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Fire management can help maintain natural habitats, increase forage for wildlife, reduce fuel loads that might otherwise lead to catastrophic wildfire, and maintain natural succession. Today, there is an emerging challenge that fire managers need to be aware of: invasive plants. Fire management activities can create ideal opportunities for invasions by nonnative plants, potentially undermining the benefits of fire management actions. This manual provides practical guidelines that fire managers should consider with respect to invasive plants.

See also: Publications - Briefs for more resources

Cattle grazing on a nearly half mile wide targeted strip of cheatgrass near Beowawe, Nevada, created a firebreak that helped limit a rangeland fire to just 54 acres this past August compared to rangeland fires that more commonly race across thousands of acres of the Great Basin. This "targeted grazing" firebreak and eight others are part of an evaluation project being managed by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), partnering with other federal, state and local agencies and local cattle ranchers in Idaho, Nevada and Oregon. These demonstration sites are being studied so the concept's efficacy and environmental impacts can be uniformly evaluated and compared.

Cheatgrass, also known as downy brome, is an invasive annual that dominates more than 100 million acres of the Great Basin in the western U.S. Germinating each winter, cheatgrass grows furiously in spring and dies in early summer, leaving the range carpeted in golden dry tinder. The Great Basin now has the nation's highest wildfire risk, and rangeland fires are outpacing forest fires when it comes to acreage destroyed.

On Tuesday, June 5, 2018, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL) confirmed the presence of the Longhorned tick (Haemaphysalis longicornis) in Arkansas. The Longhorned tick is an exotic East Asian tick associated with bacterial and viral tickborne diseases of animals and humans in other parts of the world. This tick is considered by USDA to be a serious threat to livestock because heavy tick infestations may cause stunted growth, decreased production and animal deaths. Like deer-ticks, the nymphs of the Longhorned tick are very small (resembling tiny spiders) and can easily go unnoticed on animals and people. This tick is known to infest a wide range of species and has the potential to infect multiple North American wildlife species, humans, dogs, cats, and livestock.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists, in cooperation with Pacific Biosciences and Penn State University have successfully reconstructed the genome of spotted lanternfly, paving the way for understanding it's biology and behavior. Not only is it the first published genome for this pest, but no closely related species has had its genome sequenced, making the data even more important.

For the first time, scientists have tracked the movement of a wild bird known to be infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza in North America. The new research, led by the U.S. Geological Survey, can help improve estimates of when and where the virus could spread in the environment and to other birds.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Aquatic Invasive Species Program supports a dedicated group of people who work closely with state invasive species coordinators, non-governmental groups, private landowners and many others in their day-to-day activities.

Research and commerce use a two-pronged ‘fork’ approach to deal with invasive fish. As many anglers know, carp are not welcome when found dangling from the hook. Classified by U.S. government as an invasive species and known colloquially as a “trash fish,” carp can take over and devastate every watery environment they enter. They’re not particularly well known in this country as good eating fish, either. To help curb the numbers of invasive fish, researchers and commerce are using a two-pronged ‘fork’ approach to deal with the invasive fish.

Prepared for the Office of Management and Budget.
See also: NISC and NISC Secretariat Products for additional related resources.

See also: Ecological Risk Screening Summaries for more species summaries

The Flood and Storm Tracker (FaST) maps were created to help assess impacts on nonindigenous aquatic species distributions due to flooding associated with storms. Storm surge and flood events can assist expansion and distribution of nonindigenous aquatic species through connection of adjacent watersheds, backflow of water upstream of impoundments, increased downstream flow, and/or creation of freshwater bridges along coastal regions. These maps will help natural resource managers determine potential new locations for individual species, or to develop a watchlist of potential new species within a watershed.

ARS vaccine helps to defend rare bird from avian influenza. Scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) recently joined other federal agencies to take emergency action to protect one of America’s endangered species, the California condor.

ARS Science Leads Way in Screening at the Molecular Level. Fungal pathogens represent a large and economically significant challenge to crops worldwide. The challenge is so great, in fact, diseases caused by fungal pathogens can cause crop losses of 10-20% (worth $100-$200 billion) each year. Historically, a variety of biological, chemical, and mechanical methods have been used to fight fungal diseases, Lately, though, researchers have focused on molecular methods to develop disease-resistant crops, which would reduce the need for, and damage caused by, chemical fungicides.

A new approach to tackling the spotted-wing drosophila involves manipulating the behavior of these insects. The spotted-wing drosophila is an invasive pest of fruits that infests ripe, ready-to-eat fruit. The pest poses a significant threat to farmers because it is very difficult to control with standard pesticides. ARS scientists have devised a solution involves manipulating the behavior of these insects by disguising healthy fruit as being infected with an unappealing pathogen.

This Story from NAL's Collection invites readers to appreciate the complex history of foot-and-mouth disease and the relationship between the United States and Mexico. It briefly chronicles the 1946-1954 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Mexico and how the United States and Mexican governments worked together to eradicate the disease.

Title 9: Animals and Animal Products, Part 94