I’ve noticed a slow and increasing trend lately, the level of communication about weeds has been on the decline. Now I have very little data outside of Southern California to back up my assertion, so I look to you to provide a sense of optimism. Your comments to counter my observations are greatly appreciated.
Several state and federal agencies along with local governments and organizations have been, one by one, missing weed management meetings or local workshops and symposia. Now this is not something entirely new or unpredicted, attending an invasive plant management group is certainly not as fun as being in the field for the day. It is important work: organizing regional projects, deciding which grants to write, learning about new tools to more efficiently reduce weed abundances, and keeping our professional skills up to date. These are effective ways of spending our limited management dollars.
The old adage comes to mind “talk is cheap.” If talk is cheap why has it fallen during this downturn in the human economy? Maybe I’m wrong and its just my perception. Nevertheless nature’s economy is still humming along with many weeds continuing to outcompete their rivals.
This is the time where we can be creative and increase our amount of communication. There are a great many tools out there to increase our communication, blogs (like this one) are numerous, Cal-IPC has its weedmapper in beta testing right now, pest control workshops and symposia are still being conducted on their yearly schedules (you just missed CNPS and CWSS, but SERCAL is in May), training and continuing education seminars are still being offered by organizations like CAPCA and PAPA. UC Davis Weed Day is in the summer and your local REC (research and extension center) should have a demonstration day this year too.
I have hope that this will only be a temporary downturn in participation and am even more hopeful this is only my perception and not reality. As our management levels decrease I suspect there will be an increase in weed populations (when it rains again). If there is a decrease in the quantity of our communication, I hope we can leverage it to increase the quality of our relationships when working together to manage weeds.