Ranchers set to take on hoppers
The six men sat around the table huddled in close peering at a number of maps detailing land all over the Little Bitteroot. The group of ranchers, covered with day's work of dirt and grime, marked special spots on the map including water holes, rivers and wells, while one of them crunched numbers of acreage.
The six men sat around the table huddled in close peering at a number of maps detailing land all over the Little Bitteroot. The group of ranchers, covered with day's work of dirt and grime, marked special spots on the map including water holes, rivers and wells, while one of them crunched numbers of acreage.
It was a gathering of men who work alone but had to come together to protect their hay land from a growing problem that has pushed the whole valley into disaster like conditions.
The problem are grasshoppers and they have been increasing dramatically for the last eight years under the drought-like conditions that the valley has been experiencing.
"It could be a disaster," says Joe Merenz, Plant Protection and Quarantine Officer. "Under the right proper conditions 16 grasshoppers can eat as much as a cow in a day."
Last year during the peak of the dry season Merenz estimates that some hot spots had upwards of 129 grasshoppers per square yard, a situation that took a big bite out of local ranchers' hay and pasture land.
One of those ranchers, Glen Magera, says he lost 90 percent of his crop land on the Little Bitteroot last year, saying he only produced 13 bales out of an area that can produce up to 250 bales normally.
He goes on to explain that this will force him not only to have to buy hay during the winter months, but start feeding his cattle hay up to 30 days earlier in the year after the grasshoppers have depleted valuable pasture land.
"They can wipe you plum out," says local rancher Corey Guenzler. "It's mild [right now], but it's really going to come along if we have the warm days."
And although many local ranchers have been spraying their land and seen effective results Guenzler says that if the neighbors don't spray for grasshoppers than the populations can merge back onto your land. Now he, Magera and 10 other local private ranchers with the help of APHIS are taking a more aggressive approach.
By pooling their money together, the men have joined in a federal cost share program, a massive aerial spray program that will hit nearly the entire valley including the 12 private land owners, tribal ground and state school trust lands, and they're gathering around the map to mark water spots that will be given a wide berth by the spray plane.
By spraying more than 10,000 acres, the proposed private land total is approximately 25,000 acres. The government also pays for 1/3 of the cost minus an administrative fee that brings the total to 17 percent of the cost, a percentage that may not seem like a lot, but adds up to a lot of money with so many acres being sprayed.
It's an agressive treatment that uses a proven spray called Dimilin, a chemical that stops the grasshoppers from developing a hard exoskeleton during their development into adult hood. Merenz estimates the treatment could kill 90 to 95 percent of all grasshoppers.
"We're not trying to kill them all, but we're going to take a bite out of them, a real bite," says Merenz.
A grasshopper sheds its skin five times before becoming an adult. This process is called molting and the time between molts are called instars. Merenz says they will try to spray the grasshoppers between their second and fourth instar, the treatment could begin as early as next week depending on the weather.
Merenz says the treatment should last several years depending on the weather and the migration of grasshoppers, which would be a welcome reprieve to the ranchers who would have had to face some difficult decisions if the grasshopper population kept increasing.
"We'd probably have to decrease in cattle numbers, and with buying all the hay, that can break a person too," says Guenzler.
It's a hardship that the government is hoping to avoid.