Project Overview

Reports

Commodities

Target Pests

Practices

Invasive species pressures are a consistent challenge for our region’s natural resource managers and landowners. Managers tackle the environmental, economic, and cultural challenges of invasive species in different ways, at different scales, to address specific mission priorities. Unfortunately, this can result in fragmented information streams and siloed knowledge bases. The Oregon Invasive Species Council’s “Spreading Information not Invasive Species” project will strategically build out an information resource Hub that supports both big picture planning decisions and day-to-day management activities. This NW Invasive Species Digital Information Hub will focus collective efforts to expand and share a database of available information on complex topics for various natural resource & invasive species manager users and assess user needs to maintain a useful tool into the future. 

The OISC is rolling out the basic infrastructure for the digital information hub by January 2022. This next proposed phase of the hub’s development focuses on expanded partnership building, outreach, assessment of user needs, and the development of specific information resources regarding 1) impacts of changing climate on invasive species issues; 2) impacts of invasive species on First Foods; and 3) lessons learned regarding management practices shared by invasive species managers.

To achieve these goals, the OISC and its diverse members are collaborating with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the NW Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change Network, Western Invasives Network, and Samara Group. Together, the collaborators will develop a focused questionnaire to engage with a network of natural resource managers and researchers in the Pacific Northwest region including Oregon, Washington, and Sovereign Tribal Nations in the area. Collaborators will follow up with individual specialists and requests for information related to the topics of climate change, impacts on First Foods, and IPM lessons learned to compile for a set of ~40 species or pathways of interest. The information will be linked to an online database that will be hosted on the Oregon Invasive Species Council’s website for users in the natural resource and invasive species networks to view, sort, and download for their own management purposes. A launch webinar will be scheduled for early 2023. Supporting case studies and summary reports will be published online with a ‘how-to’ guide for using and informing future iterations of the digital information hub.

Objective #1: Share best available climate science and understand pressing research needs to better inform adaptive management efforts.

Asking managers across the region to intentionally reflect on both current priorities and potential species of concern within the next 25+ years will help us identify existing knowledge gaps in terms of temporal and spatial priorities. Sharing information about the implications of a changing climate for cross-taxa invasive species is important for staying ahead of the invasion curve and monitoring or mitigating pathways of introduction and/or dispersal. 

Objective #2: Develop common understanding about the threats of invasive species establishment and the impacts of treatment methods on First Foods.

It is essential that the resource management community is proactive and supportive of the protection, enhancement, and restoration of the First Foods for the indigenous people of the region. Not only is it our collective duty to uphold Treaty Tribes’ rights, but also to restore the integrity of the native ecosystems for present and future generations. When assessing invasive species risks and treatment methods in an IPM framework, it is imperative that resource managers take into account the impacts on First Foods. We propose collecting and sharing this information alongside other IPM resources and best available climate science.

Objective #3: Compile shared resources for various management practices that have been documented to work (or not work) for invasive species management

“Best practices” is a term often used, but is a relative term that can be interpreted depending on many different environmental or cultural considerations. Thus, we propose a compilation of available information and lessons-learned for a set of emerging or especially challenging invasive species threats that provides a resource for sorting, reviewing, and selecting the most appropriate management strategies for a local area. By setting up the online infrastructure to combine available information alongside other valuable information such as climate change and impacts on First Foods, this project aims to provide a diverse suite of information for resource managers that can continue to be scaled and expanded over time.