Proceedings of the Sixty-first Annual Meeting of the Northeastern ...

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b. Legislative Visits training course- Lee explained that the Invasive Species
Awareness Coalition that organizes NIWAW and is chaired by Nelroy Jackson has
been busy planning NIWAW 7. This year will include a more unified legislative focus
with an official NIWAW position on several key issues. Part of this legislative push
will include organized Congressional visits by key NIWAW participants that target
House and Senate committees which deal with invasive weed policy and funding. In
addition Lee said that he has led two on-line training courses titled “Legislative Visits
101: Making your visit count” and will conduct the third and final session on Jan. 23,
2005 at 4 PM (ET). More information can be found at:
http://www.nawma.org/niwaw/niwaw_index.htm
2. Work with the USDA-ARS to adopt Weed Science as a Federal job series
a. Congressional Letter to OPM – Lee said the Office of Personal Management has not
responded to past requests from Rob Hedberg and is working with Hilda Diaz-
Soltero on this. Lee thought that Congressional action may be needed in the form of
a letter to OPM that is signed by key Representatives and Senators. Lee is working
on drafting this letter and plans to make visits to “the Hill” to garner support.
3. Expand the WSSA’s participation and recognition within the EPA.
a. Discussion of meeting with Don Stubbs, Associate Administrator with EPA Office of
Pesticide Policy. Lee and John Jachetta discussed the results from their recent
meeting with Don Stubbs. EPA is looking for info on Rangeland and R-O-W
expertise. Lars Anderson said we should invite WSSA members with this type of
expertise to DC for periodic seminars on these topics. John Jachetta said we need
to make sure to invite EPA employees to NIWAW. John mentioned another topic
could be application technology and how to assess spray drift in urban areas. Since
then, we have tentatively scheduled a seminar at EPA on March 2, 2006 with one or
two weed scientists to talk about rangeland and R-O-W issues.
b. Conducting EPA field visits, and reciprocal expert visits to DC. Lars Anderson
mentioned the success of his 2 week tour in the west with EPA employees. John
Jachetta said we could also be effective by organizing a small trip where an EPA
employee spends a week at a University or with an Extension Agent. Other
suggestions included forming a small discussion group at the WSSA meeting in New
York with EPA officials that will be attending and to use commodity groups as a
vehicle to get EPA involved. Lee has invited Don Stubbs and Kurt Getsinger to meet
with the WSSA Board in New York as well as participate in the WSSA WLC meeting.
c. John Jachetta said that we need to discuss some of these ideas when Carol Mallory-
Smith is in DC at the end of Nov. Lee will organize a meeting with Carol, John, and
himself and EPA’s Don Stubbs and Lois Rossi. Since then, Carol and John were not
able to travel to DC in Nov, but Lee still met with Don Stubbs.
4. Increase Weed Science research funding opportunities.
Focus of USDA’s Biology of Weedy and Invasive Plant NRI Program. Several people
were deeply concerned about the direction of this NRI Grant program. This year’s grant
program now includes all invasive species (e.g., not just plants). Jill said that when she
was panel manager several years ago, they had expanded the grant program to Invasive
Plants because of the poor submission rate from Weed Biology. She thinks this may be
the case again; however Michael Bowers, the new CSREES Program Leader for
Ecology, has said that the only way to get more funding dollars is to change what you
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