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Elevate invasive plant management as a critical conservation concern in the 2007 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act (Farm Bill). Invasive plants can change soil properties and reduce soil stability and productivity, alter natural hydrologic regimes, degrade wildlife and migratory bird habitat, degrade wetlands, and alter fire regimes.
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Prioritize funding for USDA conservationists and technical advisors working with invasive plants and require comprehensive training of technical service providers who may be consulted regarding invasive plants, site- and ecosystem-appropriate vegetation, and management strategies.
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Prioritize prevention and early detection of invasive plants. Invasive plant prevention is more cost-effective, efficient, and successful than management of invaded habitats.
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Make maintenance and restoration of biodiversity an explicit program objective. Diverse plant communities are more stable, more consistently productive, and, in concept, may sequester more carbon due to diverse lifeforms.
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Prohibit using invasive plants for biofuel production on Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) lands and elsewhere to avoid spreading invasive plants. Furthermore, plants considered for biofuels production should be screened for invasive traits.
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Allow haying, mowing, burning, and grazing to manage invasive plants. All actions should be NRCS-approved and strategically timed to manage wildlife habitat, allow reproduction of native birds and other wildlife, remove decadent vegetation, and provide other ecological benefits.
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Expand program eligibility to include non-producers. Invasive plants on non-agricultural lands can threaten the productivity of agricultural lands and the integrity of wildlife habitat.
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Provide increased incentives for long-term, multi-stakeholder efforts to prevent or manage invasive plants at multiple spatial scales. Cooperative weed management engages more people and is more sustainable than single-landowner and single-stakeholder efforts.
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Invasive plants should be explicitly excluded from definitions of “appropriate vegetative cover.” Define “appropriate vegetative cover” as species deemed appropriate by NRCS Ecological Site Descriptions.
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Require monitoring of land-condition indicators and management effects to provide a basis for management adaptations and program accountability. Long-term data are essential to evaluate program effectiveness and determine future strategies.
