Associate Professor Brian Mealor works to repair damaged rangelands by removing and preventing invasive plant species.
“If I had to encapsulate my research program over the last several years into one thought, it would be that we really try to repair damaged rangelands,” says Brian Mealor, associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences and director of the UW Sheridan Research and Extension Center. While Mealor joined UW in 2009, his roles have evolved from weed extension specialist to director of the Sheridan center, all the while carrying on his research into non-native invasive weeds.
“I think that oftentimes when people think about weed management and invasive species management, they see it as sort of an agricultural problem,” Mealor says. “But with the kind of weed species I deal with, it’s much more than that. In rangeland, natural habitats and national parks, it becomes more of an issue related to things like wildlife habitat and ecosystem functioning—in some cases, maybe even public safety. Somewhere around 9.4 million acres have burned in the United States this year (as of October 2015), and a lot of those wildfires are driven by non-native invasive plant species.
“Some estimates have put it in the hundreds of millions if not over a billion dollars in economic impact per year related to invasive species as a whole,” he says.
Mealor and his team look at the causes for invasive plants in an area and tactics to reduce their impact. “Basically, we try to get rid of the bad guys and improve the good guys,” he says. This may involve grazing management, herbicides and other approaches, depending on the situation.
Mealor also looks at how to prevent non-native invasive species from being introduced in the first place.
“We’re trying to be proactive in the way we approach restoration and invasive weed management,” he says. “Oftentimes it seems that land managers at the large scale don’t take action until the problem is so bad it’s started to have really big impacts. We’re trying to identify some management thresholds for a subset of important weeds.”
Mealor feels fortunate to work in Wyoming, where agencies are cooperative and supportive: “If you’re a weed scientist who likes to work in rangeland ecosystems, there is no better place than the state of Wyoming to do that work. Folks are really supportive of improving habitat through doing invasive weed research and management. It’s really nice to have that kind of cooperation from people out in the state.”
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