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Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/714108
30 September 2016 Landscape and Irrigation www.landscapeirrigation.com TREE CARE Over the course of more than 60 years, research by Dr. William Bramble and Dr. William Byrnes has constructed a blueprint for how to effectively manage rights-of-way (ROWs) with wildlife habitat in mind. Their research, started in 1953 as The State Game Lands (SGL) 33 Research and Demonstration Project, began in response to hunters' concerns about the effects of herbicides on game species. Today, it's considered the standard on how to use integrated vegetation management — including selective herbicides — as a means to create and maintain rights-of-way that transmit safe and reliable power while providing desirable wildlife habitat. Today, an increasing number of utilities and their contract applicators are applying these principles on rights-of-way, and for wildlife, it's making a real difference. Herbicides help make rough terrain manageable Trees Inc. contracts with utilities across the country to manage their rights-of-way — utilities such as Rocky Mountain Power, based in Salt Lake City, which has 16,400 miles of transmission line rights- of-way that keep the power on for more than a million customers in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. This area is home to some very rough mountain terrain, making vegetation management challenging. But rough terrain isn't the primary concern when managing rights-of-way in this area, said Darren West, forest technician with Trees Inc. "The biggest challenge we face is governmental regulations and environmental stipulations because a large part of Rocky Mountain Power's rights-of-way fall onto land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service," he said. "We need to make sure we comply with different agencies' requirements and secure approval from different public land managers before we do anything." West has worked on the Rocky Mountain Power account for 18 years, and in that time he has built relationships with area land managers, and understands what is acceptable when it comes to herbicide use. ALL PHOTOS PROVIDED BY DOW AGROSCIENCES Rocky Mountain Right-of-Way Project Enhances Mule Deer Habitat