Blue Ridge PRISM

Rod has been a timberland owner for over 45 years.  Having owned land in Wisconsin and West Virginia, he and Maggie purchased their land in Albemarle County, Virginia in 1998 and moved there full time in 2012.  Prior to retiring, Rod spent 40+ years in IT consulting - totally unrelated to forestry.

Their timberland ownerships were originally for investment and enjoying various outdoors activities.  Over time serious forestry activities crept in, starting with planting pine plantations, timber harvests and eventually moving into invasive species management.

While working on invasive plants on their Albemarle property, Jake Hughes from the Shenandoah National Park made them aware of the concept of Cooperative Weed Management Areas (CWMAs).  Together with Jake, they organized the first CWMA to be formed in Virginia, now known as the Blue Ridge PRISM, to address invasive plants across 10 counties of Virginia, comprising almost 3 million acres.  Visit blueridgeprism.org.

1. Nonnative invasive plants are overwhelming the forests of the eastern United States.  Current trends extrapolated into the future show the trees disappearing along with most of the wildlife.  This evolution must be stopped and then reversed.

2. The project includes a combination of research activities both to illustrate and to address better remediation methods and tools, along with a large-scale demonstration that organizing, educating and incentivizing thousands of landowners can actually make a difference and provide a path to heading off this oncoming ecological disaster.

3. This project will help elevate humanity in the same way that one might argue that stopping climate change would elevate humanity.  Invasive plants are a global problem and their impacts are and will be as profound as climate change (which just exacerbates this problem).

Our target area for demonstration is 10 counties along the northern Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.  The US Forest Service Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) data show this area to be among the most impacted in the entire US by invasive plants.  Having said, this is a truly global problem.  Nonnative plants are wrecking ecosystems all around the world and most people are not even aware of it.  Our target area to show how to approach this problem includes almost 3 million acres.  It includes Federal lands, state lands, local government lands and private lands.  There are roughly 50,000 landowners who own 5 acres or more.

The proposed project will attack the problem in mulitple dimensions, including:

- A study to project what happens to these forests if nothing new is done.

- Research on new tools and techniques to aid in addressing the problem

- Incentives to the local landowners to remove selected plants across throughout the targeted area.

- Large scale outreach efforts to the landowners in the region to enlist them to participate in solving the problem

- Development of metrics to measure the infestations, the rate of change and the progress being made.

- Capture of metrics related to the costs incurred for the benefits achieved.

The entire region will benefit from this project in terms of improved forest health, improved wildlife habitat, and a path forward to saving the forests.  In addition to providing local benefits, this project will provide a model for how other projects can be established to solve this problem on an even wider scale, including outside the US.

I am sure some of you who are unfamiliar with problems caused by invasive plants will either think this is an alarmist topic or something being overblown.  Perhaps you have seen the vines growing over the trees along the sides of our backroads, highways and even along the interstates.   There are several different nonnative species of vines that routinely climb up and topple any tree of any height.  The end result is a mound of green vines that no new natives plants will be able to grow up through.  These mounds will be replacing more and more of our trees and forests.

Think about the impact of the disappearance of all these forests and all the insects, birds and mammals that depend on them.  Avoidance of this outcome is a huge need and is of utmost importance and impact.

This problem is overwhelmingly difficult and daunting.  It is easy to throw up your hands and walk away because it is too difficult.  To walk away is to concede defeat and to accept that radical ecological change will happen.  This is akin to saying we can't solve climate change and just letting it get worse and worse.  

Part of the problem is making people aware of the problem and its potential dire impacts.  Another part of the problem is having answer when people what should be done.  This project will address both issues.

My wife and I manage over 2,000 acres of timberland, most of it in the 10-county area being targeted by this project.  On this land we encountered oriental bittersweet tearing down our forest canopy.  We literally had 20 acres that you could not walk into because the vines were so thick.  We had to bring in a bulldozer to create roads so we could get to the vines and treat them.  Our neighbor is the Shenandoah National Park.  We discussed this problem with the folks in the Park and how to avoid sending the plants back and forth across the border.  This led to a discussion of how to address this on a much larger scale.  They suggested looking into the idea of forming a Cooperative Weed Management Area (CWMA).  This led us to form the Blue Ridge PRISM (Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management).  The mission of the PRISM is to reduce the impact of invasive plants in our 10-county region.  In the last five years we have conducted a variety of outreach activities that have clearly shown that there is great interest and demand on the part of landowners to solve this problem.

I am the leader of the Blue Ridge PRISM.  I am retired and do this strictly on a volunteer basis.  The PRISM is a partnership with a dozen state agencies, federal agencies, nonprofits, universities and private individuals.  We have  two part-time employees and a leadership team of 10 volunteers.  All are highly motivated to try to save and preserve our natural heritage.

Having seen first hand what these plants can do to the lands we manage and having spoken with hundreds of other landowners about their issues, concerns, and needs, it is clear to us how serious this problem is and that it needs to be addressed.  All the state and federal agencies that have an interest in this problem are woefully underfunded and understaffed.  Nor do they have a regional perspective or any kind of plan for how to deal with such a problem on a landscape scale.  There is no visible prospect for anyone to even attempt to really solve this problem.

If not us, then who else will do what needs to be done?

I am a retired CEO of a 700+ person IT consulting organization.  We focused on big data projects for Fortune 500 companies.  In my career I started as a computer programmer and worked my way into managing multi-hundred person projects before becoming a CEO.  I used to taking on large complex projects and building the organizations and processes needed to implement large, complex solutions.  I also know how to gather large numbers of really talented people to create effective teams  and then organize the tasks and deliverables to accomplish big things.

We have built the Blue Ridge PRISM to be the vehicle that will take on this world class problem, but we can't do it without major support, such as we would get from winning this competition. 

Lots of challenges

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