On June 20th BCCD released tamarisk beetles on the Two Buttes Wildlife Area. Done in cooperation with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, several thousand of these tiny beetles were placed on salt cedar trees, as the fulfillment of the “biological control” component of a 2007 EQIP Invasive Species project.

  Colorado Department of Ag’s Insectary at Palisade provided the beetles. The Insectary has only been in Colorado these beetles have been released. Dan Bean from the Insectary describes the beetles as “host specific insects that only eat tamarisk, and will eventually defoliate entire trees. This defoliation opens up the canopy, allowing sunlight through, which enables native plants like willows and cottonwoods to come back.”

  BCCD will continue to monitor the beetles’ progress on the Two Buttes Wildlife Area. 

 BCCD began a test plot of bindweed gall mites on Smith Farms, southeast of Walsh, June 20th. These mites also came from Colorado Department of Ag’s Palisade Insectary. The District received a styrofoam cooler full of infested bindweed. 

  Pictured above, Nathan George, Storm Casper, Max Smith and Weston Moffett are winding the infested bindweed around the stems of a bindweed patch.  As the mites feed on the leaves and stems, the leaves curl and close like a clam shell. (See photo to the left with curled leaves and dead stem.) All life stages of the mite occur within the folded and distorted leaves.

  If this demon-stration project is successful, BCCD will be able to harvest infested bindweed from the Smith Farms site and introduce it into other areas.