging road or a gas or oil well on the forest, it creates openings where invasive plants can move in.

"While they're looking at spending a lot of money and spraying a lot of herbicides to combat invasives, they're also engaging in practices that spread them," he said.

As part of a federal lawsuit that Heartwood is pursuing against the Forest Service, it argues that the agency hasn't considered the overall impacts of using herbicides. Scheff said he would like to see such an analysis as part of the invasive-plants effort.

David Taylor, the forest botanist for the Daniel Boone, said he expects comments from the public about herbicides.

"We know that is controversial for many people, but prepared properly, it is very effective," he said.

Taylor also acknowledged that logging and other resource extractions efforts can be an invitation to exotics.

"Our national direction is that we will do certain kinds of management," he said. "So we're trying to do a better job of mitigating after we do something."

Exotics can also come in when new trails are built, he said, or when a wind- or ice-storm knocks down trees.

"Many of these species like disturbances," Taylor said. "They follow disturbances."

To explain how ubiquitous exotics are in the national forest, Taylor walked along the Pinch-em-Tight trail head off Tunnel Ridge Road. Here's some of what he found in just a few yards:

■ On the edge of the parking lot was a large Elaeagnus umbellata, or autumn olive, that has small berries that are eaten and spread by birds. The autumn olive was often planted on reclaimed strip-mine land because it grows quickly, holds the soil and attracts wildlife. Now it's a nuisance.

"A lot of these plants that we consider weeds were brought in with good intentions," Taylor said.

Pointing to one of the many berries that were turning from green to red, he added that "because birds like them, every one of these is a potential new plant somewhere on this ridge."

■ Growing alongside the road was Microstegium vimineum, or Japanese stiltgrass.

It was first noticed 90 years ago near Knoxville, Tenn., and now is found through most of the eastern United States. It is so widespread that the Forest Service proposes to just keep it from spreading, not to reduce its numbers.

It isn't doing any real harm just growing along Tunnel Ridge Road, Taylor said. But seeds are washing into the woods and over cliffs, and the plant is moving into rock shelters that are a favorite spot of a native called white-haired goldenrod. That species is so rare that it is found only in the gorge and nowhere else in the world.

■ Rosa multiflora, or multiflora rose, was found. It was introduced to this country as a natural fence that also held soil.

"It made some pretty tough fences that kept cattle in place," Taylor said.

Now it's making thorny barriers in places it shouldn't be.

■ Miscanthus sinensis, the Chinese silverplume mentioned earlier, is an attractive plant that can be seen waving in the wind along the Mountain Parkway.

But with seeds that spread on the wind, it has overtaken thousands of acres, mostly in Eastern Kentucky. Many people plant it in their yards all over the state.

Besides pushing out native plants, the dried blades of grass from previous growing seasons pose a severe fire hazard, Taylor said. A small leaf-litter fire will hit a patch of the grass and become such an inferno that firefighters can only pull back and watch, he said.

"It's pretty and you can understand why people would want to plant it," Taylor said of the plant. "But it produces a lot of windblown seeds and if it gets a little ground, it goes."

ACTION ALERT: Stop Robinson Forest Boundary Mining

Comments Due May 26!!!

Action is needed to stop a new mining permit that would result in the destruction of 350 acres of native forest adjacent to Robinson Forest. The original comment deadline was May 9, but an extension was granted and we now have until May 26 to get comments submitted.

Please take action immediately.

This project, if implemented, will have the following impacts:

• Two miles of streams buried forever.
  
• Additional “temporary” impacts to 3,405 feet of streams (2/3 mile).
  
• Significant destruction of the last remaining native forest on the south side of Robinson Forest.
  
• Further isolation of Robinson Forest as an island of forest in a sea of strip mines; trapping animals by eliminating migratory corridors.
  
• Expansion of the largest strip mine complex in Kentucky.

Media Advisory

April 27, 2009

Contact: Charles Suggs, Matt Louis-Rosenberg or Glen Collins: 304-854-7372.


Climate Ground Zero activists face contempt charge for violating judge's order to halt anti-mountaintop removal protests

Eleven activists are set to appear before Raleigh County District Judge Robert Burnside to show why they should not be held in contempt for violating temporary restraining orders (TRO) brought by four Massey Energy subsidiaries. Massey said the activists violated the TRO by stopping work again on March 5 and April 16th on the Edwight Surface Mine in Raleigh County. The defendants, who were cited for trespass and released, are awaiting trial on charges of criminal trespass.

The restraining orders were the result of three protests in February that halted Massey mountaintop removal operations on the Edwight mine and on Coal River Mountain.

The activists say the restraining orders are overly broad and should be vacated because they not only bar those that have already trespassed on company property, but “all other persons allied, associated, confederating, conspiring, or acting in concert with them,” and indeed anyone who ever finds about the restraining orders, from trespassing on Massey property or interfering with the company in any way. The defendants are also barred from aiding or assisting in any way, others in doing the same. Nine of those charged with contempt of court were not named on the restraining orders and activist Mike Roselle is charged with contempt only for allegedly recruiting participants for the March 5 protest.

Lawyers for Massey have requested that defendants be ordered to pay compensatory damages or a maximum of $5,000 per person (whichever is greater) and compensate Massey for all court costs. Massey has also requested that all photographs and videos of the protests be turned over to them, that any and all publication of the same be barred, and that all proceeds from the use of the media be turned over to them. Finally, Massey is requesting that all the defendants be jailed until they swear in open court never to violate the restraining orders again. According to West Virginia State Code Section 48-1-304, the maximum sentence for civil contempt of court is a 6-month jail sentence.

“Massey Energy cannot silence us” said Mike Roselle of Climate Ground Zero. “Massey Energy is a corrupt and criminal syndicate and we will prove this in court. It is Massey that is trespassing on the public domain by irreparably altering the landscape and poisoning the air and water of this community.”

The contempt hearing is scheduled for May 1, at 10 a.m. in Beckley, W.Va.

###

Worth taking a look at...
http://www.bashmagazine.com/09-Archer.html

Reposted from http://www.kentucky.com/181/story/762526.html

By Andy Mead - amead@herald-leader.com


CLIFTY WILDERNESS — The federal stimulus package is at work in some of Kentucky's most rugged back country.

It's hard, sometimes dangerous work. But in Menifee County, where one of every five is out of work, a temporary job making $15.50 an hour clearing ice-storm debris from trails is a blessing.

Darrell Hess, who with his general contractor partner Leonard Brown hired the other three men in the crew, gives the rundown.

There is Bill Peck, who usually works in construction, then got a factory job, then got laid off. There is Walter Centers, who worked off and on for Hess for years, then left for a regular job a year ago — and was laid off. There is Dave Holdorff, who owns a welding business, but hasn't had enough work lately to keep the shop lights on.

Hess and Brown do all sorts of work: some logging, excavating, building fences, a little farming.

But, with the economy like it is, all those things had been slow.

"I'll be honest with you," Hess said. "I was glad to hear about this because I didn't know where my next job was going to come from."

The men were working Wednesday on Osborne Bend Trail, known to local horse riders at Powderhouse Trail, in the Clifty Wilderness. The 13,000-acre wilderness is part of the Red River Gorge in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

The Daniel Boone was one of the first national forests to get some of the $1.15 billion in stimulus money being funneled through the Forest Service. The Boone forest's portion was $550,000. The Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area in Western Kentucky, where damage from the January ice storm was more severe, got $3 million.

The Daniel Boone hired Swift & Staley, a Western Kentucky contractor that already had been approved to do work in Land Between the Lakes, and that company hired local subcontractors in Eastern Kentucky.

Five crews totaling two dozen people are clearing trails and roads in the gorge and other parts of Daniel Boone's Cumberland Ranger District.

Two crews with a total of eight people are clearing damage from a February wind storm from the Redbird Crest Trail in the Boone's Redbird Ranger District.

Most of the crews are using chain saws or whatever power equipment they need.

But because of rules governing a nationally designated wilderness, no motorized vehicles or tools may be used to clear trails that cross the Clifty.

You might hear them work before you see them, but you would have to listen carefully for the whinnying of a horse or the soft rasping of a cross-cut saw.

The men pack their tools, their lunch and themselves on four horses and a mule. They use cross-cut and bow saws and axes to clear trees and limbs that had been blocking trails since late January.

The work can be back-breaking — sawing through a thick red oak trunk quickly teaches why a 6-foot cross-cut saw is also called a "misery whip." But the men are all from Menifee County. Although they all needed the work, Hess said, more than just money is involved.

All the men had grown up running up and down the steep hills that now are the Clifty. They all ride horses on the trails, even when they aren't coming in to work.

And there's the larger economic picture. Hess's father runs a horse camp, and already people are calling from distant places, trying to make summer plans and wondering if the trails will be open.

"This part of the forest holds a great interest for tourists and for our local merchants and our community because a lot of people come to visit this area," he said. "This is an important project to a lot of people."

Standing on a ridge in the thick forest on Wednesday, when an overcast sky was keeping the men cool and the horses frisky, Hess also noted the advantage of working in a place where most people come to get away from it all.

"It's the most beautiful office I ever set in," he said.

Reach Andy Mead at (859) 231-3319 or 1-800-950-6397, ext. 3319.

Mysterious Bat-Killing Disease Found In 2 Va. Caves


[See video at <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2009/04/10/VI2009041001304.html?sid=ST2009041003644>

By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 11, 2009; Page A01

First, the frogs began disappearing, with as many as 122 species becoming extinct worldwide since 1980. Then honeybee colonies began to collapse. Scientists fear that bats might be next.

For the past three years, biologists in Virginia have been nervously watching a strange die-off of bats in the Northeast as a mysterious fungus spread rapidly through hibernating bat colonies, leaving caves that once served as safe havens for the hibernating creatures carpeted with the tiny, emaciated carcasses of an estimated 1 million dead bats.

Biologists here were hoping that the fungus would somehow be contained or would burn itself out. Instead, they were shocked last week when researchers confirmed the presence of the fungus, dubbed white nose syndrome for the ring of white fungus that collects on bats' muzzles and wings, in two caves in the state: Breathing Cave in Bath County and Clover Hollow in Giles County, hundreds of miles from the other known infected caves.

"We thought we'd have more time to prepare," said Rick Reynolds, a wildlife biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. But it wouldn't have mattered. "Unfortunately, no one knows what to do about it."

What is known is this: As many as 90 to 100 percent of the bats in infected colonies have died within a year of finding the fungus. And with its spread this far south, there's no reason to think it will stop. Scientists are beginning to whisper the unthinkable: complete annihilation of some species.

Just south of the infected Virginia caves, in Kentucky, Tennessee and northern Alabama, gather some of the largest populations of hibernating bats in the world. And these bats have been tracked flying hundreds of miles from their home caves. They could potentially come into contact with and infect or be infected by any number of other species of bats and the as yet incurable disease could be unstoppable.

"If this continues to spread, we are talking about extinctions," said Thomas Kunz, an ecologist and bat expert at Boston University. "I've studied bats for 44 years. This is unprecedented in my lifetime. It's not alarmist. These are just the facts."

Bats, like the disappearing honeybees and frogs, play a critical role in the delicate balance of nature. A single bat will eat 50 to 100 percent of its body weight in insects in a single night. Kunz conservatively calculates that the million bats that have died would have consumed about 694 tons of insects in one year: the equivalent weight of about 11 Abrams M1 tanks.

"You take these bats away, there are a lot of unknowns," Kunz said. "What are these insects going to do that aren't being eaten? They can cause serious damage to crops, gardens and forests, further upsetting both the natural and human-altered ecosystems."

In one study of eight Texas counties, Kunz said, researchers found that if bats disappeared, farmers would have to spend as much as $1.2 million more on pesticides each year. That means more-expensive food, more chemicals in the food supply and the environment, and who knows what other cascading effects on the animals that depend on bats as a source of food or their guano for nutrition. "Eventually, there's a threshold that's going to be reached," Kunz said. "That's not going to recover."

White nose syndrome does not appear to affect humans. That's a blessing and a curse, Kunz said. "There's been little attention and little sense of urgency about this," he said. "Most of us are doing this research on a shoestring."

....

Because the fungus appears to have leapfrogged this year from caves in the Northeast to Virginia and West Virginia, in caves better known for their popularity among recreational cavers than for big bat populations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently issued an advisory closing all caves in 17 states adjacent to the outbreak. No one knows how the disease is spreading -- whether bats are infecting other bats or humans are tracking the fungus into caves on their shoes, scientific survey gear or caving equipment, or some combination of the two. But officials say they want to err on the side of caution. "We're under no delusions that this is going to stop the spread of the disease," said Diana Weaver, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service. "We're just hoping to slow it down enough for science to catch up and find some answers."

....

Later, an hour away, out in Bath County, in the Allegheny Mountains near the West Virginia line, Reynolds met with Rick Lambert of the Virginia Speleological Survey, who has been volunteering to check some of Virginia's 4,500 caves for the fungus. They donned caving gear that had been exposed to the fungus, crammed on helmets and headlamps, and crawled on their bellies through a narrow passage in Breathing Cave to reach a colony of hibernating little brown bats, one of the six bat species that have been found with the fungus.

Their headlamps drew arcs of light on the limestone walls as they surveyed clusters of bats with white fungus around their noses and along their wings. The fungus is little more than a skin irritant, they explain, much like athlete's foot. Scientists aren't sure how it's killing the bats.

The best hypothesis is that the fungus is somehow disturbing the bats, causing them to wake more often than usual. Each time they wake, they use 60 days of the fat reserves they need to make it through the winter. They might be waking up so often that they use up their fat stores and starve to death. That's why infected bats are seen in the daylight, emaciated and searching for food they won't find in the middle of winter. As the two men whispered, some of the fungus-covered bats stirred. Reynolds shook his head. "Nobody expected anything like this."

The two made their counts and took their leave.

"I'd like to give some advice to the southern states," Reynolds said. To him, the spread of the deadly fungus is only a matter of time. "I just don't know what that would be."

He trudged slowly in darkness, up to his waist in dried leaves, toward the weak daylight breaking through the mouth of the cave.

Full article at <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/04/10/ST2009041003644.html?sid=ST2009041003644>