Project Overview

Reports

Commodities

Target Pests

Practices

The Western Invasive Plant Risk Evaluation Network (Network) is an interstate work group established in 2021 and sustained through 2022 and 2023 through grant support from the Western Integrated Plant Management Center (WIPM). The Network addresses WIPM’s “Invasive Species” priority area by generating risk assessments across five states for plants that may become invasive and by providing a forum for sharing information on new plants of potential concern. It also addresses WIPM’s “Culture and Capacity” priority area by strengthening regional and inter-organizational communication networks.  Network collaborators double as end users and include conservation land managers, the nursery industry, university extension, environmental non-profits, and public agencies, all of whom benefit from the risk evaluations and communications associated with the project. 

Prevention is a key component of IPM. It can be strengthened by predicting which plant species pose the highest risk of becoming invasive in the future. Regionally specific risk evaluations are especially valuable because many plants have an extensive lag phase before becoming invasive and because invasiveness varies across environments. Our Network improves our ability to prevent the spread of invasive plants by serving as an early detection communication network and supports the evaluations of high priority potentially invasive plants. The online Plant Risk Evaluator (PRE) tool is the primary tool the Network uses. It was developed in 2015 to evaluate horticultural plants and has since also been broadened to screen other non-horticultural terrestrial plants that have not yet spread widely. PlantRight, an interdisciplinary partnership convened to prevent introduction of invasive plants through horticulture, and the California Invasive Plant Council (Cal-IPC), a California-centered non-profit dedicated to protecting California from the damaging effects of invasive plants, manage the tool. WIPM has funded the Network since 2021, supporting the completion of 56 risk evaluations of species to date across five western states, with an additional 31 pending for 2023.

We are requesting funding to grow and strengthen our Network further by: (1) facilitating the evaluation of an additional 30 species for Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arizona; (2) training at least three additional evaluators on PRE and two additional horticultural reviewers; (3) recruiting western states’ partners and public gardens to join the “Public Gardens as Sentinels against Invasive Plants” program and utilizing database information from the program to help assess plants with PRE; (4) providing a forum for state partners to share information about new regional invasive species; and (5) completing the transition of the PRE webtool to Drupal 9 over the course of the 2024 project period, marking a pivotal step in the long-term sustainability of the tool. 

The results of our work in 2024 will be shared through at least one public presentation and article. By supporting others in their use of PRE and promoting a new Public Gardens database, we are speeding up the evaluation process of potentially damaging invasive plants and improving communication about them to a wide array of stakeholders and their across western United States.  

Objective 1. Conduct risk assessments – We will work with partners from each state to generate and finalize another 30 assessments of plant species (four for each partner state and 10 for California). 90% likelihood of success by 2/28/2025.

Objective 2. Maintain and strengthen PRE assessment capacity – We will continue to strengthen invasive plant risk assessment capacity across five partner states (California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) by offering refresher training, as well as project management, QA/QC, evaluation reviews, logistical support and timeline management to all partners using PRE. Cal-IPC and PlantRight will train a minimum of three new PRE evaluators and two horticultural reviewers. 90% likelihood of success by 10/31/2024. 

Objective 3. Improve data gathering for horticultural plants – we will follow up on our 2023 workshop on horticultural invasives by working with Network partners to recruit public gardens to the “Public Gardens as Sentinels against Invasive Plants” program. We will seek to recruit at least four public gardens from western states (tripling the current number of west coast participants) to submit data on potentially invasive horticultural plants into the “Sentinels” database. Interested gardens will be enrolled in one of four quarterly informational webinars offered by the “Sentinels” program. We will request and use any existing public garden data on species selected for PREs in 2024  from the “Sentinels” program. 90% likelihood of success by 2/28/2025.

Objective 4. Share knowledge – We will engage all partner leads to share updates on new invasive plants and relevant PRE results at a kick-off and a wrap-up meeting. We will present results from our project through either a Cal-IPC newsletter article and/or conference presentation. We will share high risk PRE results with Yurok and Karuk tribes. We will post high risk invasives to our online inventory. 95% likelihood of success by 2/28/2025.

Objective 5. Maintain PRE tool – We will work with the PRE website manager to complete the transition of the PRE webtool to Drupal 9 over the course of the 2024 project period. 85% likelihood of success by 2/28/2025.